Legally marry and not inform anyone - official or family

Slinky

bryanb said:

Your marriage must be advertised for 3 weeks in advance.

So it will be visible on a list in a register office, but not plastered across the newspapers.

OP you can get a witness off the street to witness your wedding, so it's down to how likely you think it is that somebody will a) spot you going to the register office in the first place to arrange your wedding, b) notice your name on the list inside the register office, and c) spot you going in or out on the day of your wedding.

Brie

You don't need to register anything here if you are married in another country.  Either that or I've been living in sin for a few decades.

Annisele

What are you trying to achieve with a secret wedding?

If you want a ceremony that's meaningful to you and your partner, then I suspect you could come up with something that wasn't a wedding. But if you want the benefits of being legally married, you have to tell somebody - eg you can't tell HMRC that you want to use the marriage allowance if you're not prepared to tell HMRC you're married! Plus, as others have said you can't get married in the first place without involving both the state and witnesses.

RAS

Civil partnership?

p00hsticks

RAS said:

Civil partnership?

That would still need to take place in a register office and require the same notice to be given, so effectively the same. 
OP - while it's not possible for absolutely no-one to know, as others have said it can be done with very little publicity. Me and my OH did it a few years ago and only two of our friends and family (the two who acted as witnesses) and the people on this forum  know about it. 

At the minimum you need to give notice at your local register office and then have two witnesses at the marriage itself.
We had been hoping that the register office could provide the witnesses, but they said they couldn't.  
We were dubious about the 'get two people off the street' method as we thought this might become a bit of a talking point for them and if you don't know anything about them you don't know how gossipy they are going to be. In the end we asked a couple of friends who we could trust to be discrete about it. 

Spendless

My son and his fiancee living in our home town 100 miles from where they are due to marry this summer had to recently go and register their intent to marry at our local registry offices. They had to book an appointment and pay so much each. I'm not entirely sure of the reason behind this.

I married abroad over 2 decades ago and didn't need to register either before or on our return.

What's the legal rules like for Scotland - they  may differ from other parts of UK.

Have you considered making a will too? Otherwise if you don't and family think another relative will inherit because you're not married then the surviving party might be in for having to explain at what would be an emotional time anyway. 

Nelliegrace

It sounds rather worrying @spankee
Surely a legal contract such as a wedding should be undertaken openly and acknowledged in law. 
Is this your decision or your partner’s?
Is it your free decision or are you under pressure or coercion?
Who benefits from the secrecy, you or your partner?
Who has most to lose? 
Are there financial implications? 
Why is there a need to keep this from the people who love you? 
Don’t answer here but think long and hard. 

Would you make any other really important decision with no support or advice? 

Mojisola

spankee said:

Can you legally get married in the UK and not tell anyone?
By anyone - I mean ANYONE, family, friends, employers, the state, 'official' people.

While you might not want your family and friends to know, it's important that your executors are able to find that out - perhaps keep a letter and/or a copy of your marriage certificate with your wills.

p00hsticks

Nelliegrace said:

It sounds rather worrying @spankee
Surely a legal contract such as a wedding should be undertaken openly and acknowledged in law. 
Is this your decision or your partner’s?
Is it your free decision or are you under pressure or coercion?
Who benefits from the secrecy, you or your partner?
Who has most to lose? 
Are there financial implications? 
Why is there a need to keep this from the people who love you? 
Don’t answer here but think long and hard. 

Would you make any other really important decision with no support or advice? 

I can't speak for spankee, but I can tell you why we did it.....

We'd been quite happily 'living in sin' for more than thirty years, so all our friends and family already saw us as a long term couple. However, as we approached pension age and started looking in more detail at the private pensions we had, we realised that when one of us died, the other would not benefit from a spouses pension unless we were actually married and so would be considerably worse off financially - so it was purely a financial decision to wed. 

Neither of us are religious and I hate being the centre of attention, and just the idea of all the typical wedding paraphernelia  - who to invite, who not to invite, where to seat everyone, what to wear, what to eat, etc etc - filled me with absolute dread. Not to mention the cost - there are a thousand and one ways we could think of that we'd rather spend money on. So we settled on the quietest wedding we could get, at a register office with just two witnesses. 

If we'd told family and friends beforehand I'm sure people would try to talk us into having something bigger, and I genuinely don;t think I could have gone through with it. If we told them after the event then I suspect people would be hurt that they weren't invited, so we've never let them know.

As far as we are concerned it's a private matter between the two of us and the pension companies, and apart from that our life continues in exactly the same way as it did before. We don't celebrate wedding anniversaries, and I'd need to dig out the certificate to tell you the date and year that we actually did it - it's really not important to us. 

sheramber

It could be  the OP and partner have been claiming to be married when they are not.