The Wardman Wire

It’s rare for the Church of England Liturgical Commission to hit the headlines, but earlier this week the CofE announced new guidelines for couples with children who want to be married in church.

Media reaction was many and varied. Some of the right-wing press, which I expected to proclaim the death of the Church of England, were surprisingly positive. Most of the negatives are confined to the chatterati quoted by the Times and the Guardian. whilst the Independent and the Telegraph seem pretty relaxed about it.

Best coverage is, surprisingly, the Mail with a reactions roundup, an opinion piece which grudgingly admires it as a ‘bold’ move, and probably the most in-depth article of the lot, including an outline of the ‘new’ service itself. The Express approves, and has a ‘for and against’ where Joanna Jepson’s argument in favour of the changes fares much better than the caricatures in Jennifer Selways ‘anti’ piece. Both the Daily Star and the Mirror, perhaps running short on journalists, quotes the CofE media release almost word for word, under a ‘family friendly weddings’ headline.

Who’s Welcome?

Why is this important? The Weddings Project, a recent CofE study looking at attitudes to marriage and weddings, found a significant number of couples wanted a church wedding, but feared that because they were already living together, or had children together, the church would say ‘no’. The research found that many couples fear a form of personal Ofsted inspection from the vicar if they dare to approach. The reality for those who did opt for a church wedding was almost universally positive – 92% would ‘certainly’ recommend it to friends, and nearly 100% got on well with the vicar.

The new guidelines are one of the fruits of this, along with more relaxed rules on where you can get married, and a well-used new weddings site , complete with online wedding planner. As well as freeing the hands of clergy, the new guidelines send a broader message to couples in general: ‘you’re welcome’.

Normal practice will still be that weddings and baptisms happen on separate occasions, but the church is adjusting to the reality on the ground – that often marriage is the last major event in a couple’s life, rather than the first. Instead of marking the beginning of a committed relationship, it’s increasingly something people do when they get round to it, and when they can afford it. Having children together is, more and more, the first major milestone for a new family.

Marrying for the Money

Apart from fear, the other main thing putting people off a church wedding, indeed any wedding at all, is the expense. The average wedding now costs a five-figure sum, and it was no surprise that several of the weddings booked at our church this year were cancelled. One couple cited the effect that the stress was having on their relationship, and they postponed their wedding to free them from worries about the bills. How did we get to the point where people cancel their weddings to save their relationship?

At the local wedding fair, it’s hard not to look round at the purveyors of chocolate fountains, funky balloons, the Masters of Ceremonies and pushy photographers, and wonder how it got so complicated. Maybe fear drives the expense too: the fear of being different, of not measuring up to expectations, of being thought ‘cheap’. So the benchmark for the next wedding becomes the last one, and each ratchets up the cost and the extravagance.

It’s a vain hope, but perhaps others might follow the Church of England’s rethink on weddings. The effects of the credit crunch haven’t yet filtered through to the cost of the Big Day, but it’s high time they did. The recent Torchwood was called ‘event television’, and maybe we need to be freed from ‘event weddings’. The impression is that the more expense you cram into the wedding celebration, the better for your marriage. Often it’s the opposite: time spent planning the extravaganza could instead be spent on deepening a couples relationship, and the money saved will spare a family some of the stresses of debt.

Finally, back to baptisms. I can’t see a wedding/baptism double becoming the norm, most people still want to mark these events separately. But it’s now a bit easier for the church to meet people halfway.