'Good riddance' to double wedding plans

by Paula Dear
BBC News website

Wedding one: The register office bureaucracy is no longer required

A couple who married at Edinburgh Zoo on Saturday became the first in the UK to have a legally recognised humanist wedding.

Non-religious prospective brides and grooms all over Scotland can breathe a sigh of relief after a change in the law means those choosing a humanist ceremony no longer have to plan two weddings.

I for one wish the rules had changed before my husband and I got married in New Lanark, a World Heritage Site in Scotland, in 1999.

In order to get wed where and how we wanted, we had to arrange a legal wedding on top of the humanist ceremony we had chosen as best reflecting our beliefs and personalities.

It was not only a significant hassle, but it extended the whole event - for us and those guests who came to both weddings - by a day.

Wedding two: couples can write the humanist ceremony themselves

Despite the freedom Scots have long had in choosing a wedding venue, the only way to legally marry outside of a church or register office was by having a minister to conduct the necessary.

For the non-religious this rather defeats the purpose of avoiding those church bells.

And although some register offices are attractive enough we don't all want to mark one of life's most significant events in a council building on the High Street. Besides, they are often very restricted in the number of guests they can accommodate.

Arranging the register office wedding was no huge drama in itself, especially as we intended to keep it simple, saving all the trimmings for the following day.

But it did require going through a fair amount of bureaucracy, and enduring disapproving grunts from the registrar, who was not amused at our refusal to arrange music, flowers, or an exchange of rings for the service.

WHAT DO HUMANISTS BELIEVE? That we can live good, ethical, lives without religious or superstitious beliefs That we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values That we have only one life and that it's our responsibility to make it a good life, and live it to the full That we should take responsibility for our actions and work with others for the common good Humanist wedding legal first

We were made to feel that our humanist wedding was just playing at getting married.

"This is the real wedding, you know," she told us.

But as far as we were concerned it was the humanist ceremony, with meaningful and personal vows we had written ourselves, that was the genuine expression of what we were pledging to each other.

The 'double wedding' scenario also threw up several other dilemmas, such as what date should we have engraved on our wedding rings?

Any relatives trying to research our family in the future are likely to be pretty confused by our wedding certificate and wedding rings bearing different dates.

And who does one invite to the legal wedding? What should one wear? It could be tempting to allow the register office part to escalate into another full-scale event, particularly if there is pressure from relatives to treat it seriously.

Demand doubled

Luckily our laid-back families had no strong views, so it was jeans and trainers on, a quick 'I do' in front of 10 of our loved ones in a bare-walled room the size of a postage stamp, then back to the wedding venue to carry on with preparations for the following day.

Despite our desire to resist a church wedding, we did retain some traditions for the day itself, such as not seeing each other the night before, and me swooshing down the aisle in a white frock (it takes a more principled woman than me to resist it).

Some people prefer more scenic venues than a register office

One of the more bizarre outcomes of the whole rigmarole was the fact that I spent my 'wedding night' sleeping in a room with my bridesmaid, while my husband partied with a house full of wedding guests.

As far as we were concerned the humanist wedding was the 'real' day, while the legal one was simply a bureaucratic necessity.

Demands for humanist weddings, as well as affirmations for gay couples, baby naming ceremonies and funerals, are growing. In England and Wales requests for celebrants has doubled to 6,000 since 1998.

In a world where so many beliefs are embraced, why should we not have the right to legally cement our relationships in the way that fits our own sets of values?

If nothing else it will save frazzled brides and grooms a whole lot of hassle.