FAQs

A wedding celebrant is a professionally trained and fully insured officiant who performs formal wedding ceremonies. They have the skills and experience to help couples tailor bespoke ceremonies that reflect their personalities and love for each other.

A Civil Ceremony is performed by a Registrar in a Register Office or a Licensed Venue. There are significant differences. Civil Ceremonies are legally recognised unlike a Celebrant – Led Wedding Ceremony, but they are bound by restrictions regarding the words spoken during the ceremony. For example, there can be no religious content at all.  Celebrant Led Wedding Ceremonies have no restrictions and can include religious aspects to represent the couple’s individual and combined beliefs.  

NB. The legal formalities must be completed before or after a celebrant led ceremony. The Celebrant usually guides you through this process well in advance.

Choosing a Wedding Celebrant means you have the flexibility & freedom of choice to hold your wedding ceremony where you like, when you like: With so many hidden gems to choose from ; stunning private estates and hotels, castles, beaches, and many other beautiful indoor and outdoor locations, unlicensed or licensed for marriages, and many other meaningful spots including perhaps, where the proposal took place or in the surroundings of your own home, anything goes.

Yes. Unlike Registrars who, more often than not, have more than one wedding to perform on any given day, especially during the busier wedding season. Couples sometimes have to take a wedding slot that is available and not necessarily the day or time they wished for. The ceremony is restricted to about half an hour and if there is a delay the Registrar may move on to another wedding. 

Wedding Celebrants are not restricted to time and most, if not all, only perform one ceremony in a day, giving their couples their undivided quality time and attention.  

A celebrant-led wedding allows you to overcome the strict, traditional restrictions that are found in religious and civil ceremonies. They give you the opportunity to inject personality and heart into your special day, creating something that is truly unique and captures the essence and love of your relationship.

Quite simply because couples take a great deal of time and effort into choosing everything else, so why wouldn’t they want to choose the very person who will guide them through one of the most intimate and emotional journeys of their lives, leading to the BIG DAY! 

A wedding celebrant will personalise your ceremony to suit your style. You will get to know your celebrant over the course of planning your wedding day, so that you have a personal, meaningful connection for the most important day of your life. In the UK local Registrars are bound by their legal format and there are limitations to the content of the service they can provide, for example, no religious references at all. They have set times and set locations and restrictions on what can and can’t be said. 

Couples are not able to choose their Registrars, nor their attire and very often, are given a ‘tick box’ choice of words for their basic wedding ceremony. They will have a short planning meeting, sometimes with a Registrar that does not even take the ceremony on the wedding day. 

Your chosen wedding celebrant will create a unique ceremony from start to finish, one that truly reflects you as a couple. It can be fun and light hearted, formal or simple, and will suit you perfectly as a couple. 

One of the aspects that couples love is that the Celebrant will help you decide on key elements and rituals within the ceremony. As part of this they’ll help you write your own vows if you choose to. The celebrant will help you choose readings, music, help with choreography and involvement of family and friends. They will also be on hand to guide you through the process and discuss, adjust the ceremony all the way up to and on the wedding day. 

Celebrant-led weddings are not yet recognised in law in England and Wales on their own. However, it is likely this will change as the Law Commission recently announced their wedding law reform recommendations. The Law Commission is recommending that the officiant become licensed to perform ceremonies, rather than the location as the law currently requires. So, couples of the near future will hopefully be able to have a legally binding wedding ceremony performed by a celebrant.

So, couples often go to the Register office to complete the legal formalities and paperwork. To obtain your legal marriage certificate you will need to visit the Register Office to make the appropriate legal declarations with two witnesses.