A Good Reason

Last week I wrote about how Alex and I have been dreaming about getting legally hitched along the Thames River at London's famous City Hall. I also wrote that it would take a very good reason for us not to get married there. Turns out there is a very good reason: London City Hall doesn't have a wedding license.

Alex & City Hall, before we knew we couldn't get married there.

This fact checking came about last week as I started a preliminary budget for our UK wedding. Alex was home and she was been interested to know how much 'the legal bit' costs. So we Googled it. Googled again. And then Googled some more trying to find any helpful information.

Finally, we rang the civil partnership number on one of the official London sites and spoke with a lovely lady at the Registrar in Islington (a borough of London) about our inquiry regarding London City Hall. After Alex explained that we meant the City Hall on the Thames, 'you know, the famous one,' she rang us back a few hours later, 'after extensive research' she said, to tell us that she was 99% sure that London City Hall didn't have a wedding license--i.e. we couldn't get legally hitched there.

Ultimately bummed, we still thanked her profusely. If our online research was at all telling of the bureaucratic mess of London wedding licenses, she'd been through a lot to get us that answer.

In the interim, Alex and I had changed modes and started looking at (non-legal) wedding locations in Cornwall to consider where we might hold a separate, more intimate ceremony as well as the dancing. Turns out most of the locations in Fowey are smaller than we had thought or been (in our heads) planning for.

As it is right now, we're left with lots of questions to be answered and without a clear picture on where any of this celebratory dancing may take place. Still, the woman at the borough of Islington was very nice (and they actually hold civil ceremonies at her office) and we've got time in August to look around Fowey for a place to hold the dancing. Since we both have intense loads of academic work at the moment, maybe putting off the big chunks of planning until then isn't such a bad idea. It won't stop us dreaming though...