Planning a Church Wedding

A marriage service, wherever it is held, is a public declaration of love and lifelong commitment to your partner.

But a service in church brings an added dimension - the assurance that God cares about your relationship and that his resources and strength are available to help you. Including God in your marriage doesn’t mean that you will avoid all the usual ups and downs, but you will know that you can look to God for help and guidance and that his love will sustain you. You will also have the support and encouragement of the Christian Church family.

This article is a basic guide to some of the important issues. However, it is not possible here to give full legal information relating to marriages and in the case of doubt you must take appropriate advice.

A Church of England Marriage Service is a legally-recognised ceremony as well as an occasion for worship and celebration. The form of service is governed by law. After declaring their ability and desire to marry, the couple exchange solemn vows and give and receive ring(s). The minister declares them to be married and the service concludes with prayers and blessings. There are important legal preliminaries to a ceremony of marriage, which must be observed carefully.

A service of Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Marriage is sometimes known as a Blessing. This service can follow immediately after a civil marriage (e.g. in a Register Office) for couples in circumstances where it would not be possible to have a church wedding. Alternatively, couples who have been married for some time may wish to dedicate their life together to God. The couple begin the service as married people, and there is no giving of rings, though a prayer over the rings is offered. In the dedication the couple resolve to be faithful to each other and pray that in offering themselves to God that they may grow in unity, love and peace. The minister prays for God to bless the marriage which has already taken place.

The service of Thanksgiving for Marriage may be used to celebrate an anniversary, or in the renewed commitment following a time of difficulty in a marriage. The form of service is flexible and often includes the renewal of wedding vows, in which the couple recall and reaffirm the commitment they made on their wedding day.


What is the situation for marriage after a divorce?
The Church of England teaches that marriage is for life. It also recognises that, sadly, some marriages do fail and, if this should happen, it seeks to be available for all involved. The Church accepts that, in some circumstances, a divorced person may marry again in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.

The clergy of Oadby Parish are willing to conduct such a marriage in church, subject to the regulations which govern them. The minister will want to talk to you frankly about the past, your hopes for the future and your understanding of marriage. If it is not possible for your proposed marriage to take place in church, the minister may consider other alternatives with you.


Am I entitled to be married in Church?
You are entitled to be married in St Peter's or St Paul's if one or both of you live in the Parish of Oadby, or where you can demonstrate a “significant qualifying connection” with St Peter's or St Paul's Church. Significant qualifying connections can include:

• you were baptised in in the Parish of Oadby; have your confirmation entered in a church register book of St Peter's or St Paul's churches; have had your usual place of residence in the parish for at least six months; or have habitually attended public worship at St Peter's or St Paul's for at least six months at some point in your life;

• or, your parent has had his or her usual place of residence in the parish for at least six months during your lifetime; or habitually attended public worship at St Peter's or St Paul's for at least six months during your lifetime;

• or, your parent or grandparent was married in the parish.The precise rules are complicated, so please check with us to be sure.

You don’t have to be baptised to be married in Church following banns, but an understanding of the Christian faith is important if the service is to be meaningful for you.


Can I have a Church Wedding at another venue?
You may only have a Church of England wedding in a parish church or some other place of worship - normally one licensed by the Bishop. It is not possible to have a religious wedding in other venues, for instance in a hotel.


What are the legal requirements?
Banns are the normal legal preliminary for a marriage service. You must have your banns read out in church on three Sundays during the three months before the wedding. Banns are an announcement of your intention to marry and a chance for anyone to put forward a reason why the marriage may not lawfully take place.

Banns need to be read in the parish where each of you lives as well as at the church in which you are to be married. It is your responsibility to ensure that the correct information for calling the banns is given to the minister of the appropriate parish churches at the right time. Banns are not required for Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Marriage or Thanksgiving for Marriage.
If either of you is a foreign national, it is usually preferable to marry after obtaining a Common Licence, instead of banns, to ensure that your marriage is legally recognised in your home country.

If you are under the age of eighteen, you must have your parents’ consent to marry.


How much will our wedding cost?
Each January, a new fees table is published which shows all the options. As a guide, at St Paul's our fees are around £500.


Who will be the minister at our wedding?
Normally, one of the parish clergy will officiate.


How do I book the Church? As soon as you have decided you would like to get married in church, get in touch with Rev’d Simon Harvey (0116 271 0519 or simon@sjharvey.org.uk). Simon will help you with the first stages of making the booking and let you know which minister in the parish will be taking your wedding.

The minister taking your service will wish to meet with you in person to discuss your plans.

A £100, non-returnable deposit will secure your booking.


