Update: Transition to Marriage Schedules

Following a number of successful roundtable discussions, we’ve now unveiled our latest adaptions to our registrars solutions to cater for the upcoming legislative changes to Marriage Schedules.

Taking in the feedback on our proposals from these events, we’ll be launching the following to ensure our registration partners transition successfully.

Changes to Ceremony Booking Management

Ceremony bookings within agenda for registrars have traditionally helped services account for all tasks completed on the run up to a ceremony, including details like the receipt of notices and option forms.

As part of our changes, we’ll be adapting our existing backend ceremony booking process to reflect the changes requested to making schedule processing easier. This includes new additions for recording the receipt of schedules and their corresponding numbers. This will allow services to stay up to date with ceremonies awaiting the return of their schedules, assisting registrars in identifying which celebrants will need to have their certificate sent out and which require follow up.

We’ve also amended our search functionality to factor in the return of a schedule, adding in a ‘schedule received’ indicator to booking records to indicate their status to staff quickly.

Finally, reporting will see relevant changes applied through the creation of a schedule specific report to determine ceremonies currently awaiting return. This will act as an easily accessible overview on ceremonies and will function similarly to existing reporting templates.

All of these processes will be accessible across both marriage and civil partnerships.

Certificate Pre-Purchase

The main addition to agenda for registrars for marriage schedules will be the introduction of a pre-purchase certificate process ahead of ceremonies. This will primarily aim to better manage the volume of certificates requested from non-registrar ceremonies, and will facilitate the order of certificates ahead of their ceremony online. This will also in future aim to be rolled out to registrar ceremonies to complement additional certificates ordered during the booking process.

Complete with postage options, reporting and its own management work tray, this new process will benefit registrars in two distinct ways:

  1. Services will be able to match certificate requests to bookings recorded within agenda directly, with the ability to purchase upfront minimising higher demand for certificates post-ceremony.
  2. As this will coordinate registration services with their local clergy and Church of England/Wales colleagues, services will be able to direct non-registrar celebrants to this process, pre-empting expected ceremonies on any given day by orders.

This functionality will also interlink with our Certificate Stock Management system to reflect the change in how certificates will be distributed after the 4th May.


If you’d like to know more about these changes, please contact us through our contact form below.

To find out more about agenda for registrars, please visit its dedicated product page.