Making Arrangements For The Marriage Ceremony

It is important to make early arrangements for the date and time of your marriage.

• If you are having a religious ceremony, go and see the minister or clergyman who is to take the service, before completing the notice of marriage
• For a civil marriage make advance arrangements with the registrar. This is particularly important in towns and cities, where large numbers of people want to be married at certain times of the year
• Arrange for two persons, aged 16 years or over, to be present at your marriage to act as witnesses. They are required whether it is a religious or civil ceremony
• Be sure to let the clergyman or the registrar know if you change your plans or decide to postpone your marriage

How And When To Give Notice

You can each obtain a marriage notice form, and information about fees, from any registrar of births, deaths and marriages in Scotland. In most cases you can get the address of your local registrar from the telephone directory.

• Each of you must complete and submit a marriage notice, along with the required documents and the appropriate fee, to the registrar for the district in which the marriage is to take place
• Timing is important. The notices must be submitted early enough to enable the registrar to satisfy himself that you are free to marry one another. Normally notices should be in his hands about FOUR weeks before the marriage but if either party has been married before, the notices should be with the registrar SIX weeks beforehand. The minimum period is 15 days before the date of the proposed marriage, but if you leave things as late as this you could be faced with the need to postpone your marriage
• Only in exceptional circumstances will the Registrar General authorise a marriage to take place if 15 days' notice has not been given
• Although you need not attend personally at the registrar's office to hand in your marriage notice, at least one of the parties must attend personally before the date of your marriage. This is necessary, in the case of a religious marriage, to collect the marriage schedule or, in the case of a civil marriage, to finalise arrangements with the registrar. Personal attendance is necessary at this stage because the registrar will need further information before the marriage can proceed
• Every person giving notice is required to sign a declaration to the effect that the particulars and information given on the notice are correct. As a safeguard against bigamous marriages, a subsequent check of the information is made centrally

Documents To Be Produced

When giving or sending the marriage notice forms to the registrar each of you must supply the following:

• Your birth certificate
• If you have been married before, a certificate of divorce or annulment or a certified copy decree. A decree of divorce granted outside of Scotland must be absolute or final - a decree nisi is not acceptable
• If you are a widow or widower, the death certificate of your former spouse
• If your domicile is abroad, a certificate of no impediment issued by the competent authority to the effect that you are free to marry
• If any of these documents is in a language other than English, a certified translation in English must also be provided

Do not delay in giving notice simply because you are waiting for any of the documents mentioned above to come to hand. If time is getting short it is better to give notice first then pass on the documents to the registrar when they become available; but they must be made available to the registrar before the marriage. Provided the documents are in order the marriage can proceed as arranged.