You Cannot Be Serious, # 27

From a recent BBC News report:
 

Source: BBC News (Android), ‘Gay weddings targeted for UK citizenship’. Link: Online version

Apart from the fact that the phrasing of the first sentence rather amusingly makes the process sound like a routine element of the system (‘Job description: weekly duties include stopping marriages…’), is it actually possible for an official to ‘stop a marriage’ in the way implied? One can certainly ‘prevent a wedding from taking place’, or even interrupt it so it is not formally completed (or, apparently, invalidate it by using the wrong form of words at the service), but that is not the same thing at all. A wedding is not a marriage, a marriage is not a wedding. A wedding can be prevented; a marriage is the done deal, and must be undone via some or other legal process. It cannot simply be ‘stopped’.

Home Office stops marriages on a weekly basis