Notice of Intended Marriage Software: A Guide for Australian Celebrants

Search "Notice of Intended Marriage software" today and most of what comes back is a legal explainer, not a piece of software. That's not because celebrants don't want one. An unprompted signal from our own research says the opposite, and it's further down this page. It's that almost nobody has written down, in one place, what this category of software actually is, what it should do, and who's actually built it.

This page is that answer. If you've landed here from a search about the paperwork itself, the direct answers below are for you. Read as far as you need, then jump to the full state-by-state guide for the legal detail. If you're a celebrant working out whether dedicated software for this exists, keep going past the legal basics into the checklist and comparison further down. That's where this page earns its keep.

Quick answer: what "Notice of Intended Marriage software" means

Notice of Intended Marriage software is any tool that helps an Australian marriage celebrant manage, schedule and lodge the Notice of Intended Marriage, the legal notice required under the Marriage Act 1961 (s42(1)(a)) before every wedding. At minimum it should track the one-month/18-month lodgement window against the ceremony date and keep the Form 15 record celebrants are legally required to retain.

What is a Notice of Intended Marriage?

A Notice of Intended Marriage is the legal notice a couple gives their authorised celebrant before they can marry in Australia. It's a single, uniform Commonwealth form under the Marriage Act 1961, not a state form, and it has to be received by the celebrant no earlier than 18 months and no later than one month before the wedding date (s42(1)(a)). For the full state-by-state legal picture, covering witnessing rules, the state BDM systems and the record-keeping obligations, see Notice of Intended Marriage: A State-by-State Guide for Australian Celebrants. We won't repeat that depth here.

When must it be lodged? The one-month rule

The window is set by the Marriage Act 1961, s42(1)(a): a celebrant must receive the signed notice no earlier than 18 months and no later than one calendar month before the wedding date. The clock starts on the date the celebrant actually receives the signed notice, not the date the couple booked the celebrant, and not the date they filled in a draft. Any software that claims to track this properly has to measure against the ceremony date, not the booking date, and flag the one-month deadline before it becomes a problem rather than after.

Can a Notice of Intended Marriage be witnessed remotely?

Yes, permanently, since 12 June 2024. The Marriage Act 1961 (s42(2)(c)–(d)) now allows the notice to be signed under observation via audio-visual link, not only in person. That permanent rule replaced a temporary COVID-era measure which first allowed remote signing from 20 December 2021. The location rule hasn't changed: if the couple is in Australia, the remote witness, which can include a celebrant, must also be in Australia; if the couple is overseas, the witness must be overseas too, and can't be a celebrant. Software that's kept genuinely current tracks this distinction. A surprising amount of celebrant-forum advice still doesn't.

What are a celebrant's obligations before and after lodgement?

Once the notice is signed, the obligations don't stop. A celebrant must be satisfied of each party's identity (Marriage Act 1961, s42(8)(a)), sight evidence of their date and place of birth (s42(1)(b)), and, if either party has been married before, evidence that the earlier marriage has ended (s42(10); reg 70(2)(c) where it ended by annulment). After the ceremony, the celebrant completes at least two Form 15 certificates, the one prescribed marriage certificate form in Australia. One is retained, one is sent to the state or territory BDM within 14 days (s50(1)(b), s50(4)(a)(i)).

Then there's the obligation that outlasts the wedding day itself. Under Marriage Regulations 2017, reg 73(5), a celebrant must keep a record for every Form 15 certificate supplied to them, covering the serial number and what happened to it, for six years (reg 73(6)). Getting this record wrong is a strict-liability offence under reg 74(1); it doesn't require intent, just the gap in the record. None of this is optional admin. It's the part of the job a celebrant is personally and legally accountable for, in the right order, every time. That is exactly where a document sitting in the wrong place, or a date re-keyed incorrectly, turns into a real problem.

Is there software that automates the Notice of Intended Marriage?

Yes. Purpose-built celebrant software exists, and it's a genuinely different category from the client-management tools many celebrants reach for first. The general-purpose CRMs built for photographers and other small-business creatives, namely Studio Ninja, HoneyBook and Dubsado, don't handle any of this natively: no notice-window tracking, no Form 15 register, no Australian BDM integration, because they weren't built with Australian marriage law in mind. One celebrant in our own research put it plainly about the most-used of the three: it's "geared toward photographers… in terms of language and features."

