Registrar or Celebrant?

Either way you have to use a registrar for the legal bit. Most registrars allow you a lot of flexibility in what you can have. There are legal restrictions though that they have to adhere to, that includes any religious references in words and music, hence it can seem restricitive, but really it's not. In your vows, there are some words that have to be spoken, but you can then design your own words around those. The best thing is to go and talk to the registry office that the registrar you would be using works from and they can tell you exactly what they do/don't allow some are more strict than others. You can then decide if you're happy you can design the ceremony you want or if you'll need to do the double dip and find a celebrant too.

hth

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We are having a humanist ceremony. We just feels it's the right way to go for us, we have complete freedom to declare our love for each other exactly how we want to, where we want to. I don't mind going to the registry office the next day in my jeans just to sign a piece of paper to make it known in the eyes of the law....

We're having a Humanist celebrant. There are restrictions with a Humanist (i.e. no God stuff) but a celebrant doesn't have to be Humanist if you're not happy with not having mention of God. No-one except our closest couple of friends, who we will be asking to be witnesses at the legal bit, will know that our Humanist ceremony is not the legal bit. Registrars have to be more prescriptive than celebrants precisely because they are a legal ceremony - there are certain words you have to say to make it legal.

As for whether they're as restrictive as the internet says, that varies by area. One area near me won't let you have Angels by Robbie Williams because the reference to angels is considered religious, even though the song itself isn't. Another neighbouring area wouldn't care about that.

This was a huge concern our mine and the main reason we have decided to have a celebrant instead. We also found that it was significantly cheaper to hire a celebrant and have a registry office signing a few days before hand.

Instead of paying over £700 for a registrar to come to us we are paying £45 for a very quick simple registration of marriage at the local office and then £200 for the celebrant. It took a while to come to terms with the idea of us already being legally married but we decided that as long as we have the registration as a very low key vent (two witnesses from the street, no vows other than the minimum legal requirement, no fancy clothes etc) our wedding day will be what we consider the 'real' wedding. We will not celebrate the 'legal' marriage date at all and see it as just a signing of paperwork to allow us to then have the wedding we want

I never actually met with any registrars so am not sure if their restrictions have been exaggerated on the internet but it wasn't a risk that I was willing to take!

The model of seeing the registrar and then having the "proper" wedding separately is common across Europe. I attended my friends wedding in Holland and they went to the Town Hall the day before to do the legal paperwork.

Your friends and family don't really need to know about it. They would be unlikely to even notice that the wedding is being run by a celebrant instead of a registrar.

Paula - This is what we're doing, but to save on the celebrant fee we're asking a friend to perform the ceremony :-)

Thanks for all the responses.

We've decided to go with the registrar. Our ceremony isn't that outlandish and as my fiancé has just reminded me, all our music is instrumental so won't fall fowl of any religious rulings anyway, so we've provisionally booked our date with them.

We had our 'legal' ceremony just before our 'real' wedding. We found the whole legal bit just too regimented, pick one vow from list A, no religious music etc.......so we rocked up to the registry office at 10.30, exchanged vows and were out by 10.45!

Our real wedding was officiated by a wonderful humanist, in our garden, in the sunshine, with 130 people sipping champagne.......our vows were written by us, some funny, some serious but all from the heart.

I would highly recommend this as a way of getting married.

As my sister pointed out 'why have one wedding when you can have two!'

We're thinking of doing this. Having a friend do the ceremony for us but popping down the registry office to sign and make it legal for £49 instead of the registrar coming to our venue for £420! We may nip out of our wedding for half an hour to do it on the same day. I feel like I'm cheating our guests if we did it the day before, would anyone else feel like that?

We're really fortunate in that one of our guests is a minister. I'm Christian and OH isn't and we've decided not to have a church wedding. So after the civil ceremony the registrar will leave and our minister friend will do a very quick, 5-10 min, blessing. It just happens that his wife (a close friend of mine) is becoming a registrar and she may perform our service, we're not sure yet. She's Christian and is the reason I know that registrars legally have to follow such strict rules - she personally wouldn't mind if we had a hymn or a bible passage within our service but legally she wouldn't be able to.

She said she can subtly leave the room when her husband stands for the blessing. I'm yet to check that the venue are ok with this, but we only booked it yesterday so plenty of time to get it sorted I'll admit that I'm not that comfortable with the strict rules - I'd like certain songs which we wouldn't be allowed.

Hi there, I’ve been a registrar for 36 years now I feel saddened that you have been given this impression of us being strict. We are happy that you wish to include some special vows of your choice, after all this is a special day for you and the whole family. The only restriction is not having anything religious and this is because you are having a civil ceremony otherwise readings, music all is welcomed we help you plan the ceremony from start to finish so please don’t be put off by nonsense on the internet.

Taj Bahia