Having made the important decision of setting the date and venue for your ceremony, you will both need to carry out legal preliminaries called "giving notice" of your intention to marry. This will involve each of you attending the register office which governs the area in which you live, by apppointment, to give basic personal details about yourselves and to declare that you are legally free to marry.
Before either of you can give notice, you must both have lived at your address for a minimum of seven complete days before the date that either notice is given, eg if you move to a new registration district before you are due to give notice, the day on which you move does not count as part of the seven days residence requirement.
If you live in two different registration districts, you must each give notice to your own local register office.
If your chosen ceremony venue is outside your district(s) of residence, you should first contact the register office for that venue to check availability of dates.
Once you have given notice there is a waiting period of 15 consecutive days before the marriage can take place (during which time your notices will be publicly displayed at the register office).
If marrying outside your district(s) of residence, you will be advised to collect a marriage authority from the office where you gave notice, after the statutory 15 days has elapsed. These documents (one for each of you) are the legal authorisation for your marriage to proceed and must be delivered to the Superintendent Registrar of the district (or the officiating minister of the church) in which you are to be married, before the day of your wedding.
There is a statutory fee to give notice of marriage. This is not a deposit on your ceremony.
