Legal requirements for eloping.
Are elopements the same as legal weddings?
People often ask us if elopements are legal weddings. Yes elopements are proper legal weddings if you follow the requirements set out by law.
You need to have certain residency requirements and you must give notice of marriage between 12 months and 28 days before your wedding date.
But you don’t need a ton of guests to have a legal wedding. In fact you don’t need any guests if you don’t want ’em. None. You do need 2 adults to act as your legal witnesses but we’ll get to that in a second. But guest wise, you are free to come here and get married without anyone else and it’s all legal.
Marriage at Approved Premises
You can have an elopement at any Registry Office in England or Wales. But as you’re here I’m guessing you don’t want a Registry Office elopement. You’re looking for that bit extra. Well you’ve landed in the right place.
You can get legally married in any Approved Premises – that’s us, we’re an Approved Premises. It means we’re licensed by Devon County Council for Registrars from Tavistock Registry Office to come here and perform legal wedding and civil ceremonies.
Ever After at Lower Grenofen is an Approved Premises for the Tavistock area of West Devon – if you check out Devon County Council’s website, we’re registered as ‘Lower Grenofen’.
Civil partnerships
This is a legal ceremony now available for all couples.
The legal requirements are the same as for civil marriage ceremonies but you’re not legally married, you’re in a civil partnership and you’re partners, not married spouses.
Booking your date
There are 2 steps to booking the Registrar for an elopement wedding at an Approved Premises.
The first is to book your date with the Registrars office local to the Approved Premises. We can’t do that for you, it has to be done by one of you.
For Ever After at Lower Grenofen our local office is Tavistock, which has a central office in Exeter. Since Covid you book your elopement date and time online for a fee of £50, and you can do this as far in advance as you like. You need to give the ceremony time when you book and for us, that’s always midday.
If you need to change either the time or date of your elopement ceremony you need to pay another £75 to the Registrars office to make the change
Legal notice of marriage
After booking your date online with Tavistock Registrars and paying your £50 booking fee to them, the next step is to give legal notice of marriage. This means booking an in-person appointment with your LOCAL Registrars office and taking with you the documents they need to see. To find your local Registrars office, just put your postcode into this Government page and it will tell you which is your local Registrars office. As the Registrars office is connected to the county, your local office might not be your nearest one geographically to your house so it’s worth while checking.
If you live in Devon, you can make an appointment at any of the 8 Devon Registration Offices. You must have lived in Devon for at least 8 days before you give notice.
If you don’t live in Devon but you’re getting married with us, you need to apply to your own registration District (where you have lived for at least 8 days), and you will be given a Marriage Authority to give to the Registrar of Devon.
Whether you live in or outside Devon, you must both attend the Registrar’s Office in person to give notice of marriage. If you live in different districts, you need to give notice in your separate districts.
If you live in the same district but your schedules don’t match and you can’t attend the same appointment time, you can make separate appointments so you attend on different dates and just take in your own residency and ID documents.
Documents you must produce
You must take proof of name, age, nationality and residency. Original documents must be taken to the Registrar’s office to provide that proof and give notice of marriage:
Name, age and nationality
• Valid British/EU passport.
• A full birth certificate and one other form of ID.
• Certificate of registration or naturalisation.
• If you don’t have a valid passport you will need proof of nationality of yourself and your mother – check with the Registrar’s office which documents you might need to take with you.
Residency
UK/EEA driving licence.
A bill dated within the last 3 months.
Mortgage statement within the last 12 months.
Bank statement within the last month.
Current tenancy agreement or Council tax bill in the last 12 months.
Other documents
• If either of you have been married before, you also need your decree absolute, death certificate or dissolution of civil partnership.
• If either of you have changed your name by deed poll or statutory declaration, you need to take the original of that document.
How much notice of marriage do I have to give?
You can’t give more than 12 months’ notice to marry. You can book your wedding venue more than a year in advance and you can book Tavistock Registrars for your date more than 12 months in advance – you just can’t give more than 12 months legal notice of marriage. You can’t give less than 28 days notice so you’ve basically got an 11 month window to give notice.
If you don’t give legal notice of marriage – you can’t get married. It’s that simple and that important. No notice of marriage – you ain’t getting married.
The notice of marriage is for the particular venue named on the notice. You can change the date of your wedding but you can’t change the location without a fresh notice and new fees.
Don’t get caught out!
Pre-covid you could always get an in-person appointment to give legal notice of marriage in 2-3 weeks. Since covid and so many council staff WFH, in-person appointments are taking much longer in some council areas.
