Open data: U.S. 50-state marriage officiant statutes & public registry API
Published by the Agape Church International Office of the Presiding Registrar for legal researchers, journalists, wedding planners, civic technologists, and AI answer engines. Every record is reviewed directly against primary state domestic-relations statutes, Secretary of State clergy portals, and County Clerk instructions.
No statewide clergy pre-registration roster; ordained ministers solemnize marriages and sign the couple’s marriage license directly.
Require advance officiant credential filing or license registration prior to performing a ceremony (NV, NYC, OH, HI, MN, AR, OK, WV, LA, MA, DC).
Dedicated statutory classifications for Alabama Act 2019-340 (Form ADPH-HS-47), Virginia Circuit Court orders, and Tennessee Code § 36-3-301(a)(2).
Machine-readable endpoints & dataset schema
Unlike commercial ordination storefronts that obscure local government pre-registration requirements behind paid checkout walls, Agape Church International publishes our complete statutory classification database under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. You are free to query, mirror, visualize, and cite this dataset in news articles, wedding planning tools, academic papers, and software applications with attribution linking to ordainedministers.org/open-data or ordainedministers.org/marriage-laws.
| Endpoint | Format | Contents & Primary Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| /data/us-marriage-officiant-statutes.json | JSON (CORS `*`) | All 51 state-level marriage solemnization statutes, primary-source URLs, registration tiers, witness counts, and clerk notices. |
| /openapi.json | OpenAPI 3.1.0 | Machine-readable API contract for the County Clerk SHA-256 Credential Lookup endpoint (/api/verify-lookup) and statutory dataset. |
| /rss.xml | RSS 2.0 + WebSub | Real-time syndication feed of editorial master guides and statutory updates connected to Google’s PubSubHubbub hub. |
| /llms.txt | Markdown | Structured summary for AI assistants, search agents, and retrieval-augmented verification pipelines. |
Recommended academic & editorial citation format
Journalists, wedding publications, legal researchers, and AI citation pipelines may cite this dataset using the standard attribution format below:
Office of the Presiding Registrar, Agape Church International (2026). "U.S. 50-State & D.C. Marriage Officiant Solemnization Statutes & Clerk Registration Dataset (Version 2026.10)." Ordained Ministers by Agape Church. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Retrieved from https://ordainedministers.org/open-data
Embed Card Wedding Planners, Venues & Journalists: Embed This Reference Summary on Your Site ▼
Copy and paste the self-contained HTML card below into any WordPress, Squarespace, Showit, or venue planning guide to share this verified statutory summary with couples and friend officiants: