C of E says, have your wedding your way

USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman notes that the Church of England has ramped up its marketing to attract more couples to choose a church for their wedding venue.


A new video on the CofE's official wedding website, YourChurchWedding.org kicks off with a woman priest (controversial with conservative Anglicans but who's raining on the parade) talking about how you pretty much don't even have to be Christian. (No mention on whether you have to be male/female, however). Neither need you be British(although it means extra paperwork)

Happy customers wax poetic about how church staff were willing to help with all the arrangements right down to the car parking. Why bother with renting a hall or a garden when you can step right in to any fabulous stained-glass historic church with almost no pre-requisites (well, maybe you might have to attend church a few Sundays in advance but no biggie.) And it's all pretty much whatever you want including no need to promise to "obey."

I don't have the stats to tell me whether this promotional push (C0fE is working the wedding exhibition circuit, too, like all the other vendors) is driven by the financial needs of the aging stock of churches or the growing competition of civil marriages in an increasingly secular country.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's a glossy attempt to draw people in with the subtle hope that people will be so enchanted with the church and the compliant vicars that they'll stick around and get acquainted with Christianity.

Read (and watch) here.

Posted by John B. Chilton on April 5, 2011 7:14 PM | |
Comments (3)

If ++Rowan will let his clergy do weddings any which way perhaps he should just let the Communion function the same way.

Posted by Michael Russell [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 5, 2011 8:17 PM

I watched the video and found it actually better than I expected, given this write-up. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm approaching this as an interested onlooker -- I am not Anglican or Episcopalian, but an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- but I would be proud, were I member of the C o E, to have my denominaton producing a video that is encouraging couples to get married in the context of the church: not just the "lovely historical buildings" (although I do like the image of the walls of a church building being filled with love -- may it be so for all our churches), but also the community, which several people in the video did mention (e.g., "Marriages can go wrong, and it's nice to know the church is there to help"). It's glossy, but media must be these days in order to get people to pay attention. And I think it may just open doors for some couples to either connect or reconnect with the church, at an important milestone in their lives.

I also appreciate the way the video dispells some misconceptions some people apparently have about the "legality" or appropriateness of church weddings. Jesus met people where they were. No, he did not leave them there; but the journey began there. And, if vicars require premarital discussions and/or counseling (as ministers do in my tradition), there will be plenty of opportunity for discussions of faith and explicit talk about Christian marriage (and not just Christian weddings -- although, given some of the "do it yourself" vows and readings out there, one could do far worse than to use a church website to plan a ceremony!).

It may not be perfect, and it doesn't say all that needs to be said (and, again, perhaps I'd feel differently were I Anglican), but I don't think the C o E has anything to be ashamed of with this video. It's a warm and welcoming invitation for couples to consider celebrating this important step in the midst of God's people.

Michael Poteet

Posted by www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=592814929 [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 6, 2011 9:47 AM

This comes out of a different understanding of church in England - there you have the legal right to be married in your parish (a geographical designation) regardless of your status as an Anglican - they have expanded the boundaries by allowing people to marry in any church.

Posted by Ann Fontaine [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 6, 2011 10:21 AM

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