Am I out of options?

kevink123

Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster...

I'm getting married in December and am absolutely furious...

We're athiests and really feel bullied by the state. We're up against the discriminatory issues that a lot of people seem to be up against...

We're getting married outside of Dublin and would really like a "ceremony". An isle to walk down etc.

- As I understand it, registrars won't work weekends
- Unitarian priests aren't allowed to marry outside of the Unitarian churches

So our options are:
- Registary office (which doesn't really sound as nice as in the venue we're looking at)
- a Church (which we don't believe in and don't want to give in to just because the state won't allow us other options).
- A Spiritualist (Tom Colton) who will invite along our dead relative (seriously?!?!?!)

Am I missing anything? I'm so angry and disheartened... It feels like the State is making things as difficult as possible for us to try to push us into a church.

Also, which minister is in charge of this? I really want to send them a "strongly worded letter"...

Any advice, opinion, help would be massively appreciated.

Bride2012

I feel your pain, believe me. We are going with a registery office with just our parents on the Wednesday that week and then someone from the humanist society to do the ceremony on the Saturday. She is lovely, no dead relatives . She's basically going with the script I gave her but they can write their own if you want. She's just a nice woman, no hippy dippy stuff. Honestly since the ceremony isn't a legal one we could have asked a friend to do it to make it more personal but nobody really fit the bill, you could have someone?

Some people don't like the idea of having different days for legal and ceremony but I'm thinking of it as the legal bit like just getting my passport renewed, just signing the page. Our wedding and anniversary is the Saturday as far as we're concerned.

There is talk of the humanist society getting the legal powers to marry you at some point in the future. The president is a fan so this could help to speed it up.

Good luck!

PM me if you want any help or sample ceremonies etc.

Raphael

Do the paperwork the week before, then have someone else do a nice non-religious ceremony on the day.

Gillo

If you are atheist why does a Unitarian come into it?

AFAIK, you can get married in any building you just have to get permission from whoever owns it and obviously get someone to perform the ceremony. I seem to remember hearing that a few years back so you're best off getting it double checked.

An option you could look at is to have a "commitment ceremony" in the day; walk down the asile, vows to each other etc, then at a later stage go through the red tape in a registry office. It may not be ideal but isn't the day really about expressing how you feel than signing a legal document.

Either way, congrats!

eyescreamcone

Got married last year in a hotel by a Unitarian reverand.
Super day - super ceremony which we wrote ourselves - no mention of gods!
But there should be atheist solemnisers.
The census showed that that those with no religion are the second biggest group in the state.
Cmon minister cater for your people!!!

Anyone who wants to become a legal solemiser should do a 1 day state course and off you go!!!

Maybe this will all get sorted when we introduce same sex marriage soon!!!

Triangla

Raphael wrote: »

Do the paperwork the week before, then have someone else do a nice non-religious ceremony on the day.

Actually a very good idea. Leaves the ceremony part completely to your own imagination.

Registry office for the paperwork some time and a humanist ceremony?

http://www.humanism.ie/ceremonies/wedding-ceremonies

angeldelight

Unitarian ministers can marry outside of their church

grind gremlin

As far as I'm aware, Tom Colton is very flexible regarding what is included in the ceremony: Here is a response of his from another thread.


Spiritual ceremonies - SUI
Hi guys,
Just to clarify for you as spiritualists we believe if 2 people want to geth married then they should be allowed to get married the way they want too.

The only 2 peices we have to include in the ceremony is the legal piece, the rest is customised to suit the couple, so if you dont want to remember loved ones in your ceremony, then you dont have too. We have a number of ideas to include in your ceremony ring warming, untiy candle, rose ceremony, celtic hand fasting just to name a few.

