Rip off charges for humanist ceremony in ROI

TCM wrote: »

Qualified. Lol. As usual a scam and rip off.

If you want to get married in Ireland, it costs €200.

Everything above that is frills that you're choosing to add yourself, so you can't really complain about scams and rip offs. Don't do it if you don't want to pay it.

The value of that 500 quid really depends on how long the marriage lasts.

OscarCat77 wrote: »

You see I don’t want to do my vows in some HSE office and the have some weird fake ceremony on the day it’s a joke th whole is thing!!!

Its all a joke really,its the legal bit that counts, legally, the rest is a ceremony.
I dont remember how much it cost for the registrar, done on a Friday, afterwards, I did think, maybe could have had a humanist celebration, but I thought the ceremony was ok.

seamus wrote: »

Depends on the church. If someone is very tight with the local parish, they may get it for nothing.

Most churches will suggest a "donation" to the church as a gift on your wedding. If you bring in a priest from outside the parish you may be "asked" to make a separate "donation" to his parish.

€500 all-in is around standard.

tight with the local parish?! you make it sound like a mafia organisation, oh hang on. BYOP charges

Magdalena Unsightly Sludge wrote: »

You're not being unreasonable. The whole thing is a racket - the HSE makes it difficult to be able to do the ceremony, you can't just rock up to the HSE and register as a celebrant/solemniser. So the Humanists pretty much have a closed market and charge what they want.

Sure some people want to be pretty involved in the ceremony and will want all that back and forth. And for them, €600 is fine. But for anybody who just wants a standard ceremony there should be a cheaper option available.

A priest will be about half the price. Or just do the registry office thing and have someone say a few words on the day.

Its all a business, pastafarians would do it for free beer and a plate of carbonara,



In reality, if they need to turn up for 30-45 minutes, the rest of the day is a write off, maybe they could squeeze 2 ceremonies in in one day, if they could book them in or get booked, all the prep stuff they do as standard but theres not much else they can do, at 500 though, they can buy their own drinks!

ChrissieH wrote: »

On the other hand, every priest in the country is just automatically granted legal power to marry people - a reflection of how Ireland and the church are so intertwined - and being a priest is their full-time job, so whether it's "right" for them to be given €100+ for performing a wedding, given that they didn't have to invest any money to train specifically like humanist celebrants do,

Ahh, nope.

They have to be recognised as ministers in their church. For Catholics, that's seven years in the seminary. Other churches have different approaches. Catholic priests are (usually) full time assigned to church work, and paid an annual stipend (well less than 20k on average). But it's different for other churches, eg I know of one Orthodox priest who was delivering pizzas for a while: the local community couldn't afford to pay him enough to live on and he didn't have good enough English to get a better job. Interfaith ministers are different again - just to enrol in their course costs you the best part of £9000 and they'd definitely be paying for themselves. Pastafarian ordination costs a lot less, but I don't think they're recognised as ministers here - yet!

And they all have to go through appropriate civil procedures to get on the register of solomizers, it doesn't come automatically with ordination / appointment / whatever.