Wedding Forum - Blessing...

I think this seemed like the best category. Basically we now have our appointment booked to go give notice and sort the day. We are planning a blessing as well, We are planning the blessing at the same venue but have to check if this is ok. I know we are not allowed anything religious at the civil ceremony but the vicar who is performing the blessing told us that he has done it in the past where basically we have the civil ceremony, leave the room, then return in for the blessing, He said as long as the registrars are gone and it is clearly a different part of the day then we can do what we like as we have paid for the venue. He said by all means ask the registrar (which obviously we will do) but as im impatient and my appointment isnt till the 26th i thought i would see if any clever ladies on here knew the exact legalities of using a venue for a blessing after the registrars have finished their bit and left?
The man is a retired baptist minister who is now teaching at a bible college for pastors / missionaries etc... and is based far away so is not local with a church himself we could use hence why we hoping to do it in our venue.

I agree - its nothing to do with the registrar, just obviously check with the venue if yo can use the ceremony room again after the marriage for a blessing, i dont see it being a problem but its always good to check these things.. but once the registrar has left, then its entirely up to you what you do with regards to a religious blessing! xxxx

Ok, thanks..... another thing to ask opinions on:
If its all good and ok to do ceremony / blessing etc.... How do you think that would be best arranged? I have been told it very clearly has to be a different thing, so we would need to leave the room with the registrars in thoery and then re enter as man and wife for our ceremony, which is do-able, But how would we make sure our guests knew not to get up and leave as we exited? Do we get someone to make a little announcement as we leave? Make sure our parents / wedding party know and trust the rest of our guests to take ques from them? we are not having OOS as such so not going on there.
Any thoughts / ideas and opinions welcome as whilst we have a good idea what we want but havent given much thought to the practicalities of how we go about getting the end result.

We are doing it in the venue's chapel so it works out slightly different for us as we have to move all the guests over to there. You could do it a number of ways though. You could ask an usher to tell everyone to retake their seats again once you have left the room or you can get the guests to walk out after you have just been married. Get the photographer to take some snaps of you with the guests throwing confetti etc then ask them to go and be seated again. The second option would give the minister time to set up while the guests are distracted and then you can do it all over again for the second time and have some more photos when you leave again.

I'm sure you could think of a few more. It depends on what time you are getting married at to how quickly you need to get both done ready for the evening do to kick off. We are having ours with half an hour in between which gives the guests time to walk over the lawn and mill about while we go off in the car together around the block and come back to walk into the chapel. It means that there are no long breaks in the day then and everything runs from one thing to another.

We were told its about half an hour for the civil and then up to 45 mins for the blessing as it is the same as a wedding just without the legal side of it. By the time we get out of our blessing it will be about 3.45 so time for some pics and then dinner and night do.

Ohh Helenia that's a good idea :)

Sorry to hijack but does anyone know if you could have a blessing outside?
The CofE wedding site just says "there are no legal requirements"..

I'd like to have the civil ceremony, leave as H&W and have a couple of formal photos with guests (to give the venue time to move chairs & decorations about) then go round onto the other lawn and have the blessing in a marquee. That way any guests who aren't into it can stay and keep chatting/having canapes. Then after the blessing have some more formal H&W photos before the wedding breakfast - so all the guests have time to snack/drink etc :p