Locations for Legal Hitching
13 Jul
Possibly the biggest shock so far in planning a wedding in England is that a couple can’t just get legally hitched wherever they please. Growing up in the Bay Area, I dreamt as a child of getting married on my favorite beach, Bean Hollow.
Of course, when I was a child, I wasn’t exactly dreaming of falling in love with an English gal, and Alex and I will still have a ceremony in California, but probably near the beach in Santa Cruz instead. Still, this bureaucratic condition abroad is throwing a hitch kink in our English wedding dreaming.
In California, I am used to a friend of the family getting online-ordained and serving as the Master of Ceremonies, if you like, over the wedding ceremony—and making it legal, all in one go. In England, different locations, whether they are government buildings, hotels or restaurants, must have a wedding license and a designated official to make the ceremony legal. To me, this appears complicated, limiting, and, particularly, more costly.
Part of it is that I am grumpy that the location we wanted for our legal ceremony—City Hall on the Thames River—doesn’t have a wedding license.
I am also annoyed that one of the hotels we looked at in Cornwall wants 400 GBP for the legal ceremony, separate from the cost of a reception, room hire, etc.
Grumbling aside, the English wedding license requirement has also gotten Alex and I thinking more deeply about what it means to have a legal civil partnership ceremony and a spiritual commitment ceremony. Our initial plan is to have a legal ceremony in London on the Friday–with our immediate family–and travel down to Cornwall for a commitment ceremony/party on the Saturday–with everyone else. But why does two separate ceremonies appeal? Why not combine them?
What we do know is that we want to keep being creative with our wedding planning. And while we’re struggling a little to picture the ceremony, we’ve still got a few ideas floating around!
Here? Islington Town Hall - Legally Hitched
Here? Tresanton Hotel - Ceremony Room
Here? Fowey Hotel - The whole shebang
Despite the regional bureaucratic differences, what have you done when it comes to whether or not to combine legality and ceremony?
– erica
Too bad about City Hall! That room is amaaazing. I think there’s something nice about having two ceremonies (probably because we’re having two)–one small and intimate and legal, one large and boisterous and spiritual/emotional. What about the registry offices in Cornwall? If you can swing getting there for the pre-registration process without too much of a financial burden, it might be more seamless to have the two ceremonies close to each other.
Good call! The one ‘city’ in Cornwall does have a registry office. We’re also thinking about combining the two ceremonies now–we’ll see!