With the emergence of new and more informally organised Nonconformist groups, evidence of noncompliance within the Greek Orthodox community and among Jewish immigrants, and the first recorded Muslim marriage ceremonies, the prospect of radical reform faded. It was clear that delegating control over weddings to religious groups would result in considerable uncertainty about marital status. Divisions between Catholics and Nonconformists, and among different Nonconformists, meant that even the more limited issue of dispensing with the registrar could not be resolved simply by conferring authority on priests and ministers. The solution adopted in the Marriage Act 1898 was to allow ‘authorised persons’ to register marriages. While this seemed to accommodate the interests of different religious groups, the removal from the bill of any reference to authorised persons ‘solemnizing’ marriages, the regulations governing their appointment and actions, and the form of the new registers dispatched to them all served to undermine their status and make the role less attractive. The 1898 Act also added a yet further layer of complexity to the law governing weddings, with new distinctions between Catholics and Protestants, and between Christian and non-Christian groups.