Sutha asks:

I am registered in NSW, but will be getting a close friend married in Melbourne. Can I get access to BDM RIO? or is it limited to Victorian celebrants? A blog post about all the different electronic lodgement systems and who can have access to it will be very helpful to newbies like me.

Great question mainly because it’s simpler than it seems but some registry’s get weird about it.

As celebrants we have a federal authority to marry, that works across all state borders, and the Births, Deaths, and Marriages registries don’t get to choose which celebrants come into their state to marry, we’re allowed to and the BDM merely must receive and register the marriage.

I perform marriage ceremonies in all the states and I’m registered in all the online BDM systems where there is one, and the only two BDMs that raised an eye were Tasmania and Western Australia. Tasmania questioned me simply because I wasn’t on their register of celebrants so I pointed them to the AGD website. Western Australia said their system was for locals only, I replied with a friendly WTF, and they replied with an invitation to register for their online system.

So as of February 2024 here’s how you register marriages in each state and territory: