Wedding Forum - Has anyone or does anyone know how to go...

Ataraxia got married in Spain last year. Actually, I think she just had the blessign over there for exactly that reason, although don't hold me to that. She's not about much these days, but I'll try and dig out an old thread on it, if I can find it, and bump it for you.

OK, I can't find it, but I'm sure a g00gle search will pull up some useful results for you.

Yeh there are strict rules about marrying in Spain, not like Greece and Cyprus and such x

Hi Vicky! Whereabouts in Spain do you want to get married?

We got 'married' in Spain last July - like the others said we got married at home first then had a big outdoor blessing in Spain as its where my husband's family live!

Generally with Spanish weddings if one of you is a resident and known in your area, you're looking at a Catholic ceremony, probably done entirely in Spanish and for us this meant us and our guests being stuck inside a small church with no air conditioning for over an hour! Not the airy outdoors summer wedding I imagined! Like I said this is usually only an option if you or hubby has lived in an area for a long amount of time or if your family are regular church goers, we had the option as my husband lived in his village for nearly 20 years so we were given that option of using the church. If not, you probably won't be allowed, as they are quite strict on the rules with Spain being such a religious country - especially in the rural areas! There is also a truckload of paperwork you need to get translated officially and send off to get a marriage license, certificates of no impediment and birth cert and residency cert and notices and then they have to be filed all over - it can take six months minimum for these papers to be done properly and there are fees for the translations and the filing and all sorts... It gets very expensive and a tiny error in one means you have to pay all over again! It's a lot of work especially if you aren't religious yourself and don't mind not having a church wedding!

If you don't fancy that either, you can get married in a civil ceremony in Spain but you are limited to Gibraltar as that was the only place we found that allows civil ceremonies that are still legal here in the UK. If that is an option you can get in touch with the consulate for information on paperwork, you still have to have certain paper but there are some very good wedding planner services that specialise and will be able to help you get documents translated and sorted out!

Or you can do what we did - have a small civil ceremony here and then you have the run of Spain for a blessing. We loved the utter freedom it gave us - you can hire an officiant or ask a family friend who is good at public speaking... You can have it anywhere you like (we had our wedding on top of a mountain!) as long as you get permission from the landowner or local ayuntamiento - if you have a relative who is familiar with the staff there, it does help :) My Husband and inlaws are on very good terms with the mayor and ayuntamiento staff so she just asked them nicely and said we wouldn't use any fires or candles and they said it was fine to do and wished us all the best!

It was a stressful planning but worth it, we got the exact wedding we wanted with handwritten vows and entirely personal everything. The food was amazing, the pictures are stunning and we got perfect weather and a built in honeymoon. Everyone who went or saw our photos says that they've never seen a more personal wedding and our guests fell in love with the area - which is exactly what we hoped for, and why we chose Spain. I will try and find my old threads and bump them for you, so you can have a read and a good old nosy at the photos haha :)

If you need any advice, I have given more to lurking since my wedding but I am about quite often just hiding in the background haha, so add me as a friend if you like and if you have anything you want to know or anything at all, just say so! Im also about on facebook.

One thing I will say - BEWARE OF POOLS!