Weddings

So you're thinking of getting married? Fantastic!

And you would like to have your wedding in our church? Brilliant!

So let's get down to detail. There are some constraints on who can get married in which church, but, thankfully, these are far fewer than they used to be, and it's becoming easier and easier to get married in the church you want and to have the sort of day you've always hoped for. For lots of very helpful information, including who can get married where, details about the wedding service and even some little midi files playing popular wedding hymn tunes, you can't do better than to go to the Church of England's special Wedding Website: http://www.yourchurchwedding.org/

Basically, if you live in the Parish then you have the right to be married in the church. You don't have to have been baptised, and you don't have to have been worshipping with us regularly - though, of course, we'd love you to do that! But there is one proviso to the 'residence' rule, which is that if you have been married before, and your partner is still living, it is more complicated and there are some specific rules about what needs to happen and who can be married in church. But if you contact Gail, we can explore this together and we hope we will be able to help – even if it’s not with a wedding itself, we should be able to offer you a Blessing of your Marriage in church. Please do get in touch and we can talk things through together.

It’s slightly more complicated if you live outside the Parish boundaries – it’s both one of the advantages and one of the drawbacks of the Church of England’s Parish system. We cover the whole country, yes – so you always know that wherever you are in the country, you are in a CofE Parish and have a local church. But it also means that you may not live within the boundaries of the church YOU would like to approach for a wedding. If you want to marry in a church that you’re connected with in some way, this is no longer such a problem, since the law changed in October 2008. And if you go to that Church of England Wedding website you can get masses of really useful information, including what these ‘qualifying connections’ are.  They're things like: if you or your parents have worshipped here for six months at any time, or if your parents were married here - but go and have a look at the detail, and it should become clear!

We will need to do some preparation before the big day, but we hope you’ll find these meetings both helpful and very informal and friendly. We meet either in your house or at The Vicarage, and we explore what it is that’s going on when you get married, particularly looking at it from a Christian perspective, of course, but primarily trying to help you think about your life together.  These meetings start with your first visit to make the bookings, when we'll get to know each other, and we usually meet on two other occasions before the rehearsal. Remember, most people who get married nowadays are already living together, so these discussions look at how the wedding might affect your existing relationship, and we can talk about how this impacts on children and other family members. We talk about the commitments you will be making, and what this means, and of course, we talk through the practicalities of how the service runs and what you need to do.

We really hope you will want to get married at the Church of the Good Shepherd, where we can give you the sort of welcome any close family gives when there's a great occasion. There's a choir that can boost your singing, a wonderful organist to play for you, flower arrangers to make the place beautiful ... and of course there's always the Beach at the back of the church to take amazing photos on!