Available Now FREE

The Perfect Wedding Guide

E-Book Download ...

Home

Civil Ceremony

If you don't want to have a religious ceremony or can't because of divorce or mixed faith, then the alternative is a civil wedding. You can choose from either a register office ceremony or a ceremony performed in a building that holds a marriage licence. In either case, the process for arranging everything is the same.

Firstly you need to contac the superintendent registrar for your district, which you must have lived in for a minimum of seven days. Even if both of you live in the same district, each of you needs your own superintendent registrar's certificate so both bride and gorom must apply in person to the local office. You then wait 15 days for the certificate to be issued and this is valid for 12 months.

Use this first appointment to check that your preferred date is free and that a registrar is free to attend your venue if you want to have a wedding in a licencsed building. This is very important and you should never book your venue until you know that the registrar is able to marry you on a particular date. If you are marrying out of your local district, you'll need to speak to the superintendent registrar for the area where you want to get married about booking a ceremony.

If you haven't yet decided on a venue for your wedding, you can ask the registrar for a list of local licensed premises. If you want a complete list of over 3,000 countrywide premises licensed for marriage visit www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/marriages, which will let you obtain a printout of the full list for a small fee.

It currently cost £30 per person to give notice of your marriage. Fees for a register office wedding range from about £40 on weekdays to about £250 at weekends. Civil ceremonies at a licensed venue are more expensive and cost up to £400 at weekends, though prices vary considerably around the country. You also have to pay £7 for the marriage certificate at either type of ceremony.

Personalising your civil wedding ceremony

You have more scope to personalise proceedings for a civil, rather than a religious, ceremony - you can even write many of your own vows, if you would like to. Just remember, a civil wedding is still a legal undertaking and anything you want to include should reflect the solemnity of the occasion. Keep anything too personal or slightly jokey vows for a private moment between the two of you.

Legally, a civil wedding cannot have vows, songs, poems or readings that have any religious references - and this can even mean words like 'angel' in some cases - so it's very important that you check everything you want to include with your registrar before the wedding. You generally won't be able to bring in anything that extends the ceremony beyond a total of about 20 minutes, sometimes even shorter if you are having a register office ceremony.

The informal natur of the civil ceremony is that attracts many couples but you should think about adding a few readings or poems, otherwise the whole thing could be over so quickly that your guests will hardly have taken their seats before you have said your vows and you are man and sife.

If you are marrying in a licensed premises, the order of service can follow pretty much the same format as for a religious ceremony; it's just the words that are different and, of course, there are no hymns or prayers. A register office ceremony is usually much simpler but most locations will have a CD player to play your favourite music as you enter and leave.

Copyright 2011 © The Perfect Wedding Guide All Rights Reserved.