Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio launched the celebrity courthouse wedding trend when they wed at San Francisco City Hall in January 1954. Monroe wore a chocolate-brown broadcloth suit with a white ermine Peter Pan collar and carried three white orchids. The three-minute ceremony was intended to be private but became a media spectacle.
Rock stars and artists embraced courthouse weddings in the 1960s and 1970s as an anti-establishment statement. George Harrison married Pattie Boyd at the Epsom register office in Surrey, England, in 1966, with Paul McCartney as best man. Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman in a civil ceremony at the Marylebone Register Office in London in 1969.
Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías and Mick Jagger married at Saint-Tropez Town Hall in May 1971, creating a paparazzi frenzy. Bianca wore an ivory Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking jacket, a long bias-cut skirt, and a wide-brimmed hat draped in tulle.
Since the 2000s, courthouse weddings have become more popular, serving purposes ranging from privacy to aesthetics to legal requirements before larger festivities. Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber, and Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup all held courthouse ceremonies followed by larger wedding celebrations.
Recent courthouse brides include Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, who married in Santa Barbara, California in May 2022. Dua Lipa and Callum Turner wed at Old Marylebone Town Hall in May 2026, with Dua Lipa wearing custom Schiaparelli. Charli XCX married George Daniel at Hackney Town Hall in a white, off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood minidress. Dove Cameron and Damiano David wore ivory suits at a courthouse ceremony in Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy in September 2026.
Courthouse weddings now function as deliberate style statements, often preceding or standing alone as romantic, cost-effective celebrations.