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Original poster

To be furious about my wedding

807 replies

Itsalltoomuch19 · 30/08/2019 07:35

So got married yesterday and want to point out it was amazing day full of the people I love and care about the most. But one thing caused me hours of stress and I think I should complain.
Our venue doesn’t have an actual marriage license so you get ‘married’ in a barn and I paid £500 for a celebrant to conduct the ceremony we met with her before and told her no one knew we were getting married a fews before and the people from the venue were coming to be witnesses so as no one felt they were not left out and both sets of parents had contributed a lot to this wedding so I didn’t want them being annoyed. An hour before I arrive my DH text me to say the celebrant has told his mum that we got married last week, he mum was upset and then asked my mum if she knew. I think she wanted to find out if my mum had been invited and not her, so now both sets of parents knew and were upset. This is all before I got there so I felt so upset and stressed by it as we didn’t want this to happen and she knew that.
Even the venue were limited and said they have never had a celebrant do this before and they have 3-5 weddings every week for the last 5 years! I really want to email her stating how stressed she made me feel and caused a bit of tension on the day but my DH thinks it’s done now we just need to face our parents today and explain the reasons and leave it

OP posts:
lyralalala · 30/08/2019 19:37

So those celebrants who are ordained can legally conduct a wedding - and most of them do just that.

Also in Scotland Humanist celebrants can carry out weddings

[Somewhat amusingly they are classed as religious celebrants, despite the fact Humanism is the opposite to religious - it just means not a registrar]

Laiste · 30/08/2019 19:57

Your wedding ceremony was admin - I imagine you kept it at a minimum so the legalities were covered? I assume the ceremony at your venue is where you exchanged vows and rings etc?

A lot of people assume this it seems, but ...
No. You say your vows at the registry office. You stand and make the vows, out loud, and then sign the register.

Maybe it should be called the Vow Office. Perhaps it would be viewed less as 'admin'.

needmorespace · 30/08/2019 20:45

Everything Happygirl says. I'm also a registrar and we more than allow couples to personalise to their hearts content as long as the legal bits are in there, why wouldn't we?
And by personalise, if they want to write their own script that would be fine as well as long as we saw the content beforehand.
Couples can include families, have live musicians/singing etc and incorporate personal elements as well.
And, of course they are legally married at the end Grin
Love my job
Fwiw, the celebrant did nothing wrong here. (s)he is not allowed to pretend it is a legal marriage when it isn't.
Oh, and people don't really need to pay celebrants £500 odd to perform a ceremony. A family member could it for nought - it would have as much legal standing.

needmorespace · 30/08/2019 20:57

Like I said I'm not sure of the legalities I'm sure someone with more knowledge would be able to shine a light on it. However, every wedding I've ever attended has prohibited photographs of the licence being signed. Not sure on the official rules but I would certainly raise an eyebrow if it appeared the officiant was allowing photographs of the register

Not true - we allow and the last registration service i worked for do as well. As long as a direct shot of the register page isn't taken we are happy for photographers to take pictures whilst the couple are checking the details and signing. Most couples don't want formal 'staged' photographs.
Honestly, people should really find out what their local registration office can and do offer. Gone are the days (in most places) where you are told what you can have and that is that.

timshelthechoice · 30/08/2019 21:05

Yeah, there was live footage of Chuck and Di and William and Kate doing the registry bit (didn't want the Harry and Megan farce).

LagunaBubbles · 31/08/2019 02:05

And if YOU had bothered to read the thread, then you would have seen that I had corrected my mistake

I have read the thread. Don't you understand that people can't read and post at the same time?

BritWifeinUSA · 31/08/2019 02:15

So it seems the venue and party are more important than the vows? Because you consider that date your wedding date and not the date you actually legally committed to one another. The vows were the highlight for me. You didn’t have your parents present to see the vows but you had everyone there for the party that your parents paid for. Remind us again why you got married? A register office ceremony is not just “admin”. It’s where you legally become married. I’m not surprised that your parents are upset.

sashh · 31/08/2019 07:49

Well they weren't legally married then and had none of the legal benefits of marriage.

Yes that's exactly my point, the bride and groom, parents guests and the priest/rabbi/imam consider it a marriage.

And the opposite, you may be legally married but you may not consider yourself married until you have the religious bit.

FrancisCrawford · 31/08/2019 08:07

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

C0untDucku1a · 31/08/2019 09:51

K remember the photographer didnt take a photo of the signing of register at my wedding. It was a staged fake shot moments after. Same at my bros wedding i witnessed. You wouldnt know though from the photos

escapade1234 · 31/08/2019 09:56

I was definitely photographed signing the register, on the church altar, in public view.

YahBasic · 31/08/2019 09:58

We got legally married a year before our actual ceremony/celebration, so that DH could work in the UK.

We weren’t necessarily keeping it secret, but equally we didn’t go round telling people.

About 6 months after, my sibling got married and had the same celebrant, who announced in front of everyone that she was so honoured to have married both siblings.

Cue my extended family laying into me about why they hadn’t been invited etc.

The celebrant literally shrugged it off when I said I didn’t think it was appropriate.

