Getting Married 101 {UK edition} - Part One

Before I got engaged my knowledge of the pre-wedding process i.e. all the stuff you need to do before you can get legally wed was pretty limited. I assumed {pretty naively} that you just decided where you wanted to get married and you just got married there! Fast forward to January 09 and I soon realised that there is slightly more stuff you need to do.

As we're both Christians a church wedding was a no brainer for us, however because my home church doesn’t have it’s own building I always knew that we would have to find a different venue to get married in. In the UK, the type of church you use, will determine the process you go through pre-wedding.

Option 1 - Church of England {Anglican church}

Option 2 – A.N.Other Denomination church

Originally we chose to get married in the Church of England because we didn't fancy the hassle of applying to the Home Office for a Certificate of Approval, which is a document you need if you wish to get married in the UK {outside of the CofE} and don't have 'settled' status. Whilst a COA gives you more options of where you can get married, it was another paper filling exercise requiring the sending off of our passports, which at the time we didn’t want the hassle of.

CofE churches traditionally tend to be very beautiful, however they have strict rules on which of their churches you can actually get married in. Fundamentally you need to live in the parish of that church or have a qualifying connection to the church. We found this to be one of the most frustrating things we faced during the CofE, church search as the churches in the parishes where Mr E and I lived, were both really small. I remember finding a fantastic church near to our proposed reception venue, decent size as well but when we enquired, we were told point blank no {and not in a polite way as well!}.

The biggest CofE church in Manchester is the Cathedral and I thought great, lets find out about getting married there, but they were no different. ‘You don’t live in the parish, you haven’t been attending for 6 months or more, you’re not on the electoral register of the church, no qualifying connection’ - blah blah blah. In the end we both agreed that it wasn't meant to be and said goodbye to the cathedral dream. The whole thing was starting to get a little too bureaucratic for my liking!

After a couple of weeks of further research and visits, we settled on a church in my parent's parish, still relatively large in size {400 capacity} AND beautiful inside and out. Very traditional!

It doesn’t look it, but it can actually fit 400 people! My camera doesn’t do the place justice.

The process to get married there seem pretty straightforward. The lady in the church office was so lovely, answering all our questions, giving us advice on things. We completed our details, paid our deposit and were advised that we would have formal meeting with the Reverend 8-12 weeks before to talk through the day. Also three Sundays before we would get married, they would read out our banns. Good stuff – sounded pretty straight forward!

In the meantime we were told that we would also need to apply for a Bishop’s licence {permission to get married in the CofE if one or both is non-EU} which would be issued within a week and is valid for 3 months. This seemed simple enough or so we thought…

More info

Getting married in the Church of England - very comprehensive site giving you all the info you need to plan your day and what you need to do before hand