Wedding ceremonies in Sussex
Your ceremony is the one part of the day everybody sits down and watches. It should sound like the two of you, happen where you want it to happen, and take as long as it needs.
What is included
A first meeting
An hour or two with both of you, wherever suits. No charge, and no obligation afterwards.
The whole ceremony, written
Your story, the vows, the ring exchange, the readings and every link between them. Drafted, sent to you, and rewritten until it is right.
Help with your own vows
If you want to write your own, I will edit them with each of you separately and keep them secret until the day.
Rituals, if you want them
Handfasting, sand, candles, a ring warming, a tree planting, or nothing at all. Your call, not a package.
A rehearsal
At the venue or over a video call, with anyone who is reading or walking in.
The script, to keep
A printed copy of the final ceremony afterwards, which turns out to be the thing people reread.
How we begin
It starts with a long conversation
How you met is usually the least interesting thing about you, so I ask about other things. What you argue about. Who you ring first. What your friends would say if I asked them. That is where a ceremony comes from.
The venue
Hold it wherever you like
Because the legal part happens separately, your venue does not need a licence. Barns, gardens, woods, beaches, village halls, the top of a hill, a borrowed field. If it has a gate and somewhere for people to sit, it will work.
Vows and rituals
Say it however you want to say it
Some couples want the traditional wording and mean every word of it. Some want to promise to always let the other one have the last roast potato. Both of those have worked, and I have never yet asked anyone to tone it down.
Fees
One fee, agreed before anything is written, with travel inside Sussex included.
Wedding ceremony
The full thing, written from scratch.
- First meeting, free and with no obligation
- Unlimited drafts until it sounds like you
- Help writing your own vows
- Rehearsal, in person or by video call
- PA system and microphone if your venue has none
- Printed script to keep
Half on booking, half four weeks before the day.
Small ceremony or elopement
Up to twenty guests, one location.
- First meeting, free and with no obligation
- Ceremony written from scratch
- Help writing your own vows
- Printed script to keep
- No rehearsal included, though you can add one
Popular with couples marrying on a weekday.
Vow renewal
Ten years, thirty years, or getting through last year.
- First meeting, free and with no obligation
- Ceremony written around your years together
- Children and grandchildren given something to do
Also on the namings and celebrations page.
Wedding questions
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You book a statutory ceremony at your local register office. It is you, your partner and two witnesses, it takes about ten minutes, and it costs a fraction of a full registrar ceremony. Most couples do it on a weekday in the week before, treat it as paperwork, and keep the real thing for the day everyone is invited to. Some do it the morning after. I will tell you which office to ring.
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Not a word, unless you want to. Plenty of couples tell their guests afterwards and nobody has ever minded.
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Yes. An independent celebrant can include a hymn, a prayer, a reading from any tradition, or two traditions side by side. A humanist celebrant cannot, which is the main practical difference between us.
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We agree a wet weather plan at the rehearsal and I bring a waterproof copy of the script. I have done one under a gazebo in horizontal rain and it is still the ceremony those two talk about.
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Usually between twenty and thirty-five minutes. Shorter than that and it feels rushed, longer and the back row starts thinking about the bar.
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No. One ceremony a day, so I am never watching the clock for the next one.
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Whatever fits your day. Tell me the dress code and I will meet it. I own a pair of wellingtons specifically for fields.
Couples, in their own words
Our families have almost nothing in common, and both halves of the room laughed in the same places. I still don't know how she did it.
Amara and Joe
Married in a barn near Ditchling
I'd read it four times and still cried when she read it out loud. She carried on as though that happens all the time, which I suppose it does.
Beth
Married at home, Lewes
Nineteen guests, one field, a cow watching over the hedge. Nell took it exactly as seriously as she'd have taken two hundred people.
Jonah and Rae
Married near Firle
Is your date free?
Send me the date, roughly where you are and roughly how many people. I will tell you straight away whether I am free, and what it would cost.