A couple whose marriage was declared invalid by a court after a key speech was reportedly written by ChatGPT say the mistake lies with Zwolle town council, RTL Nieuws reported on Thursday.

The bride and groom, who have chosen to remain anonymous, said they were taken by surprise when they discovered through friends and family that their marriage had been annulled. At that point, they said, they had not yet received a formal letter from the court, but that the media were already reporting the ruling.

The couple married on April 19 last year with a close friend acting as the registrar. They opted for a light-hearted ceremony, which they said succeeded in setting the right tone on the day.

Under Dutch law, a marriage is only valid if both partners explicitly declare that they accept each other as spouses and will fulfill the legal duties attached to marriage.

In this case, the official asked the groom whether he wanted to stand by his partner “today, tomorrow and all the days to come”, and asked the bride whether she was “choosing him again today”. The ceremony ended without the formal legal wording required by law.

According to the couple, someone in the audience raised concerns immediately after the ceremony and suggested repeating the vows later. However, the council official who attended the wedding decided intervention was unnecessary.

Three months later, after the couple had returned from their honeymoon, the municipality informed them that the ceremony had not been legally valid.

The couple said one point in the court ruling was particularly painful. It stated that the officiant’s speech had been written with the help of ChatGPT.

“That is not true,” they said. Their friend had only asked an AI tool to check whether his text met the legal requirements, they said, stressing they wanted to defend him against public criticism.

The error came to light later when a civil registry official reviewed an audio recording of the ceremony and found the mandatory legal text was missing. The council was then required to inform the public prosecution service, which asked the court to strike the marriage from the register.

Wedding date

The couple asked whether they could keep their original wedding date, which marked 10 years of their relationship, but the court rejected the request, saying it could not deviate from the law despite understanding the date’s personal importance.

They have since married again in a short ceremony at the town hall in July. That date is now their official wedding anniversary, though not the one they say they will remember. “It’s unfortunate it turned out this way,” they told RTL. “We’ve been dealing with it for almost a year. Hopefully, one day we’ll laugh about it.”