WOW registrar fee's are soo expensive!!

Wow that is expensive!

The current fee for our registar is about £315, probably gone up need to call on Monday to confirm the exact price.

I think its one of those things you just have to pay

Our church was £850 (ceremony £650 & organist £200) plus £34 for banns in our local parish...

...that is before the flowers, bells etc.

We were told ours would be around £500 in total that included giving notice which was £67.00

We have now got our balance of £365 left to pay which we need to pay 6 weeks before the wedding.

I do think the amount you have been told is alot but it depends where you live and also which venue you chose to get married at as its normally cheaper for the registrar to marry you at the town hall/civic centre or where ever they are based.

Depends what council you are under, I'm getting married in Alfriston and the Registrar fee's are £420 but if I was getting married where I live it would be £340

Ours works out about that expensive too. Thats without a run through (which I ideally wanted) which is £129 as need it on a saturday due to work etc. It was a massive chunk of budget that I didn't realise at first.

Rachel

I had to pick my jaw up when I looked mine up a few weeks back. £460 and then £67 on top for notice (Northamptonshire) ooooooof!!

I'm getting married in church and have been told it will be £500 :-( very expensive but got to be done!

And as you said for about 1/2 an hours work!

Blimey! Ours is feeling a bargain now! We had £20 to book the date, £33.50 each for notices and then £257 for the actualy ceremony, a Satuday... thats for Barnsley.

Another reason we are marrying at RO- even this will cost us about £250. We really resent this 'rip-off-w-word' culture so we are happy to go unweddingesque to avoid those who think they have a captive market!

If you think about it though, it's not just half an hour's work. They will have to be there before the ceremony to go through things with you, not to mention the travelling time.

Think of the number of £250 RO weddings you could do in that time!

Yeh i get the extra travelling and time etc but still nearly £700 for that is ridiculous! it just annoys me that we have no choice but to pay it!!

Yep, ours is about £700 smackers as well! I wouldn't mind so much if the prices weren't so wildly different nationwide.

This is part of the reason we slipped over the border into Staffs! Its about half the Cheshire cost, yours is expensive but probably the key part of the whole day so well worth it

I had a Cheshire East registrar, let me see how much I paid...

...Mine was £500 for the ceremony (2011 prices). That paid for the celebrant, the registrar and two certificates. They were both there for a good 90 mins.

Is that a Church wedding?

Given that the Church of England fee payable is around £260 for 2011, that seems a hell of a lot of money. I know that Churches are allowed to increase their costs, but that's ridiculous.

Our is costing £285 for the church, £80 for the choir, £40 for the organist and £100 for the bell ringers.

Wow I am going to check which part my venues fall under before choosing, they are different so could be a cost. I knew it differed but not by that much!!

In Glasgow we are £350 in total for the legal bit, and also for them to come to our venue on a Saturday.

No it's at a licenced venue, on a saturday at 2pm (yes the ceremony at 2pm is more expensive than 12pm or 4pm haha!!)

it's a silly amount IMO! Maybe i need to look for a job as a registrar!! 3 weddings a day at £700 a pop! wow!

x

Our venue comes under East Cheshire and the cost is exactly why we're having the ceremony in the Liverpool registry office at 9.15am and then meeting again at our venue to have the humanist ceremony (the original plan was to have the two ceremonies in one) It's ridiculous the price difference. We are getting married in Liverpool for less than £200 (don't quote me on that coz I haven't got the exact cost with me!!)

Kent is expensive. We're paying almost £600 and that's for a Friday wedding!

Puts other prices into perspective. Some spend that on a days photography.

Have you thought about maybe changing to have a church service? Ours is £480 including a 10 piece choir!

I know it sounds expensive but they do a lot more than 3 x 30 mins a day. Like I say, my fee paid for two people, the celebrant and the registrar (yours likely the same) for an hour and a half (and travel costs, I'm sure). There's all the behind-the-scenes paperwork they do, plus personalising ceremonies, all the pep talks, a couple of certificates. And I'm sure I don't have to say but they don't work cash in hand - they are salaried by the people you pay the fee to. To be honest, it is cheaper to get married in a register office (or even a church) but you pay a premium to get married in your perfect setting. And to be even more honest, Cheshire is a bl00dy expensive area, full stop. But, I can honestly say that it's worth every penny, it's the most important part of your day! Plus, if you get Tracey, she's utterly utterly fabulous!

I think mines £350 in coventry. We have just booked to give our notice on Valentine's Day, getting serious now! x

Our fees are 33.50 for notices of marriage and then 287.20 for where we are getting married.

i thought our fees were expensive but blimey i do feel for you....some areas take the rip...its all the exact same service it should be one price nationally.

x

We are having a church ceremony but had cold feet about it over xmas so called our local registrars office yesterday and they wanted £475 + £33.50 per person for giving notice.

In addition to this we would need to hire an additional room at our wedding venue meaning that the actual ceremony part would end up costing over £1000 for about 30 mins!

Church wedding costing only about £360 so a bargain in comparrison

It's £353 [random] in Staffordshire for 2012 plus £33.50 each to given notice. If you are near-ish to a county border sneaking over for the ceremony might be worth considering. I was surprised at the Staffs price but £687 is silly money!

We are having a Humanist wedding and the cost of the Celebrant is £475 and the cost of doing the legalities and paperwork afterwards at the registry office is £43. The cost of a registrar in our area in a licenced venue would be £300 and in the Registry Office would be £200. So we are paying a fair bit more than if we were having one of the other options.

However, the Humanist ceremony can be held anywhere at all, no restrictions on the venue having to be licenced so we are having the outdoor ceremony we really wanted. There is also no restriction on the length of the ceremony, or the content. We can include as many readings, poems, songs etc as we like, and can have as many of our guests involved in as many differnet ways as we like. We are having a Handfasting as part of our ceremony, which I am really excited about. Our ceremony will be really personal to us, we will write the majority of it ourselves with guidance from the celebrant. The cost includes as many pre wedding consultations with her as we feel necessary, a pre wedding rehearsal, and her travel and attendance for the whole day.

So for all this, to make our wedding really about us and exactly as we want it, I think its worth the extra cost. The downside is that Humanist weddings have no legal standing so we still have to go and do the legal bit and paperwork to get a marriage certificate a day afterwards at the registry office but to us thats just a technicality

Wow, I am shocked at some of these quotes! It scared me, I haven't looked into our fees yet, so I called my 2 aunts who have got married in the last few years by the same minister who is doing ours (one in the church, one at the venue like we are doing). According to what they both said, ours will be around £100 for the legal bits, then a donation of our choosing to the church, and that's it! Plus the cost of feeding the minister and his wife ?