First decide on a
venue and a date. It is always a good idea to have an
alternative in case your first choice is already booked.
Contact the register office where you wish to be married
or the Office that is responsible for the Approved Venue
you have selected. They will take provisional details
from you and ask you to arrange for the legal
preliminaries to be prepared.
Important: Bookings are
all treated as provisional until you have arranged the
legal preliminaries.
What are the legal
preliminaries?
The legal
preliminaries are called the Notice of Marriage. This is
a legal document which has to be prepared by a
Registrar. It is valid for one year.
Both the bride and
groom need to attend in person to prepare a Notice of
Marriage. The cost of each notice is £33.50 per person.
Each Notice takes about 30 minutes to prepare. If you do
not speak or understand English well you will need to
take an interpreter with you.
To be legally eligible to marry and prepare a Notice of
Marriage you must:-
- Be aged 18 or
over or have written consent from your parents or
guardians if you are aged 16 or 17;
- You must have
been a resident in the district for a qualfying
period of 7 full consecutive days. This period must
immediately precede the day your Notice of marriage
is prepared;
- You must be
lawfully free to marry -in other words not married
to anyone else!;
- One of you must
have been born female, the other born male (or
completed a legal gender reassignment) and you must
not be closely related to each other.
