‘Urfi (or secret) marriages in Egypt occupy a liminal legal space in three regards. First, the parties to these unions are at once married but unmarried. While they believe they are married in the eyes of God, Muslim youths involved in ‘urfi marriages do not cohabit and members of their communities do not acknowledge or enforce the rights and responsibilities that come with their new social roles. Second, the marriages themselves are at once secret and public. Couples hide their nuptials from parents and community members, but they must disclose the ‘urfi marriage to a few trusted contacts for practical reasons (to secure witnesses to the marriage contract, for instance). Third, ‘urfi marriages are at once regulated and unregulated. They are established by marriage contracts that are not registered with the state. However, when disputes over paternity or divorce arise, the aggrieved party may now take the informal marriage contract to court and seek intervention. This paper explores how ordinary people involved in ‘urfi marriages navigate this liminal space, and in particular, how they appropriate and reinterpret formal law and legal practices. It analyzes data obtained from semi-structured interviews with 40 young men and women from Cairo and Minya who were involved in ‘urfi unions. As such, it is the first full-length study of ‘urfi marriage that draws on interviews conducted with individuals who have actually entered into such unions. I first describe several informal legal practices that are informed by lay understandings of shari‘a and the Egyptian Personal Status code. For instance, many couples who want to terminate ‘urfi marriages rip up the marriage contract (sometimes unilaterally by the woman), and thus consider themselves to be divorced. Other couples report having gone to lawyers who promised to ‘register’ their marriages in the civil registry office (usually at the insistence of the bride, who views this as a form of protection). I argue here that such informal practices, while technically not legal, have the same influence as formal law in governing behavior and social relations because they appear to be valid those involved, all of whom ascribe great power and prestige to formal law. I also argue, however, that while men and women do not appear to differ in terms of their formal legal consciousness, incomplete or inaccurate understandings of formal law have more deleterious consequences for women than they do for men involved in ‘urfi unions.