How does this change anything?
Just as in 1760, 1860, 1960, and today, either a marriage will be recognized by law, or it won’t.
There has never been a time in America where you were forced to seek to make your marriage “legal”, if you didn’t want to.
At all these Places I’ve been at, I read the King’s Proclamation against Vice and Immorality, which has had very good Effects. For thro’ want of Ministers to marry and thro’ the licentiousness of the People, many hundreds live in Concubinage -- swopping their Wives as Cattel, and living in a State of nature, more irregularly and unchastely than the Indians -- I therefore made Public Notice ev’ry be given, that whoever did not attend to be legally married, I would prosecute them at the Sessions -- and that all who had liv’d in a State of Concubinage on application to me, I would marry Gratis -- Numbers accepted of my Offer, and were married, and then I baptize’d their Children…--Charles Woodmason, diary and sermon notes February 7, 1767