Are celebrant-led ceremonies legally binding in the UK?
A celebrant-led wedding is without doubt the best way to have a memorable, fun and uniquely special ceremony that talks all about your personal journey to marriage sprinkled with unique touches that people may not have seen at a wedding before.
Sadly, in England a celebrant-led wedding isn’t legally binding. So that means, if you are choosing to have your ceremony officiated by a celebrant, you will need to arrange to have your legal paperwork completed separately from your ceremony.
But fear not! This technicality can easily be sorted to ensure that you can still have the celebrant-led wedding of your dreams. I really don’t want this to put you off choosing a celebrant-led wedding because it honestly is so worth it to have a marvellous and magical ceremony.
The simplest thing to do to become legally married is head down to your local registry office to register your intent to marry (everyone has to do this, even if you plan to get married at the registry office).
When it is time to get married, you can request a simple service at the registry office, take two witnesses along, and literally just sign the documents, saving your vows and rings, and everything else until your actual celebration date.
A registrar follows a set script and there isn’t any opportunity to add your own touches so you won’t feel like you’re getting married twice! The celebrant-led wedding will still be the main event, this is just an added extra. Perhaps it gives you an opportunity to wear your wedding dress twice. Or an excuse to have a second dress for the registry office!
Whether you do this before or after your ceremony is totally up to you.
If you are getting married in a licenced venue then a registrar will be able to legally marry you at the venue. So perhaps you might chose to do the legal bit before the guests arrive and then hold your celebrant-led ceremony with all your friends and family. Or your celebrant could officiate your ceremony and once the guests head off for a glass of fizz, you and your partner slip off to make it legally binding.
The benefit of separating your ceremony and the legal part of getting married is that you can hold your ceremony anywhere you like. Registrars are limited to where they can operate and they also have to follow restrictions for outdoor weddings.
So if you have a dream location in mind for you wedding or our thinking of a beautiful woodland ceremony, it is still definitely worth going down the path of working with a wedding celebrant.
I hope this has explained the legalities of getting married in England. If you have any other questions, feel free to get in touch and I will be happy to answer them.