Our Wedding: The Legal Bit in Bristol

This month marks our 1st wedding anniversary so I’ve got a few wedding-y posts lined up to share. As well as a few pics of the big day I’ll be sharing our readings and vows and my tips for buying a vintage wedding dress. First up here’s a little about our ‘Legal Bit’, our Bristol wedding…

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As our lovely wedding venue in South Devon didn’t have a wedding licence we decided to not worry about having a legal ceremony as part of our day and instead took care of that bit beforehand. This allowed us to have a very personal ceremony, exactly how we wanted it, in a beautiful setting at our Devon wedding. Although we were already officially married, that day was the real thing to us and we celebrate our anniversary on September 12th, but of course doing the legal bit beforehand seemed like a fine excuse for a little pre-celebration-celebration…

Wedding Outside Bristol Registery Office Confetti

The “legal bit” took place in Bristol the Saturday before. Will and I got ready and arrived together and met a few close friends at the Bristol Registry Office. In the end, we decided against inviting our families to this part. As they all live outside of Bristol and it felt like making too much of an event of it to invite them all along. The point was to keep it all low key and chilled out, which it was… and also quite a lot of fun.

The morning ceremony at our Bristol wedding was short and sweet, we didn’t have any readings or exchange rings as we saved all that for the following week. We did, however, have an exciting surprise guest as my friend had just flown in from Australia. I didn’t know she was going to be there so I was pretty surprised and happy when I saw her as me and Will walked in together!

We also took the opportunity to walk down the aisle together to Father John Misty’s ‘Honey Bear‘ – we deemed the lyrics too risque for our proper wedding – so we loved that.

Wedding Bride and Groom Entering Bristol Register Office

^^^ Super surprised! ^^^bristol-registery-office-bride-and-groom-signing-wedding-certificatebristol-wedding-bristol-registry-office

^^^These guys! ^^^bristol-wedding-bride-and-groom

After the ceremony, our group of nine took a little walk around the harbourside before heading to our favourite pub, The Christmas Steps. We had a yummy lunch and spent the majority of the rest of the day sat in the pub drinking bubbly, chatting and laughing. After a funny, merry walk home, the evening ended with a whole lot of dancing in our living room – which is pretty much my favourite way to end any night in Bristol.Bristol Wedding Bride and GroomBristol Wedding The Christmas Steps Pub Champagne BottlesBristol Wedding Bride Groom Black & White Christmas Steps

Doing our legal vows separately from our main wedding day may seem rather untraditional but it really did allow us to have a very personalised ceremony the following week in Devon. This included our own vows and our ceremony being written and led by a friend, which was incredibly special. The day of ‘the legal bit’ turned out to be pretty special too and I also love that we sort of managed to get married in both a beautiful farm by the sea and got our Bristol wedding in our darling home city – who says you can’t have your (wedding) cake and eat it too?!

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A year on and I’ve noticed many couples  seem to be choosing to do something similar to enable freedom on their ‘main’ wedding day. It’s definitely one of the best decisions we made and I’d certainly recommend it if you want to use a beautiful venue that might not have a license or don’t want to ferry people from one venue to another. That said some people might feel that doing the legal bit on a different day takes away from the big day somehow. What do you think? Would it / did it matter to you?

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