Wedding Forum - Civil ceremony rules....

Civil ceremonies can include readings, songs or music, but must not include anything that’s religious - eg hymns or readings from the Bible. From direct gov website.
I'm pretty sure you can wear a veil to a civil ceremony.
That is the only rules I was told about by my registrar :)

you can wear what you like... jeans and a t-shirt & veil if you really want to!

you are not allowed to have anything that is religious, nothing that mentions a higher power of any kind (god, buddah, allah etc), yu are not even allowed to take a reading (for example: corinthians) and re-word it to take out the references to a higher power, if it was originally written as a religious reading, hymn etc then it is not allowed. This is not the council or government that stipulate this.... basically many years ago, there was no such thing as a wedding without a church, so the church were in power and had say in whether or not we would be allowed to have civil ceremonies at all. So upon agreeing to the public being allowed a civil ceremony, the church stipulated that no religious content was allowed at all. So the government has to abide by this law that the church laid down.

Flash photography is completely down to the particular registrar/venue, however, as it is a legal document, no photos are allowed to be taken of the actual signing (you can pose for this just afterwards if you like).

Thanks girls, I didn't think I was allowed any thing religious, but didn't know why! Thanks to Katya for explaining this to me :). X

no problem huni. glad to have helped. anything else just ask.

You can wear a veil.
Readings and any songs you have can't have religious content ... That even goes as far as angels by Robbie Williams as it has the word angels in it. We've just filled our form in... After u give notice you'll get a form to fill in through the post to put down which way you want the registrar to say things, the names of your readings and the songs u want to use as the registrars have to check all the wording before they agree they're allowed or not x

They're more relaxed then they used to be about the religion thing, I think.

In late 2005, they started to allow songs with religious references if they aren't in a religious context. Hymns and readings from sacred texts are still banned and classical music which has religious roots (eg pie Jesu and Ave Maria) are allowed at the registrars discretion. We went to a wedding that had Angels by Robbie Williams when they were signing the register recently.

We accidentally had the f word in our wedding music.....I actually flinched at the time!

From government website

Civil ceremonies can include readings, songs or music, but must not include anything that’s religious - eg hymns or readings from the Bible.