It is the full legal ceremony 7 days a week indoors or outdoors

Gatica

We've booked Tom Colton. They may believe in dead spirits but how's that different from Unitarian Church believing in God, for example?
The main thing for us is that the ceremony is left without mention of either, which is what we're doing. They've been very accommodating, and they don't expect you to hold their beliefs.
We were in the same situation when we started looking into a civil ceremony. We felt completely discriminated against because we didn't have a church or religious organisation to turn to. The State in this still fails (and a number of other things with religious school systems and so on) and the fact that humanists are not registered simply because their faith does not involve God is ridiculous.
I feel your pain. We decided to go with Tom Colton because we wanted a whole/encompassing ceremony; we didn't want to have two separate weddings, civil and then another ceremony for vows in front of friends/family. I am still not telling some religious family members that the solemniser belongs to a religious organisation, I kinda feel awkward about that. I feel like they'd think that if we could have someone from the Spiritualist Union marry us, then why not a priest? if you get what I mean...
It's backward and completely irreflective of a large population of this country. One could go on and on about its absurdity, but I don't wanna ruin my day by getting upset about it...

average_runner

kevink123 wrote: »

Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster...

I'm getting married in December and am absolutely furious...

We're athiests and really feel bullied by the state. We're up against the discriminatory issues that a lot of people seem to be up against...

We're getting married outside of Dublin and would really like a "ceremony". An isle to walk down etc.

- As I understand it, registrars won't work weekends
- Unitarian priests aren't allowed to marry outside of the Unitarian churches

So our options are:
- Registary office (which doesn't really sound as nice as in the venue we're looking at)
- a Church (which we don't believe in and don't want to give in to just because the state won't allow us other options).
- A Spiritualist (Tom Colton) who will invite along our dead relative (seriously?!?!?!)

Am I missing anything? I'm so angry and disheartened... It feels like the State is making things as difficult as possible for us to try to push us into a church.

Also, which minister is in charge of this? I really want to send them a "strongly worded letter"...

Any advice, opinion, help would be massively appreciated.

Was at a wedding at the weekend, they got married in the hotel, walked down the aisle and had a solemiser(i think thats what its call) perform the
Ceremony.

Sleepy

Aye, felt the same way ourselves. Senator Ivana Bacik has a bill being put forward which would allow the Humanist society (or other non-religious organisations) to carry out weddings but unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll be in time for either of us (we're getting married in Feb).

We're going with the Spiritualists. Some friends of ours have used them and were quite happy with them. They'll let you can write your own ceremony so there doesn't need to be any reference to their beliefs.

A final option, and not one I'd take myself, is that the HSE solemnisers can sometimes be persuaded to do weekends. A family member works in the HSE and mentioned that he knows some of them do it for the over-time on a Saturday and I got him to ask the local solemniser in the area we're getting married in but apparently they only do it in exceptional cases. Not sure what that entails but presuming it'd be a sick relative who couldn't otherwise make the ceremony or something similar. It might be construed as a white lie but I didn't like the idea of starting married life based on a lie...

Moonbeam

Did you try booking the HSE solemniser to go to your venue?
I was disappointed about the weekday only stuff too but I also didn't want to walk down an aisle.

sineadc1984

- A Spiritualist (Tom Colton) who will invite along our dead relative (seriously?!?!?!)

Tom Colton won't invite your dead relative if you don't want him too. I've met him & booked our wedding for next year with him!! you can do WHATEVER you want in YOUR ceremony with him he'll send you sample readings etc but you don't have to use them!! We get to get married outside and then he can do the legal bit whereever!! WE found his prices very reasonable also especially since he has to travel.

kevink123

Hi all,

Thanks for all the replies although I take no pleasure from knowing that we're not the only ones in this situation.

The reason I was looking at the Unitarian church, as an atheist, was that it seems as though they are significantly more tolerant than a normal churches. I like the romantic idea of seeing my to be wife walking down an isle and getting married somewhere that has respect for all beliefs (including same sex). Although I don't beleive in religion, I have no problem with other peoples beliefs but I do have a problem with the Catholic church and feel like I'd be condoning their systems by going into their church.

I'm also not mad on the idea of having the civil and ceremonial part on 2 different days... It would feel a little like the ceremonial part is a bit theatrical or something.

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a religious rant and my lovely financee seems to have found a solution whereby a Unitarian priest will travel to the ceremony. She's called Pamela McCarthy and seems to have a good reputation. Anyone know her?

I totally take the point that Tom Colton's spiritualisitic beliefs are as meaningful or (non-meaningful) as any religions but unfortunately is a problem of people's perception. By all accounts, he seems great but our "audience" will still have quite a religious element and I wouldn't want to have to be defending our decision to go with him. Not for a day as important as this.

