When it comes to choosing how you get married, the days of a straight choice between a church and a registry office are long gone.
There are a wide variety of licensed venues in the UK and abroad, from disused churches to warehouses to old swimming pools – but there are also plenty of ways to do it differently.
There a variety of reasons people make the choice to do the legal paperwork separately to their wedding. For us, we wanted to get married on a special date, but our perfect venue was unavailable. We decided to get legally married in a registry office near our home, then hold our wedding in our venue with friends and family the following week. For others, they want a humanist ceremony (currently only legally possible in Scotland), their perfect venue is unlicensed, they want to get married outside, or they simply want the opportunity to create a ceremony that is completely personal.
We had multiple references to the legal bit being the ‘real’ wedding and our wedding day being the ‘fake’ wedding.
I absolutely loved doing it this way. We wrote our ceremony, keeping a fairly traditional format but ditching anything we didn’t like, then let our friend shape it and add bits before conducting our ceremony on the day. On the day it was perfect – but this option isn’t without its challenges.
We tried to be honest from the start, concerned people might feel a little deceived on the day if they found out the ceremony they were attending wasn’t the legal bit. We tried to be clear on our reasons for doing the legal bit beforehand and emphasise that they would be attending what we considered our ‘proper’ wedding, but not everybody understood it. If the Love My Dress Facebook group is anything to go by, it’s a common issue. We had multiple references to the legal bit being the ‘real’ wedding and our wedding day being the ‘fake’ wedding. Even my dad said he didn’t understand our ‘rationale’ for having our wedding and paperwork separately.
On the day though, this all fell away. As we cried our way through the ceremony, I’m pretty sure everyone in the room realised that for us, this was very much the ‘real’ wedding. There were a few things we did before and on the day that we found useful, which hopefully you do too…
Work out what you want from your legal wedding
Decide how many people you want there (if any) and stick to it. We decided early on that we would just have parents, bridesmaids and groomsmen and treated the day more like a rehearsal dinner – it was more about getting everyone together to meet before the big day than getting ‘married’.
Keep the legal bit simple
We said the bare minimum vows, didn’t exchange rings at the registry office, and had no readings. It felt special in its own way for us but didn’t feel like a massive occasion! We just went to nice pub for a relaxed meal afterwards, nothing too formal – it just felt like a nice day/evening out with my closest friends.
Keep it quiet
We didn’t post anything about the day on social media so nobody would feel they were missing out on anything.
Make your wedding personal to you
For the wedding ceremony a week later, we had enough traditional elements to make it feel recognisable as a wedding to our guests. Obviously doing the legal bit separately gives you freedom to do whatever you want, but for us exchanging vows and rings was what made this ‘the real wedding’. We then had quite a few personal elements that made it feel particularly special to us – our friend conducted the ceremony, a relative played me down the aisle and another friend performed during the ceremony. And we had Hakuna Matata as our exit music.
Of course, everyone’s different and what worked for us won’t necessarily be right for everyone choosing this option. Just be clear in what you want, and polite but firm with friends and family, and remember that it will all come together in the end!
I hope you’ve found this helpful,
Daniella x
Main image by Through The Woods We Ran of Daniella and her husband Paul on their wedding day.
Daniella Graham View all Daniella's articles
Daniella is a 2018 bride, lover of weddings and founder of the @greenwichpaperco.
Great advice. Living in Germany, this is normal- to have two ceremony days. Although some venues are trying to get licences so couples only have one day.
A lot of Germans choose to do as per blog, others also get married one year later on the same date.
We got legally married in Germany as the church we wanted to get married in in England wouldn’t accept us. Then a few weeks later had our big white Wedding (blessing) and emphasised on the invitations ‘Blessing’, with the dress, vows, rings etc. I must say, although this method of marriage was completely alien, the intimacy of our registry office was beautiful. I tried to keep it to witnesses only so there would only be 4 people in total but that number escalated to 12. But loved the intimacy and how laid back the first wedding was and loved having the blessing and party aspect with the second wedding.