Published: 11 February, 2009, 11:59
Edited: 11 February, 2009, 11:59
By implementing more relaxed rules, it seems England’s Anglican churches may have by-passed a century and landed straight in the 21st where church weddings are even being advertised on eBay.
In an attempt to see love and marriage survive through times of financial hardship, a vicar from East Sussex is offering church wedding ceremonies on Ebay for just £50. Previously marriage ceremonies have not routinely featured on eBay, but due to the Church of England relaxing their rules on wedding services, bidding to tie the knot at the hands of God may become a regular feature on the auction site.
The Church has often been accused of charging too much money for services such as weddings. Given this and the current economic climate, Reverend Andie Camper is offering a cost-busting ceremony at his Westgate chapel in Lewes. The reverend said,
“I am offering the venue and my service as minister free of charge, but that doesn’t mean I will do a rushed job”.
The mere sum of £50 will cover the £47 standard registration charge and the £3 price of a marriage certificate.
Due to expensive fees, and complex and selective rules, associated with parish wedding ceremonies, civil marriages in the UK have been become an increasingly popular option for people wanting to tie the knot. As long as they do not mind God being absent from their wedding day, with no residency restrictions means couples can have a civil marriage practically anywhere. Previously, unless couples obtained a special marriage license from the Archbishop of Canterbury, they could only marry in a church where one of them lives and is on the parish electoral roll. In fact nearly all laws regarding church weddings in England had been established by the Marriage Act of 1949.
Society has changed a great deal since 1949 and, according to Reverend Steven Hollinghurst, as society has changed the Church’s residency regulations were getting increasingly harder to defend and uphold. The reverend said,
“It was a soul destroying thing to turn away from our doors young people who wanted to make their vows to each other in the sight of God.”
As a result of these outdated ‘restrictions’, since 1994, the number of civil ceremonies conducted in Britain annually has risen to over 50,000, whilst weddings in the Church of England have dropped by a staggering 40 percent to 60,000 a year.
A survey conducted by confetti.co.uk revealed that a greater number of couples would opt for a church wedding if they knew they could have one and that 53 percent of survey’s participants believe that church weddings would “feel more proper”. The survey found that a quarter of the couples asked would have preferred to have a church wedding, but believed because they did not attend church regularly they were not able to.
In response to this the Church of England has launched new laws titled the ‘Marriage Measure’, which offers more flexibility for couples wishing to be married in a church. A church will allow a marriage ceremony to go ahead if just one of the partner’s has a loose family connection with the parish. The Church of England Marriage Measure insists that a couple can marry in a church where they can demonstrate a ‘qualifying connection’, including where one of them may have been baptized, or in a parish where a parent or grandparent has lived or had been married.
Reverend Steven Hollinghurst is thoroughly in favor of the changes, although he believes they have not altered anything that drastically and refers to the Marriage Measure as “slight modifications” which are a “welcome improvement”. According to the vicar,
“In these days when the population is so mobile and people have roots and connections in so many different communities, the old residency rules seemed increasingly bizarre, outdated and unfriendly.”
‘Unfriendliness’ is something the modern and approachable Reverend Hollinghurst can be accused of. One objective of the Church of England’s new Marriage Measure was to become more ‘consumer-friendly’ and clergy around the country have been offered training days and issued with guidelines on how to make the ceremony more ‘light-hearted’ and fun. The ‘Tips for Vicars’ include encouraging the congregation to clap and cheer, by allowing ‘Kodak moments’ whereby guests to take photographs of the ceremony and to itemize the cost of the service to the couple, to show that the wedding is relatively cheap. Bishops across the country have even been attending wedding shows to make the public aware of the changes.
Although the Marriage Measure was passed by the large majority of clergy at the General Synod in York, like with most changes, the new regulations have not been without its criticisms. The choice of church is the biggest concern some clergy have is definitely a valid point. Idyllic, pretty churches are bound to be more preferable to run-down inner-city churches, which ironically need the money the most. It was because of this fear of continual weddings at impressive and magnificent churches that the synod resisted allowing people to be married in any church they wanted. The Reverend Steve Hollinghurst is the vicar in a particularly outstanding and inspirational 12th century church in England. This church would have undoubtedly been one that the synod would have feared for being swamped by a barrage of weddings for its divinity and grandeur, perfectly positioned beside a panorama of gently rolling hills and meadows, and in the winter shaded silver by a sprinkle of frost. Although because of its location ‘out in the sticks’ in the small village of Pembridge in Herefordshire, weddings here remain a relatively uncommon occurrence. Many clergy wanted more radical changes enforced but, according to Steve Hollinghurst, by enabling anybody to be married anywhere would…
«…mean a church whose Strawberry Hill gothic interior actually looks like a wedding cake would end up spending every Saturday doing weddings and nothing else, whereas parishes with less attractive buildings would rarely see a marriage from one year to the next.»
Pembridge Church, photo by Gabrielle Pickard
Sally Worthing and Ben Price, who have been living in London for the past ten years, are amidst the initial throes of organizing their wedding. They are delighted because of the new laws they have been given permission to marry in the church in a small village in Sussex that Miss Worthing attended as a child.
“I would not have been as excited and elated about being married in a registry office which we feared was our only option before the new law. Now my wedding will mean a lot more to me personally,” Sally stated.
Whilst Reverend Andie Camper’s price-busting fifty quid Ebay weddings may be a little intense, the fact that people can now be married in their chosen religious setting without living in the parish and regularly attending the church is a major breakthrough in the Church of England’s pursuit to reach modern times. Marriage ceremonies should not be regarded flippantly and never because of petty and anachronistic bureaucracy. It is only correct that everybody should have a right to a church wedding and the Church of England’s Marriage Measure has made it much easier to say, “I do” in front of God.
Gabrielle Pickard for RT