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To understand how many people take part in the wedding ceremony
To understand who can be legally married in the UK
To understand what the couple needs to provide to ensure the wedding is legally recognised
Planning the do’s and don’ts for a ceremony
The wedding ceremony is the main event of the wedding.
As a wedding planner, your job does not include simply booking the venue and the officiant and hoping for the best. Many times your job will include making sure the ceremony runs smoothly. This will include creating a mixture of religious and cultural traditions with government and legal requirements.
In the first part of the module, you will learn about the ceremony itself and the different facets involved in most common ceremonies. In the second part of the module, you will learn what you need to know about making sure the ceremony itself is in line with the legal requirements of the UK government. Finally, you will learn some general dos and don’ts for creating a beautiful ceremony.
There are many key players in a wedding ceremony regardless of whether the ceremony is religious or secular.
Many weddings will incorporate the same traditional components in them, including the officiant, the bridal party, witnesses and extra speakers.
The officiant is a non-negotiable member of the wedding party. Having a registered officiant is required by UK law.
However, how the wedding ceremony proceeds is usually in the hands of the couple. Many couples will choose to include bridesmaids, groomsmen, a flower girl, a ring bearer and ushers. They may also choose one attendant to be the maid (matron) of honour and another to be the best man.
Everyone who plays a big role in the ceremony will often be assigned his or her own duties.
This will vary between couples and ceremony types, but can include:
Maid of Honour
General organisation duties, adjusting the bride’s dress at the altar, offering a toast at the reception
Bridesmaids
Escorting the bride down the aisle, holding bouquets, general support
Ushers
Handing out programmes, seating people appropriately, dealing with small back of house issues, assistance with leaving the church
Witnesses
To join the couple in the church to sign the wedding register
The key to organising a successful ceremony is liaising. Whenever anything changes, you should let other people know.
Some couples will also incorporate their immediate family into the ceremony. Some brides will ask their fathers, or an older man, to walk them down the aisle. Other brides will forgo this tradition.
As you can see, there are a number of people involved in the ceremony itself. Part of your job as a wedding planner will be to organise all of these people so that you know who will be performing which duty.
One of the best ways to do this is to keep a chart of the number of positions that the couple wants to have in their wedding ceremony. You can then add in the names of the people filling these roles. You may also want to add in the duties that the couple wants to associate with these roles. This is important to have on hand because it will help ensure the ceremony runs smoothly. It will also help you to learn the names of all of the people involved in the ceremony.
To ensure everything runs smoothly, host a practice ceremony within a week of the wedding. Making sure it’s so close to the wedding itself is particularly essential when young participants are involved, as it ensures their roles and the order of the day are fresh in their minds. Some couples will want this to be a part of the wedding celebrations and will want to host a dinner or a party after the rehearsal.
You should try to hold the rehearsal as close to the wedding as possible. This will help ease everyone’s nerves about the big day and it will keep it fresh in the minds of the wedding party.
In the UK, the average number of bridesmaids is three.
Source: bourton-hall.co.uk, 2024
If the couple is religious, they might want to choose an appropriate religious building.
In some instances, you might not have that much choice. Christian religious buildings are more common than Buddhist ceremonies are in Britain.
Other couples might want to go to their local registry office, while some may want a non-religious location that they can use for both the ceremony and the location. Some couples might attach some form of emotional significance to the place their parents got married, in which case you’ll need to work hard to help them secure it.
If the ceremony is going to be separate from the arena where the celebrations will take place, you need to ensure that the distance between the two isn’t too big. Not only does this make life logistically awkward for the guests, it eats into the couple’s time together on the big day.
1. Minister
2. Bridesmaids
3. Maid of honour
4. Bride and Groom
5. Best man
6. Groomsmen
7. Flower girl/s
8. Ring bearer
Anyone in the UK can hold a wedding ceremony.
However, if you want the ceremony to be recognised by the government, it will need to fit within certain guidelines. Without this recognition, the couple will not be legally married.
The first guideline is that the ceremony, whether religious or secular, must be officiated by someone who is registered. You will need to make sure that the officiant the couple chooses is recognised by the government as someone who can legally marry people.
The second guideline is that the couple must apply for a marriage licence. They do so by submitting a notice to be married. This will be submitted to the registrar in the area of the wedding well before the wedding is scheduled to take place. You should make sure this paperwork goes in at least six weeks before the wedding. However, you can submit it as late as 15 days before the wedding and still receive the papers in time. The registrar will then produce a document that must be signed by two witnesses and the couple.
Around 14 days after you have notified the registrar about the intention to marry, the couple will receive a marriage schedule. If the ceremony is a religious one, the couple will need to collect it from the registrar. If the ceremony is secular, the registrar will hold on to the schedule themselves.
In order to qualify to apply for the marriage notice, the couples will need to be:
Over the age of 18 years
Single, divorced or widowed and free to marry
Not related closely by blood
When the couple applies for the marriage notice, they will need to submit the following documents:
Registry fee
The birth certificates of each person
Divorce or death certificates, if applicable
Evidence that the couple is free to marry if one or both people reside outside the UK
Making sure the ceremony goes well is a good way to set the precedent for the rest of the evening.
Since there are often fewer vendors involved with the ceremony, there is often less that can go wrong. However, there are still a few things that you do and don’t want to do to make the planning process smoother.
The officiant is a very important part of the wedding ceremony. They are the only people that do most of the talking. If there are specific things that the couple want to happen during the ceremony, it is better to start to get to know the officiant well before the wedding.
Building that initial rapport is also important because it will make the ceremony more personal. Couples who have spent time with their officiant will be more comfortable around them and this will make the whole thing more memorable for everyone.
The programme does not need to be the length of an encyclopaedia. At the minimum, it needs to contain the order of ceremony and any song lyrics or page numbers that the guests need to know.
Any additional information can be included in the programme itself or it can be included on a separate insert if the couple wants to keep the programme itself thin.
Remember, there is no right or wrong way to do a programme, unless you print the wrong lyrics. Or misspell the name of the couple.
If the couple wants their cousin to sing or speak during the ceremony, but the cousin is more than apprehensive, encourage the couple to find another space for that person where there is less pressure. Things like readings and speeches often go more smoothly when the speaker is comfortable with what they are doing.
Plus, if the speaker backs out at the last second and their name is already printed in the programme, there is not much you can do to change the name to the new speaker.
If there are specific traditions involved in the wedding that are meaningful for the couple, but lost on many of their guests.
If there are parts of the ceremony that offer traditions from other cultures or if the ceremony is a mixed faith ceremony, schedule time in the ceremony for all of these things to be formally recognised by the officiant or whoever is performing the tradition. The guests will appreciate what’s going on and it will slow the ceremony down enough to help the couple remember everything that happened!
Throwing a wedding is a little bit confusing in some ways. As you can see, you can throw together a party and call it a wedding. You can even marry two dogs if you want and call it a non-traditional wedding. But these weddings will not be recognised by the government, which for many people, is the point of getting married in the 21st century.
There are a large number of components that have to be organised so that the wedding itself will be recognised by both religious institutions and by the government. You will need to work together with the couple to find a way to balance both cultural heritage and legal requirements when it comes to planning a wedding.
All of these requirements do not need to take away from how beautiful the wedding or the ceremony is. It is just a testament to the fact that to successfully plan a wedding, you need plenty of time to work out all the details.
