The 10 best wedding venues in Dublin

Yes — there is no residency requirement. You must give a registrar at least three months' notice of your intention to marry, pay a €200 notification fee and be issued a Marriage Registration Form, which is signed by you, your spouse, two witnesses and the solemniser immediately after the ceremony. If you are living abroad you can usually give that notice by post, but you still have to meet the registrar in person at least five days before the wedding to sign the declaration. Importantly, the marriage is registered by the Irish State and is legally binding in its own right, so unlike France or Italy there is no need for a separate civil ceremony at home first — check only how your own country records a foreign marriage.

Irish civil ceremonies are performed by a State registrar, and registrars only work Monday to Friday within office hours — no weekends, no bank holidays. That is why so many Dublin Saturday weddings use either a religious solemniser or a registered secular one, usually a humanist celebrant, both of whom are equally legally binding as long as they appear on the General Register Office's Register of Solemnisers. If a weekday date suits you, a civil ceremony is the cheaper route and venues are far easier to secure.

Per-guest packages are the standard unit and they vary widely by venue tier: the Royal Marine in Dún Laoghaire publishes packages at €99 and €112 a head, while No. 25 Fitzwilliam Place charges €150 to €185 per person for exclusive hire of the house. Read past the per-head figure — exclusive-use venues add a hire fee (€1,000 to €2,000 at No. 25) and a minimum food and drink spend (€5,000 to €9,000 there), and service charge of around 13.5 per cent is typically applied on top. Weekday and off-season dates are where the real negotiating room sits, particularly since a civil ceremony has to be midweek anyway.

Only in an approved outdoor space. Irish law requires the ceremony venue to be open to the public, and an outdoor ceremony has to be in a courtyard, garden, yard or field that is open to the public and normally attached to such a building, with the registrar for that district approving it — and possibly inspecting it — in advance. Airfield Estate's walled garden and the coastal grounds at Portmarnock are set up for exactly this; a friend's field or a private back garden is not eligible. Plan a covered fallback regardless: Dublin's east-coast position keeps it drier than the west, but a rain-free afternoon is never something to bank on.