Wedding ceremony, church wedding or civil wedding?

"Do you want to be my wife?"
"Yeah, sure, but how?"

Even though your engagement hopefully didn’t go quite like that, it’s a valid question. At some point, you’ll have to decide whether you want to get married in a church, at a civil ceremony, in a non-religious ceremony, or with a combination of these options. In this blog post, we’d like to highlight the differences between these three types of weddings and help you decide which option is right for you.

Civil Wedding Ceremony

We’ll start with the civil wedding ceremony, because it’s the only one you can’t avoid if you want to be legally married in Austria. The ceremony is conducted by a civil registrar and therefore usually takes place at the registry office. However, there are also wedding venues that have made arrangements with regional registry offices to host civil ceremonies on-site. Even in these cases, a civil registrar is still required to perform the ceremony. The ceremony is usually very brief and formal, though many registrars make an effort to make the formal proceedings as atmospheric as possible.

What many people don’t know is that the civil wedding ceremony doesn’t have to take place on the same day you celebrate your wedding. Even if you’re also planning a non-religious or religious ceremony, these can take place on different days. That’s why couples are increasingly choosing to have the civil ceremony one day before the celebration in a small setting—for example, with just a reception. This gives you some breathing room on your wedding day. 

Church Wedding

A church wedding is a marriage ceremony that takes place in a church or other religious building. It is performed by a clergy member and usually follows a set liturgical order. In order to have a church wedding in Austria and Switzerland, you must first get married in a civil ceremony. In Germany, this has not been necessary since 2009.

A major advantage of a church wedding is that it has deep spiritual significance and offers a way to seal your love before God and your congregation. It also provides the opportunity to receive the sacrament of marriage, which is of great importance to some couples.

However, when it comes to a church wedding, the question arises as to whether you both share the same religious beliefs. If you belong to different religions or one of you is non-denominational, you have different options depending on your specific situation. For example, a church wedding for a Protestant-Catholic couple, neither of whom has been married before, is relatively straightforward—even though an ecumenical wedding ceremony doesn’t technically exist as a recognized rite. If this applies to you and you still wish to have a church wedding, it’s best to check directly with your local religious representative. The various religious combinations differ too greatly, and some aspects also depend on the decisions of the respective pastor.

Wedding Ceremony

An independent wedding ceremony is a ceremony conducted by an independent wedding officiant. You have complete freedom to choose where it takes place. That means you can decide for yourselves whether you want to celebrate your love on a beach, on a mountaintop, in a forest clearing, in a castle, or in the shared apartment where you first met at a party. Many wedding venues also offer beautiful settings for a romantic wedding ceremony.

There are many ways to customize your non-religious wedding ceremony to suit your preferences. For example, you can incorporate music, readings, and other elements to give the ceremony a particularly personal and emotional touch.

However, a non-religious wedding ceremony is not legally binding in Austria, Germany, or Switzerland. This means that if you want to be legally married and share the same last name, you’ll have to go to the civil registry office. That said, you don’t have to make a big deal out of it—just treat the signing as you would any other visit to a government office—much like picking up a new passport.