Spreadsheets don't solve it either. They can hold the dates, but they don't track a legal deadline against a ceremony date on their own, and they don't keep the record-of-use register reg 73(5) requires. That part stays manual no matter how good the spreadsheet is. What genuinely purpose-built celebrant software adds is everything below.

What should Notice of Intended Marriage software actually do? A checklist

This is a genuinely useful list to hold any tool against, including whatever you're using right now, whether you ever buy anything new or not. Three of these are things the law effectively requires. Three are things that separate good software from a document generator, but aren't themselves legal requirements. It's worth being honest about which is which.

What the law requires:

• Tracks the one-month minimum and 18-month maximum notice window (Marriage Act 1961, s42(1)(a))
• Supports the 2024 remote-witnessing rule, including the in-Australia/outside-Australia split (s42(2)(c)–(d))
• Keeps a Form 15 record-of-use register: serial numbers, outcomes, six-year retention (Marriage Regulations 2017, reg 73(5)–(6))

What good software adds on top (not law-mandated, but worth having):

• Schedules the notice against the actual ceremony date, not just a standing calendar reminder. This is the only practical way anyone applies the s42(1)(a) window day to day, even though no provision requires software to do it specifically
• Prefills your state's BDM registration portal. This is a convenience, not a legal obligation. The only relevant duty in law is forwarding the certificate to the BDM within 14 days (s50(4)(a)(i)), and nothing requires it to be software-assisted
• Speaks celebrant language, not photographer or generic-client language. This is a fitness-for-purpose bar, not a compliance one, and our own research keeps confirming celebrants feel the gap. In a survey of 114 Australian celebrants, nearly one in six raised the Notice of Intended Marriage, Form 15 or BDM lodgement by name, completely unprompted. We never asked about legals; they brought it up.

Spreadsheets vs generic CRM vs Notice of Intended Marriage-specific software

Here's the same six-item checklist, scored against what's actually on the market today.

Scroll the table sideways →

Based on each vendor's own published feature list and pricing pages, accessed July 2026. None names Australian marriage-legal functionality. A photography CRM can cost $24–90+ a month depending on the tier (as at July 2026), and the cheaper rate usually means paying the whole year upfront, booked or not.

That's the point-solutions problem in a table. A spreadsheet holds dates. A generic CRM manages clients and invoices. Neither was built for Australian marriage-legal admin, so neither does it. One celebrant summed up the result of stacking tools like this in her own words: "it's like having 15 different systems." What follows is how CelebrantCentral, purpose-built for Australian celebrants, keeps the whole thing in one record instead.

How CelebrantCentral handles the Notice of Intended Marriage for you

CelebrantCentral is purpose-built for Australian marriage celebrants. The Notice of Intended Marriage, Form 15 and BDM lodgement live in the same ceremony record as everything else, not spread across a spreadsheet, a document generator and a general CRM.

• Scheduled legal sends. The Notice of Intended Marriage email goes to the couple automatically, on a date derived from the ceremony date, not a sticky note or a recurring reminder you set yourself.
• Form 15 record-of-use register. Every Form 15 certificate issued to you is logged against the ceremony it belongs to. That's the record reg 73(5) requires, kept for you instead of in a separate folder or notebook.
• BDM Form Prefill. CelebrantCentral's browser extension prefills your state's BDM online portal from the ceremony record you've already built in CelebrantCentral — you review it and submit it yourself. It's WA now, with more states rolling out toward launch.

CelebrantCentral was co-founded by Luke Firth, a working Australian marriage celebrant and ABIA Australia's Best Celebrant 2025, which is why the legal detail on this page is written the way a celebrant actually works.

How much does it cost?

$2 + GST per active ceremony, capped at $40 + GST/month. Leads are free. There's no lock-in. A ceremony only becomes billable once it's booked, and drops off again once the day is done. Free during beta.

Against that: a generic photography CRM typically runs $24–90+ a month (as at July 2026) regardless of how many ceremonies you actually have on, and the cheaper tiers usually mean paying the year upfront. See full pricing →