AccioCats · 31/08/2019 10:13

Eh? But the celebrant didn’t marry you did she?

wowfudge · 31/08/2019 10:24

I'm pretty sure, certainly in a CofE church no videoing or photography of the actual signing of the register is permitted. Photos clutching a pen and smiling at the camera are taken afterwards.

As marriages are publically registered you can't blame a celebrant for saying something a week, month or year later!

MouthyHarpy · 31/08/2019 10:43

I really want to email her stating how stressed she made me feel and caused a bit of tension on the day but my DH thinks it’s done now we just need to face our parents today and explain the reasons and leave it

So basically, you want to complain to the celebrant that you required her to lie to your parents?

Frazzled2207 · 31/08/2019 10:44

I had a civil wedding and there were definitely two signings of the register. The real one was definitely not allowed to be photographed.

AccioCats · 31/08/2019 10:54

A few posters have said they were photographed signing the real register. But if they’re the same ones who think they’re married because they’ve had a party, would they know if it was real or fake? Grin

SnarkyGorgon · 31/08/2019 10:56

For us the main reason to have a separate ceremony was that if you are married by a registrar, you are not allowed to have any form of religious elements at all involved in your ceremony. Which is difficult when you’re Jewish but don’t belong to a synagogue! For us, having a chupah, specific songs/prayers, kiddish etc. were extremely important symbolic parts of a wedding ceremony, as was making our promises to one another in front of the people we love.

Weddings have evolved since the beginning of human history, but the thing that unifies all of the iterations over thousands of years is the idea of a public declaration of your decision to be together. The legalisation of that, filling out a written contract came much, much later. Both parts are important and for some the inclusion of friends and family is unnecessary. But to dismiss people’s desire

wowfudge · 31/08/2019 11:06

Imo that's very different though. In the OP's case the register office ceremony was irrelevant and the party at the fancy venue was the important bit, but not for reasons of faith/religion.

SnarkyGorgon · 31/08/2019 11:09

Sorry can’t posted too soon, to dismiss the idea of wanting to have a celebration with all the people you love around you as ‘just doing it for the party’ is disingenuous and cynical and I feel very sorry for you if you genuinely feel that way.

When we told people we were doing the legal part separately, everyone we told insisted that they absolutely must come to that too, in the end there would have been around 30 people at the registry office with us, which we felt would undermine the importance to us of the Jewish ceremony and exacerbate the idea that those who didn’t come were being left out in some way. So we decided to just have our parents come sign the papers with us and it was really lovely.

I think it’s just one of those things, the law is incredibly rigid here and doesn’t allow for mixed faith celebrations, whilst families are becoming more and more diverse.

SnarkyGorgon · 31/08/2019 11:22

wow but PP are declaring such ceremonies as ‘fake weddings’ and how they would feel cheated to be asked to attend such a ‘sham’. We have no idea what importance the op places on tradition or the symbolic elements of a wedding

Alsohuman · 31/08/2019 11:22

So you had your parents there when you actually got married @SnarkyGorgon, you didn’t lie to them or attempt to deceive them. Unlike OP.

AccioCats · 31/08/2019 11:27

Snarky I don’t think anyone (well maybe apart from a few cynical posters) was saying the OP just wanted a party for the presents, or in a shallow way.

I agree that for many people the public celebration of the event is hugely important. It was for us. We had a very low key registry office wedding ceremony and a big party to celebrate the next day.

But again this is missing the original point which is about the dishonesty. It’s never going to go well if you set off a train of lies. Particularly when it involves other people colluding in it.

I also think your post highlights again the fact that the actual becoming a married couple is what happens during the actual wedding ceremony - whether that’s a group of people in an office or several hundred in a church, synagogue or somewhere licensed for weddings. And to many people, that’s supremely important. There were one or two posters who just seemed unable to get their head round that and insisted that what the celebrant did actually married the couple!

AmaryllisNightAndDay · 31/08/2019 11:33

When we told people we were doing the legal part separately,

See that's one difference - you told people. The OP didn't, not even her own parents.

So we decided to just have our parents come sign the papers with us and it was really lovely.

The OP didn't do that either, did she? You invited your parents, so you do acknowledge that the legal ceremony was significant to you and your parents even if it wasn't the main part. The OP didn't. And in order not to "annoy" her parents and in-laws she simply didn't tell them. And of course they found out and now she's angry with the celebrant for what was mostly her own mistake.

We have no idea what importance the op places on tradition or the symbolic elements of a wedding

We do have some idea of how much importance their parents place on the legal ceremony, which she hoped to get round by not saying anything to any of them. Though by the sound of things the in-laws were more concerned that the other parents might have been invited to the legal ceremony when they weren't, which is sad in itself.

AccioCats · 31/08/2019 11:59

The other thing this thread highlighted for me, other than that lying is never a good plan, is that there really is a shocking degree of ignorance around the actual significance of marriage. And it did make me realise why some women end up vulnerable.

A few posters minimised the actual act of marriage as ‘the boring bit,’ ‘just a bit of paper’ etc. As was subsequently pointed out by hordes of posters: this is the part that is actually life changing in terms of your legal status. It has huge ramifications. The subsequent party may well be wonderful and hugely important to the couple, but doesn’t actually change anything legally.