Our registrars will welcome you and your guests, and begin the ceremony. The whole ceremony will need to be legally conducted by one of our registrars, though a friend or family member can read a poem.
Standard ceremonies in the Canonbury Suite on Saturdays are simple ceremonies with limited personalisation, offered for couples who would prefer this kind of ceremony, so you can choose to add a non-religious reading or personal vows in addition to the legal vows. It may be possible for you to pay an additional fee to extend your ceremony to include full personalisation, depending on the ceremonies booked after yours. If you are interested in this option, please email registrars@islington.gov.uk to enquire before completing your choices on the form below.
Please click on the links below to see the ceremony script we use:
Our registrars will use a similar script to this, although some may change the wording slightly. These words you say do not need to be memorised as you will repeat them, a few at a time, after the registrar.
As civil partnership law is different from marriage law, there are no legal words you need to say, so if you would prefer to simply sign the paperwork with your witnesses you can.
The ceremony with no added personalisation takes around 20 minutes to complete, including the signing of the paperwork. If you are adding a reading or personal vows, please allow 30 minutes for your ceremony.
We book our ceremonies with enough time before the next ceremony so that the couple can be interviewed, guests brought in, the ceremony conducted, the paperwork completed and some photographs to be taken, and the room cleaned and prepared for the next ceremony without couples feeling rushed.
Having said that, please note that while we may book ceremonies which start at, for example, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm, each couple should not expect sole use of the room for an hour until the next slot, due to the interviews, guest entrances and cleaning that needs to take place. All our booking costs include use of the room for the ceremony, the registrars’ attendance and one copy of the certificate, but we don’t book ceremonies for a particular period of time; we book for a ceremony start time.