Help - giving notice vs registry marriage

Hi everyone,
I have been looking through the posts but I can't seem to find anything exactly fitting my question.

Here it is:

We have received our COA form.

We live in Swindon

We want to get married in Bath

Can we:

Give notice to marry in Swindon (which is one of the approved non-EU registry offices)

and then get married in Bath?

And if we can do that, do we need to be in Bath for 7 days (or does that just apply to the giving notice bit)?

What I absolutely don't want is to give notice to marry in Swindon, and then be forced to get married in Swindon.

We also don't want to have to pay for a hotel in Bath for a week (very expensive, and plus we live so close by) - what if we "stayed" with friends - how would they know?

Thank you very much!
Katie 

Yes you can give notice in Swindon and marry in Bath.  We gave notice in Islington & got married in Swansea no problem. No you don't have to reside in Bath for 7 days or anything like that. As I recall, Islington registry office sent something to the Swansea registry office to show we had given notice there. It really wasn't a problem at all.

Thanks Britwife,
You were right - I booked the appointment to give notice in Swindon and the marriage in Bath.

For anyone who is interested, I got my COA form the other day, called Swindon reg (where I live, and just so happens to be one set up to handle non-EU people) and made an appointment.

Goes like this:
Appointment Oct 23 - to give "notice" - basically fiance and I go together, appointments at 9 am and 9:30 am (done by 10 am allegedly).  Costs 30 pounds per person, so 60 pounds total.

They post our names, nationalities, address, occupations etc on their notice board for 2 weeks.

There is a minimum of 16 days between giving notice and having the ceremony.

In some cases the reg office will post the approval to your marriage site, but Swindon doesn't - they just give it to you to get over there.  IMO this is better as it won't get lost in the post.

We have an appointment booked in Bath for the 11th of November for the marriage.  That costs 43.50 pounds, which has to be brought in cash, in an envelope (don't know about the other sites).  I had to tell Bath when the notice will be given, and they will cancel the marriage appointment if we don't give notice on the scheduled day.

So, 238.50 GBP  later (135 pounds for the COA, 60 pounds for giving notice, 43.50 for the marriage ceremony), 2 appointments, numerous phone calls and sending passports away for 1 month and voila!

We should hopefully be getting this legal stuff out of the way by mid Nov!

I CANT believe how expensive it is - if fiance wasn't an EU / British citizen we would have had to get him a COA too - at a cost of another 135 pounds.  I heard it costs $40 in the States!

And this isn't even the "real" wedding - we are getting married overseas in a year and a half. Yikes.

Thanks for the help!
Katie

I'm really sorry to post this (but I'm starting to feel I may have missed a step-- what is a COA?

thanks!

Certificate of Approval.  If you are already over here with a work permit/visa or student visa and want to marry in the UK, then you need to get a COA to get married in a registry office.  Yup, another form to deal with...

Certificate of Approval.  If you are already over here with a work permit/visa or student visa and want to marry in the UK, then you need to get a COA to get married in a registry office.  Yup, another form to deal with...

Still tryingt o wrap my head around things.... So I came in on a fiance visa. Do I need to get a COA? If I do, where /how do I apply for one?

Thanks again (*and sorry for the question*)

If you are here with a fiancee visa you don't need a COA.

Vicky

If you are here with a fiancee visa you don't need a COA.

Vicky

Thank you! I was really starting to worry! (^_^)

Update:

We gave notice in swindon.  The receptionist was horrible when I had been trying to change the date.  She actually called me back to say that if DF was not going to be in the country for the whole week before, then we would have to cancel the appointment.

We went anyhow, and the woman who interviewed us was lovely.  She said nothing of the sort, and said that since we had lived in swindon for 2.5 - 3 years we met the residency requirement by far.

The annoying thing though is due to delay's of DF's, we won't make the appointment for the ceremony.  We get the paperwork back in a week, but then we will have to wait until DF is back which may not be until the new year.

At least we have the notice now, which is good for 12 months.  Not like the COA, which was only good for 3 months.

So I think the worst of it is out of the way??

Not that bad at all really, just EXPENSIVE!!