How to get married in the UK when you live here: notice, ceremony, church, and after

The UK has three marriage laws — England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland — and each runs its own notice, ceremonies and fees. In 2023, 224,402 couples married in England and Wales (ONS); in 2025, 27,191 in Scotland (NRS); in 2024, 7,251 in Northern Ireland (NISRA). This guide is for couples who live in the UK; if one of you isn’t British, Irish or settled here, read getting married in the UK as foreigners too.

England and Wales: give notice at your local register office

You must be 18 or over (Marriage Act 1949, s. 2, since 27 February 2023), and you must decide where you’ll marry before giving notice: the notice names the final venue (GOV.UK).

1. 1Book a notice appointment at your local register office — you must have lived in that registration district for the past seven days (GOV.UK; s. 27). If you live in different districts, you each give notice in your own, not necessarily on the same day; if one of you isn’t British, Irish or EU-settled, you give it together.
2. 2Give notice at least 29 days before the wedding: “if you give notice on 1 May, the earliest date you can get married … is 30 May” (GOV.UK). You then have 12 months (s. 33). The fee is £46.50 each, or £63 if the notice is referred to the Home Office (Fees Regulations 2016, as amended from 6 April 2026).
3. 3Bring originals: details of the venue; a valid passport, or a UK birth certificate — with evidence of your parents’ nationality, such as their birth certificates, if you were born after 1 January 1983; proof of your home address; proof of any change of name; and, if married before, the decree absolute or final order, or your late partner’s death certificate (GOV.UK).

Divorced outside the UK? A divorce granted outside the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man is checked when you give notice: £55 at the register office, or £83 if the General Register Office has to check it (GOV.UK). Raise it when you book.

Where you can marry in England and Wales

• A register office: £62 for the registrar (GOV.UK).
• An approved venue: a hotel, a stately home or another place the council has licensed, for the council’s fee. Since 6 April 2022 the ceremony can be held in the venue’s grounds, in a “seemly and dignified location” (S.I. 2022/295) — but never at home, on a beach or on a hilltop: a wedding at home is allowed only if one of you is house-bound or detained (s. 26).
• A place of worship registered for marriages, with its authorised person — or a registrar, for £114.50 (GOV.UK). Quaker and Jewish weddings follow their own usages and can be held anywhere (Ministry of Justice, 2026).
• A civil ceremony can include readings, songs and music, but nothing religious — no hymns, no readings from the Bible or the Torah; a religious blessing can follow (GOV.UK).
• On the day: at least two witnesses, and you can each name up to four parents on the marriage schedule (GOV.UK).

A Church of England wedding

For a Church of England wedding the church’s own preliminaries usually replace the civil notice. You can marry in the parish church where one of you lives or regularly worships, or in one with which either of you has a qualifying connection: you were baptised or confirmed there, you lived or worshipped there for six months, a parent did during your lifetime, or a parent or grandparent married there (Church of England Marriage Measure 2008, s. 1). The Church says you can also make a connection by going to the church’s services at least once a month for six months.

• Banns: read on three Sundays in the three months before the wedding, in the parish where each of you lives and in the church where you marry, if that is elsewhere (Marriage Act 1949, ss. 6, 7 and 12; Church of England).
• A common licence replaces banns when the date is too close, when one of you is British but lives abroad, or lives in the UK outside England and Wales: around £200, sworn in person, for one church, valid three months. A special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury costs around £440 (Church of England).
• Fees in 2026: £566 for the marriage service, £39 for banns and £20 for a certificate of banns — at most £605 in your home parish and £723 if you marry elsewhere; music, bells, flowers and heating are extra (Church of England, Table of Parochial Fees 2026).
• If either of you isn’t a British, Irish or EU-settled national, banns and common licences aren’t available: you both give notice at a register office instead (Marriage Act 1949, s. 5(3); Church of England).
• Same-sex couples can’t marry in the Church of England or the Church in Wales (GOV.UK).

Humanist weddings in England and Wales

They aren’t legal yet: “Non-religious belief organisations, such as Humanists, cannot conduct legally binding weddings at all” (Ministry of Justice, July 2026). A consultation on reform closed on 24 September 2026; legislation will follow “when parliamentary time allows”. Until then, humanist couples marry briefly at a register office and hold the humanist ceremony separately (Humanists UK).

