Why Should you Choose a Celebrant to Officiate your Wedding?
Should you have a registrar or celebrant to officiate your wedding ceremony?
Well, to start with, as a celebrant, I am of course biased. The reason I wanted to make this blog today is because I visited a venue during the week - Julia there told me that most of their couples use a registrar to officiate their wedding and she believes this is because they might not necessarily be aware of the benefits of working with a celebrant instead.
First of all, a Celebrant offers you the chance to have your wedding in any location you love, anytime – you have complete flexibility on this. With a celebrant, your wedding can be at home or abroad. A registrar is confined to times and approved venues and might conduct several weddings in one day – a celebrant will conduct maximum one wedding per day, devoting all their time and energy to your big day!
A Celebrant will also personalise your ceremony to suit your style and you will get to know your Celebrant over the course of planning your wedding so you have a personal, meaningful connection for the most important day of your life. Your Celebrant will create a unique ceremony from scratch, one that truly reflects you as a couple. The script is written for you and you only – there is no copy pasting with ‘Insert Name’ sections that would be on a registrar’s wedding script.
An Independent Celebrant-led wedding could include any symbolic elements, whether they are religious, spiritual or cultural, such as a Quaich, ring warming, hand fasting or a sand ceremony.
A celebrant can actively involve your guests in these symbolic rituals.
Any music, personally written vows, readings and of course exchange of rings your way can be included!
If you choose to get married aboard, for those who can’t attend your wedding, you could use a celebrant to renew your vows back home or have a second wedding altogether.
In the UK, Local Registrars are bound by their legal format and there are limitations to the content of the service they can provide. A registrar ceremony would include your legal wording, vows, rings, and limited readings/music if desired. However, they have set times, set locations and restrictions on what they can and cannot say or do. For example, no religious or spiritual content is permitted, and ceremonies usually need to be fairly short. It is unlikely you would meet your registrar before your wedding day. They It is more than likely you will also not meet the person delivering the most important words to you as a couple before your wedding day either. A celebrant offers you complete freedom over style, content and location.
Celebrant led weddings offer an affordable alternative. You no longer have to search purely for wedding venues that are licensed; you may have a favourite beach, restaurant, family farm or beach! The options are endless with a Celebrant.
Now, you can combine a wedding ceremony with a celebrant and a registrar.
You can choose to carry out the legal aspect of your ceremony with a registrar in council buildings for between £57-91 if in Lancashire, Sefton or Liverpool, followed by the personalised and meaningful Celebrant-led celebration in the presence of all your family and friends.
Or if you wish, you can request a registrar to attend your celebrant led wedding, which of course, is more expensive. However, it’s a popular option for couples who want to tick off the legal side of marriage at the same time as their Celebrant-led ceremony.
Hopefully one day soon our campaign to allow celebrants to perfom legally binding marriages in England and Wales will be successful. Keep an eye on the Law Commission weddings review.
The following are the costs of having a registrar ceremony in my local councils:
Lancashire
Notice of marriage or civil partnership £35 per person (needed anyway)
Registration offices - £91-330
Approved premises - £355-480
Liverpool
£41 per person to give notice of marriage or civil partnership
£57-290 at council offices / town hall
£365-525 at approved venues
Sefton
£57-£243.50 for Town Hall weddings
£388.50-£601 to attend an approved venue (all of these do include a certificate which would cost £11)
Notice of marriage or civil partnership £35 per person (needed anyway)
The Joy Celebrant - covering the whole of the North West
My cost is £550 for 2023, which includes all of the ceremony consultation and planning meetings, couple questionnaire and personalised ceremony script writing, support with writing your vows, help with choosing readings, music and symbolic elements, sharing of draft scrips, a presentation script on your wedding day, as well as unlimited contact with me. That’s it.
For my wedding, getting married in the church where I did all my sacraments in wasn’t an option and this turned out to be a blessing for us: our celebrant Chloe Cairns was able to craft with us the most unique and personalised ceremony where all our guests were absolutely buzzing, laughing and crying the most joyfilled tears from hearing our own story and it meant that they could be intimately involved in understanding our day and why they were chosen to be there. After meeting with Chloe and a few other celebrants over zoom, we had another few zoom sessions and multiple emails so we were so assured on our wedding day that our ceremony was going to be exactly as we wanted it, confident in Chloe’s relationship with us as a couple. She even waited and held the guests together during the 50 minute delay for our wedding to start! And the feedback from our guests? It was the best, most joyous wedding they had ever been to! We did have thunder and lightening during our vows to top it all off!
Based on my own experience, I feel passionately that celebrant-led weddings are the best option for couples and this is part of the reason I became a celebrant. Why wouldn’t you choose a restriction-free, personalised ceremony led by someone you have got to know and trust? The legal aspects can deter some couples as they may not want to have two ceremonies. But this is easily resolved by asking your register office for a simple 2×2 midweek ceremony. This can be done for as little as £50 and will just involve the two of you, two witnesses and two registrars. Only the legal wording and paperwork is required, so you can save rings etc for your big day!
Thanks so much for reading! Lots of love, Una, The Joy Celebrant