Are resources available online?
If you have access to the internet, you’ll find a wealth of online resources about weddings. You might like to try these:

• cofe.anglican.org/lifeevents/weddings The website of the Church of England.
• stpaulsoadby.blogspot.com The blog of St Paul's Church. Use the “weddings” label for specific information.
• rejesus.org Information about the most talked-about and influential person who ever lived, Jesus Christ.

Can I get married here?

I spent a couple of hours with the clergy of the newly enlarged Leicester City Deanery today, delivering some training on the new Church of England Marriage Measure. It's now possible for people to marry in a wider range of churches, other than the church in the parish where they live.

Churches do great weddings. But we also want to support couples in a way that goes beyond a really special day. So all of us were concerned to apply the new legislation in a way that's genuinely helpful and welcoming.

Mike Harrison, our Diocesan Director of Mission and Ministry, will be working with me in the coming months to help clergy around Leicestershire with the new regulations.

If you'd like more information about a wedding in Oadby at St Paul's or St Peter's, get in touch with me by email or phone.

Where can I get married?

There's a lot of uncertainty among the public about who can marry in which church. And it's getting more complicated.

An important change in the regulations which govern who may marry in a parish church are about to come into force. I've spent most of the afternoon working my way through the 40-page guidance notes and the 8-page form that couples are asked to complete if they have a "significant qualifying connection" with the parish. I've updated our basic information leaflets to reflect the new situation.

The changes mean that couples will find it possible to marry in more than the church in the parish in which they live or worship. So if someone has previously lived in Oadby, or if they parents did, or if their grandparents were married here, it might be possible to marry here. The rules and regulations are pretty complicated and there's a whole lot of questions to work through each time, so we'll see how we get on.

I would be sorry if the opportunity to get to know those whose weddings we are conducting will be lost. I really enjoy weddings ministry and it's an awesome privelege to be with a couple as they pledge their commitment and make their vows to each other. I try hard to make each wedding personal, and that's really only possible if we've had the chance to meet on several occasions.

If we get more enquiries from far away, or if we 'lose' local weddings to other churches, this kind of personal touch will be harder to maintain. And the opportunities for evangelism that come from the requirement of couples to regularly worship with us in order to qualify for membership of the electoral roll might also be harder to find.

Still, our enquiries for weddings are quite buoyant just now and I'll look forward to seeing how the new system will work in practice.

An introduction to the new Church of England Marriage Measure is on the CofE website.

Can I get married in church on Sunday?

It's a question that we're being asked more and more. With wedding reception venues taking bookings three or more years in advance, the availability and cost of the traditional Saturday wedding is a real problem for many couples.

We've had Sunday weddings in Oadby parish in the last couple of years and it works well.

There's less flexibility in timing due to the other services, but it's quite possible to have a wedding at 1.00pm or 2.00pm, which are the prime times to marry.

For more information about weddings in Oadby, use the weddings link on the labels and categories section on the right of every page.

The legalities of getting married in church

I've just been talking the new curates of Leicester Diocese about weddings. We explored the legalities of who can marry whom, where and how. It's all quite invoved. The good news is that there is quite a lot of very useful guidance if you know where to find it.

Only about six out of ten weddings are completely straightforward, in my experience. The others have me reach for my trusted copies of ANGLICAN MARRIAGE IN ENGLAND AND WALES - A Guide to the Law for Clergy and SUGGESTIONS FOR THE GUIDANCE OF THE CLERGY WITH REFERENCE TO THE MARRIAGE AND REGISTRATION ACTS, ETC.

But apart from the complexities, marriage ministry is one of the best and most valuable aspects of our work in the wider community. I enjoy every wedding.

Lowest number of weddings for a century

Despite something of a revival in weddings at St Paul's, the number of marriages in England and Wales has hit a record low, an Office of National Statistics survey reveals. The rate of marriages in 2005 fell to 244,710, the lowest since 1896, The Guardian reports. The number of couples tying the knot two years ago plunged 10 per cent on the previous year. Observers said various factors, including legal moves to cut ‘sham marriages’ and increases in weddings overseas helped to explain the decline. But The Guardian said growing acceptance of cohabitation and government plans to give cohabiting couples similar rights to married partners were to blame. A Church of England spokesman expressed concern although the brunt of the fall has been felt by civil marriage ceremonies.

Source: The Guardian (22/2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,2018518,00.html

via The Bible Society Newswatch service.

Weddings at St Paul's, Oadby

Between 1993 and 2004, we had not a single wedding at St Paul's. But since then, we've seen something of a revival. Izzy and Steve (2004), Clare and Michael (2005), Ian and Sehlule (2006) all began their marriages with wonderful services in our church. Now we're looking forward to Lynn and Richard's wedding this summer.

Of course, most of the weddings in Oadby are at St Peter's. We've produced a leaflet with some basic questions and answers, which you can download here.