Alternatives ceremonies

i71jskz5xu42pb

Hi,

Got engaged last month (yey for me!) and am looking to get married in the late summer. Venue identified, all good bar the ceremony. No interest in a church wedding and non-religious solemnisers are booked solid (great business to be in it seems, I might try it myself one of the days!).

So the alternatives are:

• Forget the ceremony, get married in a registry office in advance and just have a party on the day
• Get married in a registry office in advance and have some sort of non-official ceremony on the day

Anybody any experience with the latter, have you seen it done before. I've seen mention of people just exchanging vows, no celebrant as such.

lazygal

We did the latter before humanist weddings were legal. We hired a celebrant to make things more wedding like and formal. We married legally the week before. Enjoyed both days immensely.

Milly33

We were the same no interest in any of the religious side but for some reason I didn't really fancy going to the registry office before the wedding or warty day itself. So we have booked the civil service at the venue which is so far looking all good.

before that we were looking into as you say going to do the whole registry office either before or after and then perhaps having a friend or some nice speaker say a few words, maybe do the whole handfasting thing just to do something on the day.. Did you look into a celtic priest one of our friends had him and he was loverly

conf101

I know a couple of people who got married in a registry office during the week and then just had a close friend or family member perform a ceremony on the day. They wrote the whole ceremony themselves so it was personal to them and they weren't stuck doing traditional ceremony things that they didn't like. Great idea in my opinion

i71jskz5xu42pb

Milly33 wrote: »

So we have booked the civil service at the venue which is so far looking all good.

We're going for a Saturday which rules this out (HSE god bless them only work Mon-Fri) and the Humanists (the only other non religious that can do a ceremony) seem to be booked out. Might go the lazygal/conf101 route.

Milly33

Did you ask them sorry now not pushing I know as a rule they say they don't but when I was chatting to the civil office in cork the chap there said they would but it depends on the civil servant themselves perhaps they charge more or something..

That celtic priest aswell I know he calls himself a priest but that is all non religious anywho best of luck in the search hope ye find something to suit

almorris

Pman, your dead right about getting into the non-religious solemnisers business. Handy money for a 20 minute gig. I looked at it but it's not cheap and I think you have to have been sitting on the Big Mans right hand side for years or something like that. Good luck.
P.S. If anyone knows any details on the route to get into this business feel free to PM me.

i71jskz5xu42pb

Milly33 wrote: »

Did you ask them sorry now not pushing I know as a rule they say they don't but when I was chatting to the civil office in cork the chap there said they would but it depends on the civil servant themselves perhaps they charge more or something..

Good idea, some might be more flexible. I know we had same deal with registering. Some offices were "we will not register you unless you have everything sorted (dates, venue, celebrant)" but some were "we'll just mark that as TBD"

i71jskz5xu42pb

almorris wrote: »

P.S. If anyone knows any details on the route to get into this business feel free to PM me.

I gather from reading about that the process to become a solmeniser is not that transparent, kind of those who need to know it will find out.
Main one I think is that you are part of some grouping e.g. Church, spiritualist, humanist, etc.