Ideally, the humanist would be the way to go and with Micheal D behind them it'd be easier on the day to justify the decision and am delighted to hear that Ivana Bacik is trying to sort this out. I'm going to send her a "thank you" email right now actually...

Thanks again for all the advice and will update if we have any more news.

eyescreamcone

kevink123 wrote: »

Hi all,

Thanks for all the replies although I take no pleasure from knowing that we're not the only ones in this situation.

The reason I was looking at the Unitarian church, as an atheist, was that it seems as though they are significantly more tolerant than a normal churches. I like the romantic idea of seeing my to be wife walking down an isle and getting married somewhere that has respect for all beliefs (including same sex). Although I don't beleive in religion, I have no problem with other peoples beliefs but I do have a problem with the Catholic church and feel like I'd be condoning their systems by going into their church.

I'm also not mad on the idea of having the civil and ceremonial part on 2 different days... It would feel a little like the ceremonial part is a bit theatrical or something.

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a religious rant and my lovely financee seems to have found a solution whereby a Unitarian priest will travel to the ceremony. She's called Pamela McCarthy and seems to have a good reputation. Anyone know her?

I totally take the point that Tom Colton's spiritualisitic beliefs are as meaningful or (non-meaningful) as any religions but unfortunately is a problem of people's perception. By all accounts, he seems great but our "audience" will still have quite a religious element and I wouldn't want to have to be defending our decision to go with him. Not for a day as important as this.

Ideally, the humanist would be the way to go and with Micheal D behind them it'd be easier on the day to justify the decision and am delighted to hear that Ivana Bacik is trying to sort this out. I'm going to send her a "thank you" email right now actually...

Thanks again for all the advice and will update if we have any more news.

Pamela McCarthy did our ceremony
She was superb and put everyone at ease
She allowed us to write our own ceremony including and excluding what we liked... without comment or judgement.
In the end it might as well have been a humanist ceremony.

As for Tom Colton being able to bring dead relatives... maybe we should have got him to get our living relatives to attend

Gatica

kevink123 wrote: »

I totally take the point that Tom Colton's spiritualisitic beliefs are as meaningful or (non-meaningful) as any religions but unfortunately is a problem of people's perception. By all accounts, he seems great but our "audience" will still have quite a religious element and I wouldn't want to have to be defending our decision to go with him. Not for a day as important as this.

This is how we kinda felt as well, but we didn't see any other way out. We're keeping his background "secret" to our more religious relatives. (So long as hopefully there are no business cards passed around )
I preferred him to Unitarians, as some relatives are not even Christian, so that kinda side-stepped that particular issue.

We actually booked our venue for a Friday based on the HSE requirement. Then turned out there were no registrars available that day in the area (I know it's our own fault for not checking this before booking), as they only have one and they're already booked to do a wedding at 3.
Now we have to get everyone to come to a Friday wedding, even though there's no longer a good reason to have it on Fri... :mad:

eyescreamcone wrote: »

As for Tom Colton being able to bring dead relatives... maybe we should have got him to get our living relatives to attend

Ha ha.. I'd actually wish for the opposite. My grandparents threw a tantrum that I wasn't inviting my parents' cousins (who I've met like 2ce ever!) - is that like second cousins twice removed?

Sleepy

Parents cousin is first cousin once removed.

TBH, if any of my relatives have a problem with Colton's beliefs they can take a long walk off a short pier. The state won't provide a civil registrar on the weekend and the spiritualists have both a far cleaner record in this country than the Catholic church and seem to be far more respectful of other's beliefs (one might even say they act in a more "Christian" fashion tbh).

I like a good theological debate tbh, so thinking about it, I don't mind if someone wants to discuss their problem with my choice of celebrant: once they're paying for the whisky!

eyescreamcone

People will notice that your ceremony is different from the "usual".

However, I still get people who come up to me saying "Your Humanist ceremony was lovely"
My reply "Thanks...but it was a Unitarian ceremony"

Nobody will take much notice of the details - but you'll know you did what YOU want and that's the important thing.

gowayouttadat

we're getting married in may by a unitarian priest in a non religious venue... outside if the weather permits