From Registrars to Celebrants
We said goodbye to Brighton & Hove Register Office at the end of this season to become We Do Brighton, celebrants with the freedom to conduct ceremonies the way YOU want them. We know all about the rules and regulations, having legally married and civil partnered hundreds of couples (we never kept count, but reckon it’s probably closer to two thousand between us) over the last ten years. We’ve also conducted plenty of vow renewal, citizenship and baby naming ceremonies too. We know all about licensed premises, legal declarations (what has to be said, when and why), witnesses, signatures and all the necessaries that make a civil ceremony legally binding. And all our knowledge will be useful when the law inevitably changes (and soon, we hope) to licence people, rather than places, to officiate legally binding unions. But that’s for another post.
We’ve been asked all sorts of things over the years about readings and poems, petal scattering, music and entrances and exits. We’ve adjusted many a buttonhole, cut tags and loose threads, and occasionally had the emergency sewing kit out. We have navigated people through situations and emotions as guests take their seats and the music starts up. We have calmed and soothed and often comforted people who were not expecting to be overcome with such a potent mix of nerves, joy, relief, and sadness at the absence of loved ones. And all within five minutes of laying eyes on each other, because registrars first meet a couple 30 minutes max before the actual ceremony. And in that time, we check their legal details, guide guests and musicians and photographers and then magic up the ceremony they want, on the spot, and run the ceremony to time. Then we do it all again. And again. We’re always asked on a busy day ‘how many weddings can you do in one day?’ We have been known to marry seven couples in one day at Brighton Town Hall, and in Covid catch up, nine couples a day. And every one of those weddings and civil partnerships has felt as special in its own way as the one before, and the one after. The ceremony registrars at Brighton Register Office are brilliant at doing all this; we learned from the best.
But now We Do want to have more time to listen, more connection with a couple’s story and more flexibility with time and place. As celebrants we will meet you weeks or even months beforehand, write a bespoke ceremony just for you, and can consider including cultural and spiritual elements too. And dogs! We Do love dogs, so please bring them along or even include them in your ceremony.
We will miss the pace of Brighton Register Office and the fun of meeting so many people (and making sure that everyone’s in the right wedding!) but it’s time for us to do ceremonies differently.
We Do hope you’ll join us.
Love,
Eve and Andrew