Cheapest legal marriage or civil partnership

Bitsy_Beans

You don't have to spend a fortune to get married. Hire a community hall and rather than a gift list ask guests to bring something for the buffet etc.
Or just have a small but select number of guests and have a sit down meal somewhere.
I spent around £10K on my wedding day, including the honeymoon which is a great deal of money (although well short of the average) but we didn't go into to debt for this (parents and FIL helped out financially and we saved some house equity money for this too). If you can afford to spend lots then spend away but I don't see the point of going into huge debt for something like a wedding.

s4aRainyDay

you could get legally married now and take care of all the house/wills problems and not make a big deal out of it. Then save for the big romantic wedding/renewal later on, maybe at 5 or 10 years.

lostinrates

poppycracker wrote: »

I've got the marriage fees notice in front of me actually....... talk about coincidence!

Aberdeenshire Council Registry

Private ceremony - £46.50
Marriage Notices (1 each) - £52.00
Marriage Certificate - £8.50
Total

---

£107.00
.

Thats about wht ours cost. two friends were our witnesses, and my husband wore jeans. I wore a dress I already owned, and picked roses from the garden to carry. We didn't do any extras and had a lovely lunch after wardswith our friends.

Our fmily were planning a very large wedding for us and we felt we were being further and further removed from what the day was really about to us. To do it so quietly with friends who understood was incredibly romantic, we held hands all day and there was no performance or show. I loved it.

poppycracker

OH would wear his boilersuit if I let him! :eek:

halfpint90

The whole point of the day is what you and your future wife want, don't be rail-roaded into what everyone else says you 'should' be doing !!


as i said before ours cost less than 4k, much of which was actually paid by family as our wedding presents, my mum paid for my dress (which was actually a bridesmaid dress, so nowhere near the price of a wedding dress) and she made all my invites, and i had silk flowers which my mum arranged, and that in turn saved the cost of having them pressed afterwards!
my dad paid for the hall for the reception and the toasting drinks and wine with the sit down meal.
my in laws done the evening buffet for 200 and the photographer was a friend of the family.

we did push the boat out on a few things but thats the beauty of it, you can pick and choose the things that are important to you and your future wife.

To me i wasn't too fussed on flowers, hence some cheapish silk ones from the local hobbycraft shop!

anguk

We've been thinking about the same thing, we've been together almost 25 years and have 2 kids. My OH's health hasn't been too good lately and we know it's going to get worse over time, I've never wanted a big wedding and it's never bothered us not being married but we realise that having that piece of paper will make things easier if anything happens.

We'll probably just go to the registry office with the kids and OH's sister, she can be a witness along with our eldest son. If my daughter was a couple of years older we would just have her as a witness and not even bother taking SIL. Then we would just go for a meal somewhere afterwards.

It seems daft for us to spend vast sums of money just to make things formal. It always makes me laugh when people say that getting married shows commitment, sticking together for the last 25 years shows plenty of commitment!

jess1974

Me and hubby got married in the local registry office, just us and our children,
we literally hauled 2 strangers of the street to be our witnessess.

We then went for a lovely meal, total cost around £300(rings, outfits, meal, license etc), the only thing i would do differently would be to tell our families beforehand, we did'nt and they were absolutely furious...

Emmaizzy

OH and me had both been married before (me registry office, him big church do). I personally felt the RO was so quick and not very romantic and we didn't want a church wedding as non believers and the cost.

What we did instead was travelled to Westminster RO for the legal bit and then we had a private ceremony in a friend's garden with a BBQ with a humanist celebrant. What this bascially allows you to do is have a ceremony as similar to a church wedding or as far away from it as you want. You get to write your own vows and the celebrant acts like the vicar bringing the ceremony together. As it's not legal you don't need any permissions and you can do it anywhere at anytime.

We had a BBQ (which we did bring in a company to do as it was a wedding gift). We made fairy cakes for the wedding cakes and we made a cheap wedding stand for them by getting four pieces of glass cut and bought loads of cheap shot glasses to stand them on.

We hired tables and chairs from the local parish hall for £50. We hung cheap fairy lights from trees (ones for xmas trees). We bought disposable cameras with developing and put these on the tables - some mixed results!

We hired a bar but these have gone up in price now so might not work.

it was a brilliant day and the best wedding I have ever been to.

However, you might be able to persuade a pub to let you have a ceremony in the garden if you have the meal in their restaurant which people should be happy to pay for then you can have a romantic bit without all the hassle!

We paid £75 for our celebrant http://www.humanist-society.org/ gives more info.

Congratulations by the way.

Emma

margaretclare

Several posters have mentioned things like a meal, drinks, cake, dresses etc.

As I read the original post, the OP was not asking about anything like that. She just wanted to know the cheapest possible way of 'being married or civil partnered'.

You can't be civil partnered if you're a heterosexual couple.

Cheapest way of being married would, I guess, be the basic register office.

We were married in 2002 and - had we gone about it the way DH wanted - the actual ceremony needn't have cost us a penny-piece, because we're both members of our local Methodist Church and they don't charge to marry members. It would still have cost us £30 each to go to the registrar and 'notify our intention to wed' (and also be interrogated there as to whether we really knew each other, whether we weren't doing it just as a convenience!!)

I couldn't do it as no-frills as that though, I had to have some music, some flowers...Total cost including 3 days' honeymoon, meal for 18 people, dresses etc, just under £1K. But we could have been just as married, for a total cost of £60 for that notification to the registrar.

Tabby

If you are in England & Wales, the cheapest register office wedding - all in - would be £103.50 which breaks down as:

1. groom's notice of intention to marry = £30
2. bride's notice of intention to marry = £30
3. ceremony in a statutory marriage room at the register office = £40
4. marriage certificate = £3.50

Many register offices now have decommissioned rooms which means they are classed the same as a licenced wedding venue (e.g. hotel) and the register office can set the fees. However, they have to also offer a room or rooms in the register office as statutory rooms which total at £43.50.
We have a lovely room at the register office where I work but you wouldn't know it as it is not advertised! :rolleyes: I tell people as I think it is only fair in MSE spirit.