Mostly for the Dead, and the Rule That Changed in 2019

The great majority of sealings performed in any year are not weddings. They are proxy sealings, carried out for couples and families already dead, once their names, dates and relationships have been established by family history research and submitted for temple work. A living member stands in for each of the dead, and the ordinance is performed exactly as it would be for the living. This is why the movement built the genealogical apparatus it did: the ordinance is available to everyone who has ever lived, and the limiting factor is not willingness but identification.

The most consequential recent change to the practice was administrative. In many countries the law requires a civil marriage, and in those countries a couple married civilly and were sealed afterward. But in countries where a temple sealing is itself legally recognised as a marriage, church policy until 2019 imposed a one-year wait after any civil ceremony before a couple could be sealed. The effect in the United States and elsewhere was to force a choice: be sealed, and exclude every relative without a recommend, or marry civilly with everyone present and wait a year for the ordinance.

The waiting period was removed in May 2019. A couple may now marry civilly with all their family watching and be sealed the same day. The change was reported inside the movement as one of the more humane adjustments of recent years, and the warmth of that reception is the clearest measure of what the previous arrangement had cost families.