which they proposed (in New Recommendation No. 4) should be made, but it would appear that they had some intention that the ceremony should follow one of the accepted patterns.
31. The members of the Sub-Committee all felt that such "two-stage" marriages of this sort would be most unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons, and they would urge collectively that serious consideration be given to the difficulties which might arise before legislation is framed. In the first place the system would be un- necessarily complex as a legal form of marriage, particularly when subject to the scrutiny of authorities outside the Colony. On the level of formal validity, if compliance with the requirements of a definition of a particular Chinese form of marriage were to be a requisite, then presumably a marriage would be open to attack after registration if it could be shown that there was a want of due ceremony. If, on the other hand, the certification by the four deponents at the time of registration were held to be conclusive as to the form of the marriage, then it would seem that the nature of the ceremony would be strictly superfluous, and it would not in practice matter what kind of ceremony actually took place, provided the certificate was executed. It would become clear to people that all that need to be done would be to fill up the form, regardless of whether the requirements of the definition had or had not been satisfied.
32. As regards essential, as against formal, validity, too, the complexity of a two-stage marriage would be inconvenient. At what stage, it may reasonably be asked, would the Registrar be expected to satisfy himself that the requirements for the essential validity of the marriage had been met? It would clearly be most undesirable if persons were able to conduct a traditional wedding of one sort or another, in good faith, only to be refused registration later by reason of some essential defect, or lack of notice. Such purported marriages might come to be widely regarded in Chinese society as binding, though legally they would be ineffective. A two-stage marriage would thus be open to serious misunderstanding and even abuse. Indeed, it might be necessary to consider the possibility of providing for criminal sanctions against persons responsible for the conduct of purported ceremonies. While the
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