Gretna Green thousands of weddings. Today there are several wedding venues in and around Gretna Green, from former churches to purpose-built chapels. The services at all the venues are always performed over an iconic blacksmith's anvil. Gretna Green endures as one of the world's most popular wedding venues, and thousands of couples from around the world come to be married 'over the anvil' in Gretna Green. In common law, a "Gretna Green marriage" came to mean, in general, a marriage transacted in a jurisdiction that was not the residence of the parties being married, to avoid restrictions or procedures imposed by the
Family in early modern Scotland Reformation, "Irregular marriage", without a church ceremony or any residence qualifications, remained valid if promises were made between the couple in front of witnesses. From the 1730s the border settlements of Coldstream Bridge, Lamberton Toll, and most famously Gretna Green, developed local industries in private and rapid marriages for English couples wishing to take advantage of the more flexible Scottish marriage laws, undertaken by individuals who declared themselves marriage priests. This business would expand rapidly after the passage of Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act in 1754, which completely ended irregular marriages in England, but not in Scotland. While among the wealthy,