The Church of England has just published its new rules which make it easier for couples to get married in church. There’s a shift going on – to seeing a church wedding as something which can be positively offered to couples as distinctive and special. We’re moving in the same direction and experimented [very successfully] with a stand at a Wedding Fair in Glasgow.
I’m very happy with that. Some of the best of ministry is in working with a couple to custom-make a wedding liturgy. People get drawn into that process and begin to find that this is not just something which the church ‘does’ – but they can shape it so that it expresses their love and their hope for the future.
Contrari-wise, I think we are still more accommodating than is wise with weddings outside churches. Yes, I too feel the pull of the island in the middle of the loch. But more often it is just the hotel .. and it suits people .. and it risks just being a piece of ‘bolt on’ religious ceremonial rather than something with the richness and status it deserves.