civil ceremony

dccarm

Myself and my fiancee are getting married next month in a civil ceremony. I have just looked at the vows / declaration that go into a civil ceremony, and by the looks of them they could be over and done with in about a minute and a half!

So we have a dilemma. Neither of us feels very comfortable with writing our own vows as we're both quite shy and self concious, but at the same time it would be nice for us, and the guests to have slightly more than just "do you take this man, do you take this woman? - good and now you're married" (although I've been to some slightly drawn out weddings where I'd have prefererred that!).

Has anyone any suggestions of readings, or examples of how they overcame such a dilemma. Perhaps you just went with it!

wigginsmum

When DH and I married, we were both Pagans, and we followed the civil ceremony with a short do in the local park where we exchanged our own vows in front of a Wiccan high priest and high priestess (friends of ours), and jumped the broomstick. We printed out the details of the ritual and gave everyone a copy beforehand so they could follow what was happening (most members of our families are not Pagan). We contacted the council beforehand and got their permission.

Having said all that, I found the civil ceremony very meaningful and joyful in its own right. When it came down to it, it didn't feel like a short ceremony.

Noozan

When we got married, we were offered a choice of a long or short service and we could change the vows if we wanted to. We asked my brother to do a short reading for us too. If you'd like a detailed outline of both services, PM me.

lesleystrawson

My husband and I had a very short wedding (about 5 minutes) - we thought that a lot of the offered words were pretty naff, and didn't want to write our own (we are practical people, not overly wordy/lovestruck if you know what I mean) so just chose one of the more straightforward selections offered to us by the registrar.

Hubby is very shy and nervous, so I didn't want to prolong the agony. It was still very special even though it was short (personal music, holding hands, rings etc. ) Still plenty of time for half the congregation to cry! Its not how long it lasts, but who you're marrying that's the important bit.

And of course, short wedding = more time at the bar afterwards!!

Good luck!

Sarahsaver

I've been wondering about this too. Im getting married in a civil ceremony in September and dont want it to be all over in 5 minutes. Can't event think of music. Didint go for a church wedding because we are not religious and it would be hypocritical, but at least the church ones get to have a couple of sing-alongs! OH and I know all the hymns too because I was brought up to go to church every sunday, god-fearing n'all that, and other half played in a brass band.
The music has to be non religious so not even words like 'soul' and so on, which rules out a lot of things!

Noozan

Sarahsaver wrote:

The music has to be non religious so not even words like 'soul' and so on, which rules out a lot of things!

Oops, hit the thanks instead of quote, lol.

Just wanted to say that we had some music at our ceremony and spent ages trying to decide what music to have as we had read in the civil ceremony bumph that we weren't allowed music with any religious connotations. We wanted to have Daniel Beddingfield's "If you're not the one" which is our song. It has the words "soul" and "pray" in it so we thought we wouldn't be allowed to have it. We took the CD in the Registrar and asked her to listen to the song. After listening to the lyrics, she let us have it :j

We chose the short ceremony and didn't write oue own vows, just used the ones that were offered to us. I think from begginnig to end, the whole ceremony was about 20 mins, which I thought was just fine.

flutterbybutterfly

I got married in a civil ceremony 5 years ago, we were given a few selections from the registrar as ideas and put them together until we found we had what we wanted. We also included a reading by my best friend, which was an american indian love poem. It was lovely as it added a bit of spirituality to the service in a non-religious sense (if that is possible?). I would search the internet for love poems and see what you get, there are loads of free poem search sites out there waiting to be found. My sister gets married in July and is insisting that her reading will be The Owl and The !!!!!cat which I think is v bizarre but she has always been a bit wacky so it will sut her day down to the ground. At then end of the day you will know when you find the right reading as it will just feel right, and remember if the reading is lovey dovey then make sure whomever has the lucky job of reading it is going to be able to hold their own and deliver it well without getting too shy and embarrased.

I know that the registrars in different parts of the country offer more and less personal choices for the ceremony, it really does depend on where you live. You might find you have to be pushy to get what you want.

Music-wise, there are some lovely non-religious classical pieces which suit weddings, whether it is "live" music or a recording, and often the registrar can provide CDs. I had a very accomplished organ/keyboard-ist playing wedding marches (one in and one out - they are different marches), and my sister will be entering to The Queen of Sheba which is a lovely piece (and will be played by my mother, my husband and my son 10 yrs in a violin trio). My SIL had "Meditation from Thias" which was lovely also.

Also, try http://www.weddingguide.co.uk/articles/features/civilmusic.asp

http://www.hitched.co.uk/plan/advice/wedmusic.asp

lynneinjapan

Our wedding was last August. We got a booklet from the registry office with a large selection of suggested vows and readings to add to the basic legal bits. They told us when we originally went to register the forthcoming marriage that this booklet would be available, but we could only get it on loan so we had to go back for it nearer the time of the actual wedding - it wasn't sent to us automatically. See if your register office has anything similar. We were also allowed to provide our own readings/vows, though they had to be approved before use. We picked one reading out of the book and I drafted another one which our usher (who was reading it) re-wrote in a far wittier fashion. (The gist of it was contrasting my new husband and me.) The register office were fine with it - in fact the girl I spoke to said it was really lovely and one of the best readings she'd seen.

If you like you can PM me and I'll send you copies of the readings we used.

These might be worth a look too: http://www.hitched.co.uk/plan/readings/index.asp

As for music, I picked out the songs we wanted, put all the lyrics in a Word document, printed them out and gave the to the register office for approval. Again, everything was fine - they didn't even mind Shania Twain's "From this Moment" (You're the answer to my prayers from up above) or the Proclaimers' "Sunshine on Leith" (While the Chief puts sunshine on Leith, I will be with you / While I'm worth my room on this earth, I'll thank him for his work, and your birth, and my birth). However, we later asked if we could also have the Proclaimers' "Then I Met you" (Thought that God had failed me / Thought my prayers were useless / Thought that he would never give the chance for me to praise him) and they wouldn't allow that - I guess it was the "God" word.

In the end I think our ceremony went on for about 40 minutes, though a lot of that was due to the registrar liking the sound of his own voice!

However, if this article from the Independent is correct then there should no longer be any problem with "religious" lyrics.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article327545.ece

dccarm

We met with the registrar yesterday and she gave us the full breakdown of the service. It's actually perfect as it is, and lasts about 20 minutes in total so we are just going to leave it without any additions or amendments.