Getting "legally" married before the big day.

It entirely depends on what would make you 'feel' married- to me it's saying vows to one I love and meaning them, when ever, wherever with whomever present. If for you it is saying it in front of all your family and friends then I see no issue in what you propose- you won't 'feel' married until the event. Have you considered a different venue for each aspect of the wedding and using your chosen venue for the WB and evening reception- I found when planning timings, having 20mins in a car with my hubby seemed like a very nice break!

Hi Adam!

It's not uncommon for couples to get married ahead of their 'wedding day'. It gives you so much more freedom to do what you want, where you want. My brother in law got married at a registry office local to home in the UK and then went to Australia to have a 'wedding' with all his new wifes family - they convinced them that was the actual wedding.

xx

We are 'getting legalled' two days before our actual ceremony. The main reason is that I wanted to get married in the woods which obviously isn't legal in England, also it works out around £500 cheaper to have a legal ceremony at a registry office and hire an independent celebrant for the main day.

We had our concerns to begin with as we didn't want to feel like we were already married on our wedding day, but we got around this by planning to make the 'legalling' as insignificant as possible. We will have witnesses from the street (or fire station next door!), wear normal clothes and say the bare minimum legal requirement as our vows. Some family members haven't taken it very well, but they understand our reasoning.

As someone else said, it depends on what you see as the most important part of a wedding. For us the legal aspect just isn't important, what matters is the personal vows that we make to each other.

We are getting married legally a week before the wedding as we would have to pay the venue and extra £500 if we has the registrars there (something about them needing to be on site) and this was our celebrant has done us a lovely personal ceremony so it's worked out well. Not many people will even know! Xx

It's really normal is some other countries. I went to Holland for my friend's wedding and she & her husband were out shopping with us and said "We have to go to the town hall at xx time to do some paperwork for the wedding."

They were gone about 10 min and then had the wedding the next day.

Totally normal these days. Apart from the fact English marriage laws are still stuck in the dark ages it seems and you can only have a legal secular ceremony in certain places, people are becoming more disillusioned with religion and are seeking non religious yet meaningful ceremonies for their big day. This is where humanist ceremonies come in, yet still are not legally recognised in England and Wales. We are doing the legal bit the day before with a humanist celebrant doing what we consider our real wedding. The only resistance I have had is from my 'catholic' stepmum who seems to think the 'real' wedding is when its legal. One thing I would say is try not to make your legal wedding ceremony a big deal. I feel like family members are already making a fuss out of ours and I don't want it to detract from our actual wedding day.

Thank you all so much for the replies! It's really helped and made myself and my fiancé feel a bit more at ease with the decision. We just felt a little bit uncomfortable at the start with the idea of having a pre-wedding signing. But... today we have gone ahead and booked our venue and we are now so excited! We will be organising the registry office the week prior to the actual wedding day in the town hall which we will keep very low key. The only thing is my fiancé's mum wants to be there for that, which I don't really have a problem with just as long as she understands that it is not the wedding. There will be no photos, no suits and no flowers... nothing.

Thanks again for your replies!

Adam xx

My friends did this and it worked really well for them. They actually did the legal bit in the morning with haribo rings, which they then ate!! They had a ceremony in an orchard in a field and were "married" by a friend of theirs. It was really beautiful and that was the most important bit to them, was definitely right for them too!

I did this and the ceremonies were a year apart, I was legally married last year but felt married this year after our blessing in church. You can now do what you want to do and so long as it suits you there is no right or wrong way of doing it. I really enjoyed both ceremonies as they were totally different and I enjoyed having 2 totally different dresses!

I really like this idea, as I don't like the wording used by registrars and I'm getting married 43 miles from home so don't want to locate a church...I think I'd probably not tell any of my family or his about the legal bit being earlier as they'd cause a fuss....

I'm going to pitch this to OH now