Humanist Weddings

How is a Humanist Wedding different to a Civil or Religious Ceremony?

A Humanist wedding ceremony is different to both faith based and civil ceremonies. It puts you, the couple at the centre of it. When you choose to get married in a religious setting, the wedding ceremony is centred on your faith, when you choose a civil ceremony, it's about meeting the requirements of the law of the land. A humanist wedding is centred on you and those who are important to you. 

You might be wondering how, as a humanist wedding celebrant, I’m different to a registrar. This starts right from when you get in touch for the first time. The first thing I do will be to have a chat with both of you so you can find out a bit about me. We get to know each other and I hear a little bit about your exciting wedding plans! Ultimately it’s for you to make sure we're a good fit. I'm always fascinated by people or, as Mr Celebrant Kathryn puts it, I’m ‘always making friends on the bus’. I love that this is part of being a celebrant! When you book a registrar-led wedding, you’ll be allocated whoever is working on your wedding date and you’re unlikely to meet them beforehand. As your wedding celebrant, I’ll have become someone friendly and familiar to you, I’ll be so excited for your day.

A registrar-based ceremony will be delivered using one of a couple of set scripts. These are rarely customisable and there are lots of rules and restrictions on what can & can’t be said. When I create your personal wedding ceremony, it can be as offbeat, unusual or as ‘traditional’ as you like. Every word will be uniquely chosen to reflect you both! I’ll structure your humanist wedding ceremony to be perfectly paced and you can choose to include your friends, family and/or fur-babies as much or as little as you like. As your wedding celebrant, I’ll weave this all together into a feel-good fabulous, meaningful wedding ceremony that is a completely unique, made just for you both.

Are Humanist weddings legally recognised in England?

At the moment, Celebrant-led/Humanist wedding ceremonies in England are sadly not legally recognised. They have been recognised in Scotland since 2005 and are now legally recognised in Jersey and Northern Ireland. But, you can still have a fab personalised Humanist wedding ceremony in England! What it means is, you do need to pop to a registry office and say the 'legally required words' at some point.  It’s important to know, you can do this 'legal-bit' in a way that feels right to you, and I can help advise on what feels best for you both. For example, if you just want it to feel like a bit of wed-min, I can advise on how you can obtain a statutory legal registration ceremony from the local register office for usually around £50. You say all the legally required words with two witnesses, but you don’t have to include any of the usual ‘wedding-y’ bits unless you want to. You can choose to do this in the days, weeks or even months before or after your Humanist wedding ceremony, or even on the day itself. I’m happy to help you figure out the right plan for you both.

While this might seem like an annoying extra step, it does give you more opportunities to have a really personal ceremony in the exact place that you want. For example, a Humanist wedding in England can take place anywhere you like including outdoors. Why not check out my blog post on how to combine your ‘legal bit’ with your Humanist wedding.