Harry's Blog

Our wedding moved a step closer today as we had to go to the local registration office to give notice of our attention to marry. I'm not convinced you have to do this if getting married in a CofE church, but certainly we had to because of the church where my beloved L and I are getting married next month.

Our appointment was at 10am and I met L there. We had to bring lots of ID and documents along with money. Yes it costs £30 each if you want to even register intention to marry.

The purpose of the process is to give formal public notification of the intention to marry. This then gives members of the public who may know a legal reason why two people may not get married a chance to speak up.

Essentially it's the secular version of the reading of the bans, as you'd get in an Anglican church.

So today our names go up on the board. In two weeks time we will then have documents that give us permission to be married at our particular choice of church and the permission remains open for 12 months. I'll have to take these documents to the church once I've got them, because without them it's within the church minister's right to refuse to marry us.

So there we go, we're £60 poorer today but one step closer to being married. It's all rather exciting.