Giving notice, the legal bit nobody explains

Somewhere between booking the venue and choosing the food, English law would like a word. You cannot legally marry in England or Wales without giving notice at a register office at least twenty nine days before the ceremony, and you cannot give notice more than twelve months ahead. Scotland runs its own system with its own dates. This is the whole of the law's involvement in your wedding, and it is the task couples most often discover late.

What giving notice is

An appointment, at a register office in the district where you live, where you each state who you are, that you are free to marry, and where and when you intend to. Bring your passport and proof of address. It costs thirty five pounds each at most offices, more if either of you is subject to immigration control.

Your details are then displayed publicly at the office for twenty eight full days. This is the actual notice, a genuine Victorian mechanism for objections, and it is why the twenty ninth day is the earliest you can marry, not the twenty eighth. Couples planning short engagements have been caught by that single day.

The order to do things

Book the venue first, because notice names the venue and a change of venue can mean giving notice again. Then book the registrar or confirm the venue's arrangements, then give notice once you are inside twelve months. Put the appointment in the diary the day you book the venue. On a VOWÉA checklist it appears automatically with the date worked out, which is the closest we can come to doing it for you.

Scotland is different

In Scotland the celebrant is licensed rather than the building, a humanist ceremony is legally binding, and you can marry on a hillside if the celebrant will climb it. The notice period is twenty nine days there too. If you are marrying across the border in either direction, check which system applies before booking anything, because the two do not mix and match.