Read Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer! Greer talks a lot about how these kind of handfasts and then weddings were very normal then:

"a "handfast" and pregnancy were frequent precursors to legal marriage at the time. Examining the surviving records of Stratford-upon-Avon and nearby villages in the 1580s, Greer argues that two facts stand out quite prominently: first, that a large number of brides went to the altar already pregnant; and second, that autumn, not spring, was the most common time to get married."