Celebrant wedding

I read somewhere that a lot of registrars won’t do this unfortunately. Would be worth checking with your local council before getting too excited about anything.

It's more common to do it the other way around, but there's no reason why a non-legal ceremony should prevent you getting legally married after. A lot of people refer to doing the 'legal bit' and then having their 'real wedding' after, but the truth is that the 'legal bit' IS the marriage ceremony for legal purposes, although of course, couples can choose to celebrate whatever day they want as their 'anniversary'.

I know you do have to make sure that you don't have a ceremony that looks like a legal wedding but isn't (or at least, that was the case a few year ago - it might have changed now). So you can't have the set vows that have to be said for a legal marriage if it isn't your legal wedding.

Hi,
We’ve booked a celebrant for our wedding next October and honestly we’re so excited. I had a few hesitations at first but after speaking to her more and knowing our ceremony will be completely built around our relationship is just too lovely!
We’re planning to do our legal ceremony about 3/4 weeks before the wedding. It’ll just be a 2+2 ceremony and we’re just thinking of it as signing legal forms and not making a big deal out of it at all.
But everyone is different, I would say research and talk to different celebrants and if it feels right, go for it! X

We are doing this as we want a more personal/fun ceremony rather than the very "contractual business like" ceremony of a civil ceremony conducted by registrars (we aren't religious so wouldn't marry in a church).


We plan on "doing the legal bit" on the morning of our "wedding"
We have our venue booked for 17th Feb next year. Unfortunately, despite the registry office supposedly booking 12 months in advance for weddings, they currently only have their diary open until October this year!! So we can't physically book our "legal bit" until whenever they open their diary for Feb! And, they're unable (or unwilling) to actually tell me when that will be!
The ideal would be quick legal bit v early in the morning and then our "wedding" later that afternoon but, if we need to do it before that or after, so be it. To us, that isn't "our wedding" (though legally it is)
Celebrant lead weddings are not legally recognised so if you're having a celebrant, you will need to attend a registry office for the paperwork at some point.
For a registrar to come to our venue to "marry us" it would cost almost £700!!! Celebrants tend to be £500-600 and the registry office service is £70
We are actually having a friend conduct our celebrant ceremony so isn't costing us anything. Meaning we just pay the £70 for "the legal bit" so, it's much cheaper that way!

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Presumably there would be nothing to stop the registrar moving on as soon as the 'legal bit' was done, so as long as the venue was happy, the ceremony could continue after he/she left?

We had a church wedding but needed a registrar to attend as the church didn't have a person to register the marriage themselves. She left as soon as the vows and signing were done and we carried on with the rest of the wedding service.

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"Presumably there would be nothing to stop the registrar moving on as soon as the 'legal bit' was done, so as long as the venue was happy, the ceremony could continue after he/she left?"

In theory but I am not sure what the registration service would have to say about that but probably nothing they can do once it has been done but not sure of their position if they were to find out before - each authority have slightly different "rules" that they apply.

I have shot a wedding that had the registrar lead ceremony then there was a short drinks reception and then a pagan ceremony followed but that went outside afterwards.

The issue would be that you are paying twice, once for the registrars to come out and then the celebrant. Also if it was done this way I wonder what the guests would think about the couple seeming to do the wedding twice and the whole thing possibly lasting longer than a Church wedding, especially in the middle of summer in a room without air con. (Churches are usually loverly and cool in the Summer )