A registry office wedding, start to finish

Almost everyone searches for a "registry office", and councils answer to it, but the legal term in England and Wales is register office. If you are looking at a council page and it talks about the register office, you are in the right place.

Each register office covers a district. That district matters twice: once for where you give notice, and once for where your ceremony is held and therefore who you book the registrar through.

Notice is a legal declaration of your intention to marry. You each attend in person at the register office for your own district, take your documents, pay the statutory notice fee and answer questions about your circumstances.

If you and your partner live in different districts, you give notice separately, in two different offices. That surprises a lot of couples and is one of the most common reasons a timeline slips.

After notice is given there is a statutory waiting period before you can legally marry. In standard cases that is 28 days. Where one or both of you is subject to immigration control, a notice can be referred to the Home Office and the wait becomes 70 days.

There are three separate costs: the statutory notice fee per person, the ceremony fee, and the marriage certificate. Notice and certificate fees are set nationally; ceremony fees are set by each council and vary with the room, the day and the time.

A weekday ceremony in the smallest room at your own register office is the cheapest legal option available in England and Wales. Saturdays and larger ceremony rooms cost materially more, and an approved venue adds a registrar attendance fee on top of the venue's own charges.

Because ceremony fees are local, we give indicative figures in your plan and link to your council's published fee list, which is always the authority.

Bring a valid passport, or a birth certificate plus proof of your current address. Proof of address is normally expected to be recent, and offices differ on what they accept, so check your own office's page before the appointment.

If either of you has been married or in a civil partnership before, you must bring the original document ending it — the final order (decree absolute) or the death certificate. Photocopies are not accepted, and replacements can take weeks to arrive.

Ceremony dates are usually the constraint, not notice. Check registrar availability for the date you want first, then work backwards to a notice appointment that clears the waiting period with room to spare.

Notice stays valid for 12 months, so giving it earlier than the minimum is fine and gives you slack if a document turns out to be missing.