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Jun. 22nd, 2008 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleIn my perusing of the wedding planning part of the internet I'm getting increasingly irritable with non-religious brides who want to have an Anglican wedding so that they can get married in a pretty church but then bitch about unfair it is that the church:
a) won't let them get married in a different church to their parish church just because it's prettier and/or was in a film.
b) strongly encourages them to come to church a whole three times to hear the Banns read.
c) makes them meet with the vicar more than once and dares to try to explain Christian ideas of marriage during those meetings.
d) won't allow them to do things which it deems inappropriate during the service.
e) makes them use the liturgy of the Church of England.
The Church of England is a religious body, not a wedding and pretty building preservation service. Would these people wander into a Mosque because it was pretty and then get all uppity about how the imam wouldn't let them wear a strapless dress for the ceremony?
a) won't let them get married in a different church to their parish church just because it's prettier and/or was in a film.
b) strongly encourages them to come to church a whole three times to hear the Banns read.
c) makes them meet with the vicar more than once and dares to try to explain Christian ideas of marriage during those meetings.
d) won't allow them to do things which it deems inappropriate during the service.
e) makes them use the liturgy of the Church of England.
The Church of England is a religious body, not a wedding and pretty building preservation service. Would these people wander into a Mosque because it was pretty and then get all uppity about how the imam wouldn't let them wear a strapless dress for the ceremony?
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Date: 2008-06-22 09:33 pm (UTC)I think there is some mileage in 'the CofE is the official church, so don't I have a right to get married in a CofE church' though. We (the CofE) can't (or shouldn't IMO) get away with the privileges we get from being the state church without the costs of having to marry people who don't regularly attend.
OTOH people don't have a right to get married at any church they want - AFAIK they only have a right to get married at a church in their parish (or possibly one they regularly attend, although one of your commenters said this is not the case - I suspect the vicar has a wide leeway to do things how they want in these cases). They certainly don't have a right to turn it in to a non-Christian service, or to have things the vicar deems inappropriate in the service though :-)