Ministers of the Sacrament of Matrimony according to Canon Law

It should be noted that having a priest preside over a wedding is not an ecclesiastical impediment, but rather a requirement. The impediments established by ecclesiastical law are clandestinity, difference of religion, affinity, etc.

According to Canon 1059: The marriage of catholics, even if only one party is baptised, is governed not only by divine law but also by canon law, without prejudice to the competence of the civil authority in respect of the merely civil effects of the marriage.

Also to go back to the fact that the couple themselves are the ministers of the sacrament, canon 1055.1-2 states:

Canon 1055.1 The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has, between the baptised, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

Canon 1055.2 Consequently, a valid marriage contract cannot exist between baptised persons without its being by that very fact a sacrament.

N.B. Canon 1055.2 states that marriage between Christians and the sacrament of matrimony are one and the same thing. As Pope St. Leo XIII noted:

A distinction, or rather severance, of this kind cannot be approved; for certain it is that in Christian marriage the contract is inseparable from the sacrament, and that, for this reason, the contract cannot be true and legitimate without being a sacrament as well.