Scotland: notice to the registrar where you marry

• Age: anyone domiciled in Scotland can marry from 16 (Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, s. 1).
• The notice: each of you completes an M10 form, plus the celebrant and witness details form, and sends it with £45 to the registrar of the district where the ceremony will be — at least 29 days before, and ideally 10 to 12 weeks (NRS). Bring or send your birth certificate, a passport or other proof of nationality, proof of your usual address and, if married before, the final decree or death certificate.
• Where: “Ceremonies in Scotland may take place at any indoor or outdoor location, as long as it’s accessible to your chosen celebrant or registrar” (NRS). A civil ceremony at any place you and the council agree, except religious premises (s. 18), for the £55 statutory fee plus the council’s own; a religious or belief ceremony wherever your celebrant agrees.
• Who: a registrar, a minister, priest or celebrant of a religious body, or a belief celebrant — Humanist Society Scotland has married couples legally since 2005, for around £520 (HSS). A Church of Scotland minister may marry couples who aren’t members; if neither of you is, start with the parish minister where one of you lives (Church of Scotland).
• The schedule: for a religious or belief ceremony one of you collects the Marriage Schedule in person, no more than seven days before, and returns it signed within three days; for a civil one the registrar brings it (NRS). Two witnesses aged 16 or over.

Northern Ireland: notice to the registrar where you marry

Each of you sends a marriage notice form (GRO 446, £22) to the registrar of the district where you’ll marry, in the 12 months before the wedding — eight weeks ahead is normal, ten if either of you was married before, 28 days the minimum (nidirect). Anyone under 18 needs a parent’s or guardian’s consent, and 16 is the minimum (nidirect). A civil wedding costs £36 at a registration office on a weekday, £162 in the evening or on a Saturday and £216 on a Sunday or holiday, or the council’s fee at an approved place; religious and belief ceremonies can be held anywhere, with the officiant’s agreement; humanist celebrants marry couples legally (nidirect; GRO guidance notes).

What it costs

Same-sex couples

Same-sex couples can marry in all three: in England and Wales since March 2014 (Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013), in Scotland since December 2014, in Northern Ireland since January 2020 — with a religious ceremony there since September 2020, where the church agrees (NRS; GOV.UK). Other faiths in England and Wales marry same-sex couples only in buildings registered for it; Church of Scotland ministers who opt in may, since 2022.

After the wedding

• Your certificate: the marriage is registered by the register office, or by the registrar once the schedule comes back; certificates cost £12.50 in England and Wales, £10 in Scotland within a month, £15 in Northern Ireland (GOV.UK; NRS; nidirect).
• Your surname: you don’t need a deed poll to take your spouse’s surname — send a copy of the marriage certificate to whoever holds your records (GOV.UK). A passport in your new name costs £102 online or £115.50 on paper; you can get it up to three months before the wedding, post-dated, with a form signed by the registrar or minister — and the name on your passport must match your travel booking (GOV.UK).
• Tell HMRC straight away, and the DVLA: changing the name on your driving licence is free, on form D1, and the V5C logbook needs updating too (GOV.UK; Northern Ireland has its own process).
• Marriage Allowance: if one of you earns less than the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the other pays basic-rate tax, the lower earner can transfer £1,260 of their allowance, cutting the other’s tax by up to £252 a year, and a claim can be backdated to 6 April 2022 (GOV.UK). Otherwise spouses are taxed separately, as they have been since 1990 (HMRC).
• Inheritance Tax: nothing is due on what you leave to your spouse, nor on gifts between you while you both live in the UK permanently (GOV.UK).

• Your will. In England and Wales marriage revokes a will made before it, unless the will shows you were expecting to marry that person and meant it to stand (Wills Act 1837, s. 18); Northern Ireland’s law says the same (Wills and Administration Proceedings (NI) Order 1994, art. 12). In Scotland, “getting married … does not cancel an existing will” (mygov.scot) — review it anyway.
• No common-law marriage: “‘Common law marriages’ do not exist in England and Wales, even if you’ve lived together for a long time or have children” (GOV.UK); marriage gives you, among other things, the right to inherit if your spouse dies without a will.

Is there wedding leave?

Not in law: the statutory kinds of leave don’t include your own wedding, and “You have no right to additional holiday, even if it’s unpaid, unless your contract provides for it” (nidirect). The wedding and the honeymoon come out of your annual leave — 5.6 weeks a year, 28 days for a five-day week. Ask with notice of at least twice the leave you want, plus a day; your employer can refuse with as much notice as the leave asked for, plus a day, and can restrict leave at busy times (GOV.UK). Ask early.

Where your photographer fits in

• August Saturdays go first: in 2023 August was the most popular month (14.3% of weddings in England and Wales) and Saturday the most popular day (41.9%), with Saturday 2 September the busiest date (ONS). Book the photographer when you book the venue.
• Most weddings are civil: 85.5% of 2023’s marriages in England and Wales, and three in four of all marriages took place at approved venues (ONS) — ask the registrar what they allow during the ceremony, and the exact time.
• The signing of the schedule, straight after the vows, is a moment to have on camera.
• What to ask the photographer: how to choose a wedding photographer and the contract checklist.

With the notice booked, the rest is the day itself: the wedding day timeline and how deposits and payment protection work. When you have your date, see the wedding photographers in the UK or tell us about your day, and we’ll tell you who is free.