This year I’ve had several couples who have wanted to get married with us, we’ve had a date available, Tavistock Registrars can do their date but the couples could NOT get an in-person appointment to give legal notice of marriage and so they had to delay their wedding for months. Some councils are not giving in-person appointments for legal notice of marriage for 3-4 months. MONTHS. Crazy I know but if you’re looking to get married within the next 3-4 months, you MUST check first with your local council that you can give legal notice in time.
Fee
The fee for giving notice of marriage is currently around £42 per person by either cash, cheque, or card to your local Registrar’s office.
Further fees
In addition to the £50 booking fee to secure your date with Devon Registrars, there is a further fee to pay to them for the ceremony, and in Devon those fees are as follows:
Ceremony at Ever After (Approved Premises)
Fee payable to the Registrar 2 months in advance:
Monday to Friday to 6 pm £525
The fee is payable to them 2 months before the wedding date.
Non-legal Marriage Ceremony
If you want to have a wedding ceremony but you don’t need it to be legally binding, you can get married in England or Wales in any kind of ceremony you like. Maybe you’ve already got married or maybe you don’t want the legal aspect of it. These marriage ceremonies are often called ‘humanist weddings’ although you don’t need to have a registered humanist to conduct the ceremony and the celebrant doesn’t have to be licensed.
You can design the ceremony as you like, you might have a hand tying ceremony, a woodland celebration, write your own vows, have your own music, have a religious or other blessing.
If you want to have an experienced wedding celebrant, there are plenty to choose from. Their fees vary but expect to pay about £400 – £500.
We’re happy to recommend a wedding celebrant if that’s helpful.
On the day
The Registrars will come here to the licensed venue about 30 mins before your midday elopement ceremony. You can elope at other times of the day at other venues, but for us, it’s always midday.
The Registrars will go through the requirements of the ceremony with you. You will already have confirmed by email with the Registrars which legal vows you’re going to have and whether you’re also having your own vows in addition – that’s optional. You don’t have to write your own vows but if you do, you also have to say the statutory vows too in order to be legally married.
What about witnesses?
It’s a legal requirement for eloping (as well as bigger weddings) that you need to have 2 adult witnesses who need to be present through your whole ceremony. The witnesses have to sign the marriage schedule to confirm they were present for the wedding ceremony, the Registrars make sure everyone signs in the right place.
You don’t need to have guests to have legal witnesses. I’ve acted as a legal witness to a ton of Devon elopements when couples get married with zero guests. It’s usually me and our elopement photographer, Clare who are your witnesses. No charge, all part of the service!
What do we book first?
It sounds complicated – how do you know which order to do things in?
S’easy, if you want to get married in the next few months, call your local Registrars office first to check you’ve got enough time to get an in-person appointment with them to give legal notice of marriage. If you can get an appointment with them in time (ie 29 days before your wedding date), you’re good so you can then reserve the date with us.
You need to reserve your date with us before booking with the Registrars in case you come back to us having booked the Registrars but someone else has already booked that date with us. We only do one wedding a day, the Registrars can do numerous weddings in a day so they will pretty much always be able to do your date.
Reserving a date with us doesn’t cost you anything and doesn’t commit you to anything – we just hold the date for you for 7 days. That 7 days reservation period gives you enough time to book Tavistock Registrars online and pay your £50 fee to them. They’re usually pretty prompt with their online booking system but if there’s a delay at their end, just let us know and we’ll try and extend your reserve period.
If you’re booking a wedding date more than a few months in advance, you don’t need to check whether you’ve got time to give legal notice – you’ll have enough time. So if you’re booking a ways in advance, reserve your date with us first, get your 7 days reservation period and then book online with Tavistock Registrars and pay your £50 booking fee.
When you’ve booked Tavistock Registrars online, you let me know and I’ll email your terms and conditions and your deposit invoice over to you. Payment of the deposit to us commits you to that date. Just as an FYI, if you do need to change your date and we’ve got another date available, we can usually change it for you for no extra fee but the Registrars will charge you to change the date with them.
When you’re booked with Tavistock Registrars and you’ve paid your deposit to us, then you can give notice of marriage. And that’s it, a whistle stop tour of all the legal requirements for eloping and you’re good to get married. We’ll see you soon!
Oh and whilst you’re here don’t forget to download our elopement brochure right here.
And get yourself over to our availability calendar to check what dates we’ve got. It’s bang up to date so do check it out.
All photos: Clare Kinchin Photography
