Wedding postponed but what about my passport!!

I've been looking into this myself, as my passport will expire 10 days after our new wedding date now we have postponed to 2021. We cancelled our September honeymoon and are now looking at our options for next year. I've realised that I have to figure out what name is going to be on my passport before we can book anything.

I've read that your new passport gets 'post-dated' to the date of your wedding but I have no idea what happens if your wedding then doesn't go ahead. I'd be worried that it wouldn't be a legally acceptable form of ID, and you may have trouble at borders, as legally your name hasn't changed yet.

I mentioned my dilemma to my Mum the other day, to ask what she thought I should do (i.e. renew passport in maiden name, and then either keep for 10 years or just pay again at a later date to change name, or apply for passport in married name and not be able to travel for the 3 months prior to the wedding), and she said that you can't currently get a new passport! Apparently the passport office is currently only doing passports for people who need them for urgent medical travel, or governmental/diplomatic work.

So essentially my point is you may have a hard time getting any contact from someone at the passport office. If you do try and you manage to get through, please let me know what answer you get!

For now it looks like we're just gonna have to hold off booking anything until the picture becomes more clear around both international travel being legal/safe again, and the passport office being open...

Hopefully it wont be so complicated as you first think with booking a holiday - you just book it in your name on your new passport. So long as you are going away after the post dated passport.

Don't do anything without checking this though.

Or you will have to pay for a new passport again in your old name (name now) and then apply for a change of name again after you are married.

Their must be some GOV guidance on this as their must be 100s in the same situation.

Thanks both! I can’t find anything online about this, if you find anything please share !

Just by way of update, I emailed the passport office and they’re issuing me with a new passport in my current name and have said they will let me know what to do when I need to reapply in my married name (once I’m married!). Alll free of charge so I’m quite impressed