i had a civil ceremony last year as neither me or my husband are religious.  you can pretty much do whatever you want in the ceremony, it can be as long or as short as you want.  the registrar gave us a copy of what she was going to say at the ceremony, and a choice of what to say in our vows.  i thought she said some lovely things, and we had 2 family members read poems that we chose so it was very personal.  we chose all the music too, so it was exactly how we wanted it to be.  you can have anything you want as long as its not religious  xx

Hi hun,

We will be going over all this very soon and talking more in detail over the ceremony.

At a civil venue you can write your own vows and can be so personal x

im having a civil ceremony in 2010 and i think they are very personal to what you want, you get to choose every last detail from a song to walk in to and i think its special as well as personal

Thats good to hear. I would appreciate any tips or any experiences of civil ceremonies.

My friend got married in a civil ceremony a few years ago. It was a beautiful ceremony, made longer and more sentimentle by family doing some beautiful readings, too.

Definately far from 'impersonal'.

We are getting married in 2010 and I am Catholic & df is CofE. Our 2 girls have been christened Catholic but we don't go to church. I always just assumed I would marry in Church but now thinking about it I haven't been confirmed so would have to do this first and it would mean going to church, meeting the priest etc before they would marry us. I don't think I really want to do this as I dont want to go to church every week. What does everyone think of civil ceremonies? I have been to 2 and I found them very impersonal just a quick 20 minute service in a function room. Really don't know what to do