How do you fit in your legal and celebrant wedding ceremonies? Here's 3 timeline ideas
- Meg Senior
- May 3
- 5 min read
In England and Wales celebrant weddings aren’t legal ceremonies, which in some ways gives you loads of freedom. But, ultimately, it also means that if you want to be legally married – like most of my couples do – you need to have a quick civil ceremony too.
In an ideal world your celebrant would complete the formal marriage paperwork with you, but there's an annoying delay in the law catching up to people's preference for this. (If you're interested, you can read more about the campaign for legal recognition of humanist marriages.)
Now, how you approach your civil ceremony is totally up to you. You can see it as a formality, or as an extra part of the fun!
Why have a legal wedding and a celebrant wedding?
If your current approach is there’s already a million jobs on my wedmin list so why bother with a celebrant wedding at all, then fair enough: but celebrant weddings really are the best. They allow you to have a completely bespoke ceremony that reflects you to a tee, with none of the bits you don’t want. You can laugh, cry, disco dance, sing, do all four of the aforementioned, do none of them: whatever feels best for you.
Assuming that mini pitch has worked like a charm and you’re now totally sold on having a legal and a celebrant wedding, your next stage might be scratching your head about how to fit in both ceremonies. Below you’ll find three wedding timeline ideas that’ll do just that.
But first here’s a couple of quick definitions, to make sure we’re all on the same page:
What’s a civil ceremony?
In England, a civil ceremony is a legal, non-religious ceremony that takes place at a registry office, or a licensed venue. You book them through the local council, and need two witnesses to be there (one of these can be your photographer). Read more about them here.
What's a registrar?
A registrar is the person who would lead your civil ceremony. You don’t get to choose who your registrar is: they are allocated to your ceremony by the council, who they work for.
What's a celebrant?
By comparison, a celebrant is an independent entity that you can build a relationship with and choose to lead your ceremony – which is why celebrant weddings work so brilliantly.
Here’s more about the difference between a wedding celebrant and a registrar, if you’re curious!
3 timeline ideas for legal and celebrant weddings
Start at the registry office, then head to your wedding venue
On the morning of your wedding day, go to the registry office with two witnesses (and possibly a close-knit group of family and friends too). Then, head to your wedding venue, have your celebrant wedding with your full guestlist, and go straight into party time!
With this option, you can get ready before your legal ceremony OR after it. It depends how you feel about seeing one another in your full wedding finery before your proper ceremony (by which I mean of course, your celebrant ceremony!)
Lots of couples I work with choose this option, because it neatly wraps everything into one day. They often find it involves less admin, and enjoy having just one wedding date.
Have both at your wedding venue
On your wedding day, have your celebrant ceremony with all of your guests first. Then, plan an activity for your guests whilst you (plus two of your guests who you’ve chosen as witnesses) go and have your civil ceremony with the registrar. After that, you can come back together with the rest of your guests to PARTY!
This wedding day timeline helps the civil ceremony feel like ‘just the legal bit’, almost an addendum to your celebrant wedding.
While this timeline is possible, it’s not hugely popular. There’s no legal reason it can’t work, but registrars aren’t always keen to follow a celebrant ceremony, so they can be a little hesitant to make it happen.
A wedding weekender
If you’re having your big do on the Saturday, you could have your legal wedding at the registry office on the Friday, and follow it with a rehearsal dinner-style event in the evening (alternatively, if you’re having a DIY wedding, you could use this evening to set up the venue with your nearest and dearest.) Then, your celebrant ceremony can happen whenever suits you during the Saturday, followed by your big party afterwards.
This is a very popular timeline, which turns a one-day celebration into something a weekend-long. If you’ve ever thought “I wish our wedding could last forever”... this is one way to get a bit closer to that!
Extra option: Keep them separate
Another idea is to do your paperwork completely separately to your celebrant wedding. Have your wedding day – featuring an awesome celebrant ceremony all about you and your relationship, with no boring template wording or feeling rushed or being bossed about – at your wedding venue. And after? You guessed it. A Big PARTY with all your favourite people!
Then, you can have a simple civil ceremony at a registry office on a separate day. There are no rules (legal or otherwise) about when you do this, so this can be before or after your wedding day. Choose a significant day like your one month anniversary, or one-month-to-go date… or, do it whenever you can next get an appointment with the council!
This is perhaps the most typical way to arrange the legal marriage ceremony when having a celebrant wedding. Once you get your head around the idea that the legal bit is a formality and your celebrant wedding is the main event, it’s easier to imagine uncoupling the two.
How do you decide which wedding timeline suits you best?
Ultimately, the choice is up to you – so go with whichever of the above feels best. Do any of them jump out as being most aligned with your vision for the day? Did you read any of them and breathe a sigh of relief as you realised you could have that as your wedding plan?
It’s also something we work out together, if you book me as your wedding celebrant! As well as writing and delivering the ceremony, of course, I’m here to help you plan your wedding day in any way I can. Discussing the type of ceremony you want, and how best to do them, is definitely in this remit, and I’d love to help you land on something that reflects what you want.
Get in touch to tell me all about your wedding plans so far, and book a chat to talk about how I can help.
Thank you to Chelsea Shoesmith Photographer for these fab images of Asra and Saad at Upper House Estate.
