What registrars charge at an approved wedding venue, council by council (2026)

If you marry at a hotel, barn, castle or other approved venue in England or Wales, the local council charges a separate fee for its registrars to attend. Each council sets its own fee. We read the published fee pages of 86 councils between 23 Oct 2026 and 29 Oct 2026 and put the figures side by side. Venue hire is always extra.

Headline findings

• The cheapest listed fee is £375 (Doncaster). The council with the highest starting fee is Westminster, at £993, 2.6 times as much.
• The median lowest fee across the 86 councils is £620; 39 of 86 councils charge under £600 for their cheapest slot.
• The dearest daytime fee in the table is £1,683 (Westminster, bank holidays).
• Within one council the biggest gap between the cheapest and dearest daytime slot is £905 (Waltham Forest: £595 to £1,500).
• In the London boroughs we read, the median lowest fee is £675, against £600 elsewhere.
• 19 of 86 council pages print no year next to their current approved-venue fee, so couples cannot tell from the page which period the figure covers.

Fees are not perfectly like for like: some include a booking fee or certificate and others add it on top (see notes). Figures are as printed by each council on the date we read them.

The table

Lowest = the cheapest standard daytime slot the council lists for a ceremony at approved premises. Highest daytime = the dearest standard daytime rate we quote (usually Sunday or bank holiday), excluding evening ceremonies, special dates such as Christmas Day and upgraded ceremony types. Click a column heading to sort. Download the table as CSV.

Councils whose sources conflict

For these councils two first-party sources disagree, or the page is out of date, so we quote no single fee and leave them out of the table and the findings:

• Staffordshire: The council’s two published sources disagree on the 2026/27 approved-venue fee: the Staffordshire Ceremonies page lists a traditional ceremony at £550 Monday to Friday, £600 Saturday and £650 Sunday and bank holidays (plus a £100 booking fee), while the council’s 2026-27 fees and charges schedule lists £660, £720 and £780 as proposed (plus £120). We quote no single fee, so confirm the figure with the council.
• Gwynedd: The council’s two published sources disagree on the 2026/27 approved premises fee: its Registration Fees 2026/2027 sheet lists £485 Monday to Friday, £535 Saturday, £590 Sunday and £665 bank holidays (booking fee £150), while its March 2026 fees decision gives these as the 2025/26 fees and sets £505, £555, £610 and £690 (booking fee £155) for 2026/27. We quote no single fee, so confirm the figure with the council.
• North Somerset: The council’s fees page lists £570 Monday to Saturday, £630 Sunday and £750 bank holidays for a classic ceremony at approved premises (£645, £705 and £825 for an enhanced one), but it prints no year, still shows a notice fee that changed in April 2026, and refers couples to the Somerset Wedding Service website for current fees. We quote no single fee, so confirm the figure with the council.
• Croydon: Croydon’s booking page lists registrar fees for approved external venues of £570 Monday to Friday, £750 Saturday, £825 Sunday and bank holidays and £880 Easter Sunday and New Year’s Day (25% more after 5pm), but it prints no year, and its Town Hall room fees differ from the council’s own room pages (for example £355 against £340 for the Clocktower room Monday to Thursday). We quote no confirmed fee, so check with the council.

We also left out councils whose pages print no current approved-venue fee (Cardiff, Lambeth, Bromley); their guides link to the council page instead.

Methodology

• Sources: only each council’s own fee page, fee schedule or council-run ceremonies website, linked in every row. We copied the figures exactly as printed and did not estimate or adjust any fee.
• We record the year or period the council prints next to the fee. Where it prints none, we say so.
• Findings are computed from the 86 rows above (median of the lowest fees; Lancashire and Cambridgeshire are left out of “highest” comparisons because our guides do not quote a comparable top rate). Islington’s service also covers the City of London at the same fees, so it is counted once.
• National statutory fees from 6 April 2026 are separate: notice £46.50 per person, register office statutory ceremony £62, certificate £12.50, as quoted in our register office cost guide).
• Fees change, usually on 1 April. Always confirm with the council before you book.

Approved wedding venues in numbers, 2026: 4,238 in date, per head by area (data and CSV)

Cite this data

Approved Venues (2026), “Registrar fees at approved wedding venues by council, 2026”, https://approvedvenues.co.uk/guides/civil-ceremony-fees-by-council, figures read from council websites 23 Oct 2026 to 29 Oct 2026. You are welcome to reuse the table with a link to this page. Spotted a change? Email hello@approvedvenues.co.uk.

See also: why registrar fees are higher at approved venues · register office wedding cost · all area guides · London borough fees