Has anyone had/been to a Humanist wedding?

https://www.humanism.scot

Hi Annie - we are having a humanist wedding too. We also liked the idea of the ceremony being about us and our families. I got our celebrant from this website and it tells you all you need to know. We arranged a meeting and liked the feeling we got from him so have decided to go with him. He is from Glasgow but they are all on the website.

Good luck x

Hi Annie, we're also having a Humanist service. We are having a lovely lady we et 5 years ago when we needed one for my Dads funeral, she had such a lovely manner about her that I was adamant I wanted her to perform our wedding too, thankfully although she is moving away from weddings, she agreed to carry out ours.

I have been to a few Humanist weddings, they have all been different in timings, one 20 mins, one an hour, just depends how many songs/readings etc you want.

I think we're paying just short of £400.

Anyone I know who has had a humanist ceremony has gone to a registry office separately for the 'legal bit' (and obviously had to pay the additional charge for that). I've heard different prices from £400-600.

Hi,

My husband and I had a humanist wedding at home in Scotland earlier this year. There's no need to 'keep the registrars happy' - it's legal in Scotland, so you just have to apply for a marriage schedule through the local Registrar and then have them registrar the marriage as you would do with a religious/civil ceremony. Since it's legal in Scotland it's legal everywhere - I'm Scottish, husband is English and we live in Oz and it's legit for us

We found our celebrant through the Humanist Society and he was utterlhy fabulous. We couldn't have asked for more in our celebrant. He came from Edinburgh but was happy to travel to the Borders. If you want his details I'd happily pass them on. We arranged everything from Oz and he did it all by e-mail, until we met in person the week before the wedding (we went round his house for coffee and a run through). He passed on a load of previous ceremonies to give us some ideas. Anything went re readings, timings etc. Think ours was about 25 minutes and we had one reading.

The celebrant's fees were 275GBP for the ceremony plus travel expenses, we were asked to join the humanist society which was 30GBP for the year, and the registrar's fees for the paperwork were 70GBP (Borders Council - Dumfries and Galloway might be different).

We really had a fabulous day, and everyone said how lovely the ceremony was

We're paying £400 for our humanist ceremony. We're treating it as a normal ceremony and our guests won't know we were legally married 20 minutes prior but we like it to have the personal touch. We were given a book full of options for vows, readings, writing what the guy conducting the ceremony is going to say so got full control of the whole thing

Yes you do need to to the legal bit in england. we're meeting at 9.15am at the registry office both dressed in our normal clothes, not exchanging rings etc, no readings just us and our 2 witnesses.

We'll then go our seperate ways and get ready into our wedding stuff and then meet again at our real (humanist) wedding at 2pm.

we've written it ourselves, or at least are in the process of writing it. MrApples Mum is an AMAZING poet and its going to be said as a poem a lot of it with 3 readings and a few songs performed by our friend who is a singer and harpist.

Our minister is AMAZING! i think i want to adopt him as my grandad!!! we're paying £350 for the humanist and £43.50 for the registry office (not inc. bans)

Good luck with writing your excremony its one of the best things we've ever done and we've loved talking about things which happened in our relationship (nearly 11 years there is a bit to say!) its reminded us why we're in Lurve!!!?

Oh and i should have said i've been to a humanist wedding as well and it was the most touching and beautiful ceremony i have ever been to! i'm so excited for ours! i need to chill i still have over 14 months left to wait!

We are having a Humanist Ceremony in England. As it is not legally recongised we are having a humanist friend as the celebrant. I would really reccomend buying the "sharing the future" book from the BHA website. It has 4 or 5 example ceremonies and hundreds of phrases/paragraphs/readings. We have largely put our ceremony together from that. If you PM me your email addy I can email the format of out ceremony to give you an idea if you like.

As for cost, though ours is free, i remember when I was enquiring it seemed between 400 and 600. This was in the home counties so may be cheaper in Scotland where there is more demand?

Greenbean I have pm'd you

I spoke to the general registrars office in scotland today, all we have to do is give notice 3 months before the wedding, pick up the schedule from them 7 days before, then take the signed schedule back after our humanist wedding, they will then issue our marriage certificate. It will only cost us £70 on top of the humanist fee

We had a humanist ceremony in Scotland too and it was fantastic, drummore has covered everything cost and info wise etc. The marriage is legally recognised in England and you can have it anywhere the celebrant will go to, does not have to be a licenced venue we had ours under an arch we put up on a beach, we had a fabulous guy playing accordian, wrote our own vows and had 3 readings then were served cocktails and canapes that our venue had brought down in a decorated wheelbarrow!

The ceremony was so personal all our guests commented on it and I wouldnt have done it any other way