How much does a nikah cost in the UK?

One wedding, three separate bills

Ask what a nikah costs and you are really asking about three different things. The ceremony fee: what the mosque or imam charges to conduct and record the nikah. The civil fees: what the state charges to make it a legally recognised marriage. And the wedding: hall, food, clothes, the walima, which can be anything from tea at home to a hotel, and which no honest page can price for you. Blogs answer the question by blending all three into one made-up range. Keep them separate and the real numbers are small and checkable.

What mosques actually charge

Each mosque sets and publishes its own fee, so here are published fees, checked in September 2026, from three large London institutions:

• London Central Mosque (Islamic Cultural Centre): £70.
• Al-Ihsan Marriage Service at the East London Mosque: from £150 at their office, £250 for a ceremony at your venue.
• West London Islamic Centre, Greenford: £150 at the mosque, £250 outside it.

Outside London the same pattern holds: a published fixed fee for the ceremony at the mosque and a higher one when the imam travels. Fees change at each mosque’s discretion, which is why every figure above carries its date. Get the fee in writing before the day.

The civil fees that make it legal

A nikah on its own usually does not create a legal marriage in England and Wales; our guide to whether a nikah is a legal marriage covers what that gap costs families. Closing it has its own fee schedule:

• Giving notice, required of each of you at your local register office. Councils set this fee themselves; Leeds, for example, charges £46.50 per person as of September 2026. Where the notice must be referred to the Home Office, typically when a partner’s immigration status requires it, councils list £63 per person from April 2026.
• The registrar: gov.uk lists £62 at a register office and £114.50 at a registered religious building. Many mosques are registered for marriages, and some have an authorised person on their own staff, in which case the nikah and the legal marriage can be one ceremony: ask yours before you book anything else.
• The marriage certificate: £12.50.
• Councils also sell enhanced ceremonies with rooms and time slots at their own prices, from around a hundred pounds to several hundred; those are venue prices, not marriage fees, and your council publishes its own list.

The mahr is not a fee

The mahr appears in every nikah and in no honest cost table. It is the gift the groom owes the bride under the marriage contract: her property, her right, recorded in the nikah documents, and no part of what any mosque or service charges. There is no going rate, whatever any forum says, and a figure invented here would follow families around. Agree it between yourselves and see our guide to what to check on a nikah nama before anything is signed, because the mahr entry is one of the boxes people regret leaving vague.

A worked example you can re-add

A couple in Leeds, nikah at London Central Mosque’s published fee, register-office civil ceremony, no venue costs counted: notice £46.50 each is £93, registrar £62, certificate £12.50, ceremony £70. Total: £237.50. Your own total moves with your council’s notice fee, your mosque’s fee and whether the imam travels, but it moves from there, an amount most families spend on the flowers. The expensive part of a wedding was never the nikah.

Common questions