Humanist Weddings - A Bride's Perspective

When planning a wedding, the venue selection can be one of the most time consuming tasks, and the one that you need to complete early before many of the other suppliers can be booked.

So what if you already have a venue in mind, one that you have always loved or visited, or maybe a family home that is not licensed for weddings but where you can see yourself exchanging vows? Fear not as it IS still possible to hold your ceremony in your ideal unlicensed location, under the watchful and often tearful eyes of all your nearest and dearest in a ceremony which is written to represent your views, values and love for each other.

Bride-to-be Anna from London is getting married in June 2012. She will be having a small civil wedding at the register office first, attended by just a few close family, then she will move on to the main event; her Humanist Ceremony.

“When we decided to get married, we really struggled to find a venue that was licensed for civil ceremonies that was affordable and able to accommodate all our guests. Registry offices usually seat a maximum of 50 people and a lot of the other options we looked at offered little flexibility with regards to catering, drinks & corkage and minimum spend. We really wanted all our friends and family to be there while we said our vows and when we found a venue that we fell in love with, we researched holding our own ceremony in the garden.

The British Humanist Association website was really helpful and you can search for the celebrants that are closet to you and view the profiles of those available. Our search took us to the website of a local celebrant who we met up with to discuss the wedding. She explained the humanist values and that we could have as much or as little reference to humanism in the ceremony as we wanted. She was really sensitive to the fact that many people have expectations and beliefs about weddings and that she would in no way challenge other belief systems and was happy to explain to guests that we hadn't 'converted' to humanism.

We completed quite an extensive questionnaire so that she could get a feel for the things that are important to us, what we're like as a couple and how we view marriage. We were able to include any readings, music or symbolism that we wanted and she provided a draft for us to review along with some lovely suggestions for how to personalise the ceremony.

Humanist weddings offer complete flexibility to include what's most important to you and allow you to make your commitment to each other in a location that works for you and your guests. It did take some time for family and friends to understand the set-up, mainly because it's not yet legally binding in the UK. In Scotland, humanist weddings are much more common because the law recognises them so I really hope that this soon becomes the case in the UK as well.”

At Esc Weddings, we love it when a bride and groom can have the ceremony that is perfect for them. Many prefer to play it safe but more and more are breaking the mould and opting for a humanist wedding, it’s their wedding, their way