Who conducts the ceremony?

tread_softly

Hi all!

Engaged now for nearly 3 years and we're finally getting the finger out to organise the wedding :P

We're at the very beginning so we don't have any dates/venues etc. booked, we're just making a list of what we need to do.

We're leaning towards a small ceremony, only close family, friends and the wedding party, a meal after with the same and then a big blowout afterwards where we'll invite all the friends and family that weren't at the ceremony.

I'm thinking a hotel would be the best venue, we can have the ceremony, meal and the afters all in the same place.

The only thing I'm not sure about is who actually conducts the ceremony.

Neither of us are religious. All of the weddings I've been to have been religious with a priest marrying the couple so I don't have any experience with an alternative.

What are our options if we're not getting married in a registry office?

January

The HSE can send out a registrar or you can have a Humanist celebrant or a religious solemniser of your choice, there is a significant cost for these though.

tread_softly

Really? What kind of cost are we looking at!?

January

Tom Colton charges in the region of €300/350... a HSE registrar will cost about €130 on top of the €200 charge to register your intent to marry. Humanists charge around the same region as Tom Colton. Not sure how much the religious solemnisers would charge.

tread_softly

Alright, thank you for the help!

The extra money we thought would be going towards the honeymoon seems to be dwindling fast!

Gatica

If you do you ceremony in the registration office, there's no extra charge. If you have friends that could do a ceremony you want after, that's another option (Kinda Joey from Friends style). There's a also a group that specialises in wedding ceremonies, though they're not legal ceremonies I guess there must be a market for it - http://www.abeautifulceremony.ie/

Moonbeam

The hse only perform them Monday to Friday aswell so that is worth noting.

tatli_lokma

If you are not religious, then go for a civil or humanist ceremony all the way. Your wedding has to be reflective of you, not just an exercise of ticking boxes or doing what is the 'norm'.

Although there are costs in having a civil or humanist ceremony, they are usually a lot less than the costs of a church wedding. Even a small church wedding can cost in excess of €500 by the time you factor in things like price for use of the church, alter flowers (which you may have to pay for even if you don't want them), organist (again, might have to pay for even if you don't use them!) 'donation' for the priest, a few quid for the sacristan and alter servers etc etc. I don't know of anyone who had a church wedding who got out of it for under €400 and this was in addition to the €200 charge everyone has to pay for registering the marriage.

Our wedding was a civil one, and we had it in a specific venue which cost €200. If we had used the hotel it would have been free. Outside of that cost, which was purely a personal choice for us, our wedding registrar cost €175 - €130 for their time and an additional €45 travel expenses.

Personally having the type of ceremony that means something to you and is reflective of you as a couple is the most important aspect of the whole process of getting married. Everything else is an optional extra, including the honeymoon. If it were me I'd rather have a cheaper honeymoon than a ceremony I didn't want, so that is where I would prefer to spend money.