How do you get married in England at a registry office?

I never imagined this would be so complicated.

My and my girlfriend fiance got engaged today. Yes yes I know, laugh it up, the big fluther cynic that thinks valentines day was made up just to sell more greeting cards proposed on valentines day. Ha – ha – ha.

We plan to register quite soon, then spend a little longer in the UK before moving over to Spain.

It is quite soon to be getting married, we have only known each other (been a couple) for a short while. However, we can both see that getting married is what is going to happen in the long run, and getting married now will save on paperwork when we move back to Spain. Neither of us really like the UK, so we figure get married now, and in a year renew and have a big ceremony in Spain.

The problem is, my girlfriend is in the UK on a visa, and while the visa will allow her to stay here or any other part of Europe for a very long time, she is still here on a visa and thus a million and one weird rules seem to apply.

From what we can see, the government basically wants us to register for some kind of permission to marry, then send some kind of social worker round to rape our privacy and accuse us of trying to fiddle immigration laws, and then they will allow us to marry. However we can’t find all the info we want online, and as it is the middle of the night we can’t phone any offices to ask questions.

So, we was wondering if anyone here on fluther could help out with giving some information, so that we can get a better idea of what to do before we start making calls tomorrow morning.

How do you register to get married in England when one of the people are in the country on a long term work visa?

Thanks!