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About the guides
Editorial standards
A short, honest account of how the Ivyfold guides are written, what we will not do, and how to tell us we have got something wrong.
Who writes them
The Ivyfold research team, which is the small UK team that builds the Ivyfold wedding planner. We are not solicitors, registrars, clergy or insurance brokers, and nothing in the guides is legal or financial advice.
Where a rule depends on your council, your diocese, your parish or the wording of your policy, we say so in the guide rather than smoothing it over. Those variations are the reason most of the confusion exists in the first place, and hiding them would make the page easier to read and worse to use.
How every claim is sourced
Each factual claim in a guide links to one of two things.
- An official source. GOV.UK, the Church of England, or legislation.gov.uk. Every official link is checked to resolve before it is published.
- The forum thread it came from. Where the evidence is lived experience rather than a rule, we link the specific public thread, named, so you can read the whole conversation instead of the fragment we quoted.
Anything that could not be sourced either way was cut from the page, including material we wanted to use. Every guide carries its full sources list at the foot, and the guides are cross-linked so a claim only has to be evidenced once.
The no-invented-numbers rule
We do not publish average UK wedding costs. The figures that circulate each year are mostly produced by businesses that sell to couples, drawn from surveys people opt into, and they average together weddings with almost nothing in common. They are precise and not accurate, which is the worst combination for someone trying to budget.
So the only numbers in these guides are:
- Statutory or published fees, quoted from the body that sets them and linked.
- Sums a named person said they personally paid, quoted from the thread and labelled as one person’s bill rather than a typical price.
Where we teach a calculation instead of giving a figure, that is deliberate. Our guide to cost per head is the clearest example.
Quotations
Quotations from forum threads are reproduced as written, including typing errors and abbreviations, because tidying them up would misrepresent the source. Where a quotation is trimmed we cut only at a sentence boundary and never to change its meaning. Posters are named where they used a display name on a public thread, and the thread is always linked.
Some of the threads we cite are several years old. That is stated where the age matters, particularly for any figure, because council and church fees are revised regularly.
Dates and review
Every guide carries a last-reviewed date in its byline. Council fees are commonly revised in April, and Church of England parochial fees are set annually. If the date on a page is not recent, check any figure against the official page in that guide’s sources list before relying on it.
When we correct a page we change the last-reviewed date on it.
What these guides are for
Ivyfold is a wedding planner. The guides exist because the questions in them came up over and over in our research, and because the answers online were either thin, wrong, or written to sell something. We would rather they were useful whether or not you ever open the app.
Guides are not sponsored, we take no payment for a mention, and no supplier is recommended in exchange for anything. If that ever changes it will be stated on the page itself.
Tell us if we are wrong
Email hello@ivyfold.com with the page and what is wrong with it. If a claim turns out to be unsourceable or out of date, we correct it or remove it. A shorter guide is better than a claim we cannot stand behind.
Questions people actually ask
Who writes the Ivyfold guides?
The Ivyfold research team, which is the small UK team that builds the Ivyfold wedding planner. We are not solicitors, registrars, clergy or insurance brokers, and the guides are not legal or financial advice. Where a rule depends on your council, diocese, parish or policy wording, we say so and point you at the body that can give you a binding answer.
How are claims in the guides sourced?
Every factual claim links to one of two things. Either an official source we have checked resolves, such as GOV.UK, the Church of England or legislation.gov.uk. Or the specific public forum thread the account came from, named and linked, so you can read the whole conversation rather than the fragment we quoted. Anything we could not source that way was cut.
Do the guides quote average wedding costs?
No. We do not publish average UK wedding costs, because the widely circulated figures come from companies selling to couples and from self-selected surveys, and they average together weddings that have nothing in common. The only figures we quote are statutory fees published by an official body, or a sum a named person said they personally paid, labelled as such.
How current are the guides?
Every guide carries a last-reviewed date. Fees change, most often in April for councils and in January for Church of England parochial fees, and forum threads can be years old. Where a quoted figure is historic we label it. If a date on a page is old, check any fee against the official page linked in that guide’s sources list before relying on it.
How do you report a mistake in a guide?
Email hello@ivyfold.com with the page and what is wrong. If a claim turns out to be unsourceable or out of date we correct or remove it and change the last-reviewed date on that page. We would rather have a shorter guide than a claim we cannot stand behind.