I was just catching up on things I've missed during my long absence, and I came across JulieW's interesting post on special licenses and the fact that Darcy might not have been eligible to obtain one. If he had been a lord and qualified to obtain one, how long would it take? Surely, it must be faster than the three weeks it takes to read the banns. I'm assuming that it was faster to obtain a common license than to have the banns read because that's probably what Darcy had to do for Lydia and Wickham.