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A young cou­ple ex­changed mar­i­tal vows at Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle yes­ter­day as the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs hand­ed out 36 cer­tifi­cates to new­ly ap­point­ed mar­riage of­fi­cers, mark­ing what the Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward clear­ing a years-long ad­min­is­tra­tive back­log.

Dar­ryl Saun­ders and Ri­han­na John, who re­cent­ly wel­comed their two-week-old daugh­ter Jazmyn, were in­vit­ed by the min­istry to hold their cer­e­mo­ny at the his­toric venue in­stead of the usu­al of­fice set­ting. They shared their first dance to Christi­na Per­ri’s “A Thou­sand Years” per­formed by vi­o­lin­ist Sachin Boodram, with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al of­fi­ci­at­ing.

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said the ap­point­ment of the new of­fi­cers rep­re­sents the first ma­jor ef­fort to re­duce de­lays that have kept some ap­pli­cants wait­ing up to 10 years. Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, he crit­i­cised the en­trenched red tape across state agen­cies and not­ed that sev­er­al re­li­gious bod­ies had com­plained that li­cens­ing gaps left cou­ples un­able to have wed­dings of­fi­ci­at­ed by their pre­ferred priests, imams or pun­dits.