Confused about registrar and licence etc...!

You can officially book your marriage registrar one year in advance. However, many registrars will pencil in bookings before this. We were in the books 18 months beforehand. You can phone the register office responsible for your wedding (your venue will advise you which register office to contact) as soon as you like to see when they will accept your booking.

The marriage licence - permission to get married - is issued by your home register office, that covering the locality you live in. It may be the same office that will be marrying you. You can ONLY legally get this permission to marry - called "giving notice" - within 12 months of the date. You will need to know the wedding details - times/dates/venues.

You can book the registrar at any time but you need to wait to do the paperwork until you have a year or less to go. Its different in every district so your best bet is to ring the registry office and ask them. They should be able to help x

I have to say there have been A LOT of thread like this lately, mass confusion over booking/performing/legal bits of civil ceremonies. So I went back re-read the info (I actually started my research into it over a year ago) and my god they're rewritten it and worded it BADLY.

if your confused, just give your local registrar office a call and get them to clear it up over the phone

Thanks everyone! This has actually cleared it up for us better than the information we had seen on the internet. My fiancé and I were just getting information left, right and centre and getting ourselves completly confused!

Thanks for helping us! ?

Yes contact them asap. Me and h2b found our venue in june 2012 for may 2014 wedding. Phoned venues local registrars (chemlsford) and told them our proposed wedding date (15 may 2014) they 'pencilled it in' and gave us a confirmation letter of our date and time in the post. We then had to 'give notice' between 15th May 2013-15June 2013 (so a year before wedding) and we could do that at our local registrars in colchester as within essex so you could see if you have to go the exact place to give notice or another within the district.

Once you have confirmation of your registrars you can then book your venue! (we are a civil ceremony so not sure if this changes anything).

hope i have made sense!

The best thing to do is contact the registrar in the area that you are getting married (your venue will be able to tell you which registrar you need) and speak with them. We have been able to book our registrar for May 2015 already, we got first pick of the times and paid a £50 deposit (in Buckinghamshire). We will give notice to our local registrar (we live in Oxfordshire) next May (you can only legally do this a year in advance), they will then tell us what to do with the paperwork! I would speak to the registrar where you want to get married, many will take bookings already, especially if it's in peak season.

You give notice in your local office regardless of where you are getting married. We got married in Colchester but had to give notice in West Bromwich (West Midlands) because that is our local office.

So confused about this too, we've just pencilled in our July 2015 date and phoned up the registrar (Windsor & Maidenhead). They don't take bookings more than a year in advance so really worried now that I'll have booked my entire wedding but then won't have a registrar available... also, totally impossible to confirm timings and therefore catering/entertainment etc...

.... What do people do?? Book the wedding anyway and then just hope the registrar will be available (the lady on the phone recommended either queuing up on the first day or phoning repeatedly from 9am onwards) or hold off until a year ahead before booking?

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