Oh God.

So I thought we were having a civil ceremony, and that meant the church had nothing to do with it – right?

Oh no. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Because the church essentially decides what a civil ceremony is. In fact, the church are so massively paranoid about civil ceremonies that they can’t get enough of them – or enough out of them.

So what is their problem? Well, something like this…

If people are allowed to get married outside the church, people will leave the church, because there aren’t really that many believers left, and they need that 28% to boost their political influence. If civil ceremonies allow people to express their personal beliefs, personalise their ceremonies and don’t have to conform to the rigid doctrine of their particular denomination, then people will stop having church weddings and follow their OWN beliefs. This would be awful, because the church would no longer be controlling these people. Not to mention many people’s only interaction with the church is through weddings, christenings and funerals…

So the church dictates what can and cannot happen in a civil ceremony. Originally, it was reduced just to the legal basis, and has since expanded and become more ceremonial, but it’s still restricted. As it were, it’s a cripple, but we now have a wheelchair and crutches.

We’ve just come up against a brick wall again with our registrars. They are very nice and helpful people, so we know it isn’t their fault, but they have changed their minds to our annoyance and expense. This is our problem: eating and drinking has religious connotations. Yes, the church OWN eating and drinking. You cannot eat, drink, or pretend to eat or drink in a civil ceremony in England.

We were originally told we couldn’t have our quaich ceremony because we couldn’t eat or drink. We were sad. We had wanted to share this with everyone. But we gave it up and decided to have a “dry” quaich. We sent the registrars an updated version of our ceremony plan, and they said it was okay. Today we called and begged to be able to speak to our registrar, as she was now allotted. During the call, she told us the quaich was a no-go. Ah! But we updated it! we said. We removed the drink, as we were told to. No, apparently a quaich ceremony is a no-go because eating and drinking at a wedding is religious. Even if there isn’t really any food or drink, and you tell everybody that fact.

She’s going to call back at 3.

The thing that bothers me is that we’re the last people to want a religious ceremony. We’ve personalised our writing about the quaich to be symbolic of what we

Symbolism in fact, seems to be the church’s problem. If it’s not about god, how dare we have symbolism, how dare we express deeper meanings? Most church-goers probably think this is as silly as I do. Of course their is depth and meaning in non-religious things – take love, for example – but the church authorities seem either to believe there isn’t, or fear that people will work out that there is. Facepalm truly is the appropriate word.

Their paranoia is getting to me too. It makes me wonder – what else isn’t allowed in civil ceremonies because it’s nearly churchy? What about “hymn style” singing – i.e. everyone standing up and joining in. Maybe that’s forbidden. Maybe that’s why they suggest readings? I’ve never heard of it in a civil ceremony myself.

Paying for the Wedding

As of today – the last hour or so, we have now paid for more than half of our wedding (the biggest expense, caterers, isn’t due until May 1st). I’m very excited about it! Never been so excited before about paying money – the Fiance and I danced around the living room!

Earlier on, we wanted to pay for things in full as they came up, but suppliers don’t like you doing this. I can see their point when small changes incur huge faffs rearranging what is essentially small change on the scale of the total cost – and I have changed our flowers a few times, although they didn’t even want a deposit from us!

So we paid deposits, like good children. But then today we received a call from the registrars saying that they wanted payment 12 weeks before the wedding day, and we were overdue! It is now 29 days… We’d never known the payment date (or had an invoice for the amount!) so we looked up the fee on their website and paid it electronically, presuming we’d got the right amounts.

Everything in the garden was lovely. The Fiance updated our budget spreadsheet and made a list of everything else we’d paid in parts – flowers, transport, food and drink… And thus began the furious invoice hunting.

I located two – the cars and the flowers. Christopher cars were out at a wedding when I called them, but are going to ring me back to let me pay. Their payment was due on the 18th – two days ago (oops – but at least we realised and I contacted him!).

The flowers, as I mentioned, didn’t even have a deposit on them. I trawled through the email conversation I’d had with Jemma from Austin Flowers hoping to find out when they wanted our money. When I eventually found it, it wasn’t very specific either – payment was due before the week of the wedding – around the same time as the catering.

Well, I decided I didn’t want to do this again in two weeks time, and it’s a Friday afternoon, so they should be open. I called up Austin Flowers and explained my business to be greeted with a very cheerful, “Oh! I’ll just look up your invoice!” In fact she sounded delighted that she wouldn’t have to chase me at some later date; I suppose if you’re as relaxed about payment as they seemed initially, it does fall to them to do all the chasing.

Payment over the phone was quick and painless. Another expense sorted: hurrah!

Meanwhile, the Fiance was investigating other suppliers. The Town Hall didn’t pick up the phone, so he left a message with them, and they replied by email shortly afterwards telling us that we didn’t need to pay them anything until the 5th of May – two weeks prior to the ceremony.

He also emailed Oxon Carts – the rickshaw company. They hadn’t given a date for remaining payment either. A few minutes later he got a response: the balance was due tomorrow: they were going to email him then, but he’d beaten them to it. Excellent. So I transferred the rest across online, and the Fiance gave them our payee reference code and explained what we’d done.

Sorted!

The only thing left is the Somerville drinks reception, which the Fiance’s parents are in charge of. The Fiance is emailing them everything they need.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present…

…The New Mr and Mrs FW!
Mr and Mrs FW
The New Mrs and Mr FW
Mr FW and the New Mrs FW
The Newlyweds

Being a grammar nazi has really caught up with me this time. You see, on our form for the registrars it asks at the end how we’d like to be announced. And I really, really don’t know.

I want it to be correct grammatically, but I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to make a feminist point – using our marriage politically. On the other hand, I don’t want to conform to the traditional just because that’s what you do. I need a better reason. And all the different ways of announcing us of which I can think have a problem in some way or other…

The Fiance is not newly Mr FW. His name hasn’t changed – but mine has.
Mr is supposed to come before Mrs, so doing it the other way round looks deliberate.
Mr and the New Mrs makes Mr sound less important.
There is already a Mr and Mrs FW in the audience (his parents) so adding “new” or similar is needed to differentiate.
If you don’t use our names, is it really an announcement?

I’m kinda tempted to just tell them to announce us however they want, and then it won’t be our fault how badly it turns out. Apparently Mr and Mrs Fishy is not an option *sad face*.