Getting hold of your Marriage Schedule when you live nowhere near Scotland

Everyone tells you about the 29 days’ notice. Almost nobody tells you about the piece of paper you have to go and physically pick up the week of your wedding. If you’re flying in from Denver for five days, that piece of paper decides which day you fly.

We’ve lost count of the couples who had the forms in on time and still nearly came unstuck on this, so here it is in full. It’s not complicated. It just has to be planned around.

What it is

The Marriage Schedule is the licence. Once the registrar has checked your notices and is satisfied nothing stops you marrying, they draw it up. Your celebrant has to have it in their hand at the ceremony. If they don’t, you’re not getting married that day, however lovely the hill. After the vows you both sign it along with your two witnesses and the celebrant, it goes back to the registrar and the registrar uses it to register the marriage. Your certificate comes from that.

The notices, done from home

You each fill in a Marriage Notice form, which is called the M10, and send it to the registrar for the district you’re marrying in. Edinburgh wedding, Edinburgh registrar. Glencoe, it’s Lochaber. With the forms go your birth certificate, your passport, and if either of you has been married before, the final divorce decree or your former spouse’s death certificate. Non-UK nationals also fill in a Declaration of Status. Anything not in English needs a certified translation.

The registrar must have it all at least 29 days before the ceremony. The National Records of Scotland suggest sending it ten to twelve weeks out so there’s time to chase anything missing, and we’d go along with that. Post from North America isn’t quick.

On the documents themselves, you don’t have to post your actual passport across the Atlantic. In our experience the Edinburgh registrar is happy to take emailed scans with the forms and see the originals when you come in to collect the schedule. That’s a courtesy rather than a rule, so email the office and ask before you rely on it, but every couple we’ve had do it has been fine.

None of this needs you in Scotland. It’s forms and emails from home.

With us: Put your date into the legal timeline generator and it counts backwards for you: when to post, when the registrar needs it, when to chase. The legal guide goes through the forms line by line.

Collecting it, which is where overseas couples get caught

For a celebrant wedding, which is what nearly every elopement is, the schedule is issued no more than seven days before the ceremony and one or both of you has to collect it in person. The rules are explicit that it can’t be someone on your behalf. Not us, not the celebrant, not a relative who happens to live in Fife.

The registrar’s office is a council office and keeps council hours, so that means a weekday. Which means that inside the week before your wedding, at least one of you is standing at that counter on a Monday to Friday with your passports and the original versions of whatever you emailed them.

Build that into the trip and it’s nothing. Fly in Monday, collect Tuesday, marry Thursday, see some of the country, fly home at the weekend. Don’t build it in and you’re the couple who landed Friday night for a Saturday wedding and found the office shut at four.

While you’re there, ask about getting a copy of the certificate. If you need it in a hurry, say so at the counter and they can usually sort it. Otherwise you’re ordering it from home afterwards.

With us: The collection day goes into every elopement plan we write. Send us your flights and we’ll tell you which day it is. If you’ve only got two nights, we’ve written up the weekend-from-London version, which has a way round all this.

The way round it: a civil ceremony

If a registrar marries you instead of a celebrant, the registrar brings the schedule to the ceremony and takes it away again afterwards. You don’t collect anything or return anything. In Edinburgh the registrars hold civil ceremonies at City Chambers on the Royal Mile and they do weekends.

What you give up is the location and the content. A civil ceremony happens in the registrar’s suite or an approved venue rather than on a hill, and it can’t include anything religious or anything that looks it, so no handfasting in the room. Quite a few of our couples do the civil bit at City Chambers and then walk up to Calton Hill with us an hour later for the vows that mean something. On paper it’s one marriage. In the photographs it’s the one on the hill.

The ceremony and the signing

Your celebrant has the schedule, you say the words, and then everyone signs: you two, the witnesses, the celebrant. The registrar is fussy about the ink. The official guidance says black, fountain-pen quality, and they mean it. Your celebrant will bring the right pen.

Two witnesses, over sixteen, able to follow what’s going on. If it’s just the two of you, that’s us. We’ve signed more of these than we could count.

Returning it

The signed schedule has to be back with the registrar within three days of the ceremony, at the same office it came from. This is the one part that doesn’t have to be you. Your celebrant can take it back, and most will as a matter of course, but ask, because if you’re marrying on a Friday and flying out Saturday morning that one question is the difference between a nice weekend and a rebooked flight.

Once the registrar has it the marriage is registered and you can order certificates, which you’ll want for passports and banks and whatever your own country asks for.

With us: The celebrants we work with return it as standard. We confirm who’s doing it before the day so nobody’s wondering on the morning.

Does it count at home?

Yes. A Scottish marriage certificate is recognised in the US, Canada, Australia and everywhere else our couples come from, and you don’t register the marriage again when you get back. For some official uses you might be asked for an apostille, which is a stamp from the Foreign Office saying the document is real. It’s an online application. Most couples never need one.

The short version

Post the notices ten to twelve weeks out. Be in Scotland on a weekday inside the seven days before the wedding, and collect. Marry, sign in black ink, let the celebrant return it within three days, then order your certificate. Or book a registrar at City Chambers and skip the collecting and the returning entirely.

With us: Check your date and run it through the timeline generator and you’ll know in a couple of minutes whether your trip works as planned. If it doesn’t quite, we’ll tell you what to move.

— Jodie & Matt

Not sure which day is collection day? Get in touch with your flights and the date you’re hoping for and we’ll map it out. Or check your date and head to pricing.