County jail to begin charging for inmate weddings

PORTLAND – Cumberland County Jail inmates soon will have to pay for jailhouse weddings.

That’s because the jail plans to start charging $75 to host a wedding, the same fee charged by the Portland city clerk. In the past, the service was free.

The service will remain free at Penobscot County Jail, Lt. Ty Babb, assistant jail administrator, said Monday.

A handful of couples tie the knot each year in the sterile confines of the jail’s visiting room because the groom or bride – or sometimes both – are behind bars.

Fewer weddings, usually just one a year, are held in the contact visitors’ room of the jail in Bangor, Babb said.

“We don’t charge them,” he said, “but anything like the minister or a cake or rings the inmates would have to pay for themselves.”

The fee established in Cumberland County aims to cover the work involved in having a jail wedding, including paperwork, ceremony preparations, guard staffing and the jail pastor’s interviews with the prospective bride and groom. The fee is still a bargain compared to the going rates for wedding ceremonies.

The Rev. Jeffrey McIlwain, the jail’s part-time pastor, spends a lot of time interviewing prospective spouses to make sure they’re getting married for the right reasons. He points out that they won’t get special jail privileges because they’re married, and reminds them that they won’t have family and friends share in the moment.

“I’ll ask them, ‘Why are you doing this? Your life’s a mess. His life’s a mess. You need to get your life together,”‘ McIlwain said.

Confronted with the realities of a wedding behind bars, many inmates decide to wait until they’re out before they exchange vows.

But some forge ahead; in the past two years, there have been about a dozen weddings in the Cumberland County jail.

“They make the decision they’re going to stick together through this time,” McIlwain said. “Some people who have gone through this are still together” after their release.

Jails are obligated to allow inmates to marry under constitutional guidelines endorsed by the Supreme Court, said Cumberland County Jail Capt. Steven Butts.

Not every prisoner, however, can get married in jail, Babb said. They have to be classified as a minimum security risk and have to be serving a longer sentence than a few days or weeks.

Defendants sentenced to serve less than a year may be sentenced to a county jail, according to state law. Those sentenced to more than a year are to be incarcerated at a state facility.

Bangor Daily News reporter Judy Harrison contributed to this report.