Jeremy Trigg explains the idea behind a new drive to put the church back at the centre of the wedding industry and, (left) two brides say why they picked their venues – and reveal how much they spent on their big day Civil or church? – adding up the costs
‘I THOUGHT this marriage thing was old fashioned and irrelevant…. then I met Kate.’ Words spoken to me by a friend not long ago. He was describing how discovering that he loved Kate as well as being in love with her had made him change his mind. He’d always vowed he’d never get married. Now he couldn’t wait for the day. ‘It’s the only thing you can do with love that says how serious you are,’ he said.
‘It’s just a pity it’s so expensive to do it properly and we’re going to have to spend so long saving up.’ The more I thought about that, the more I saw that he was right. The average cost of a wedding today is £17,000 to £20,000! Now it may be true that your wedding day is the most important day of your life, but come on! There’s got to be a different way of doing things. What chance have you got of paying that if you’re on benefit? That’s not to say you can’t do it for less, but of course we all know you get what you pay for.
The ‘Wedding Industry’ is booming. If you’ve any doubt about that get hold of a publication like ‘The Wedding Guide’, or go online and type ‘Wedding’ into any search engine and you’ll see what I mean. The number of people getting married in church is declining, but the industry is booming. So where are we going wrong? There’ are lots of theories on this, but I’d like to put two very simple ones forward.
The big attraction of hotel and stately home weddings is that you can have everything on site, and they’ve gone out of their way to think about important little details like well kept indoor and outdoor areas for photographs and in lots of cases safe areas for children.
They’ve also got a bar to pass away the endless hours while the photographer does his stuff. It makes more sense. The second reason is that the Church has often been guilty of making things hard for people to get married.
It’s not entirely our fault since the legal framework is not the most liberal in the world and the bad news is it doesn’t appear that even the proposed changes to legislation are going to make it much easier for us. We’re also hung up on the idea that Christian weddings can only take place in churches. Yet anybody who’s up to date on their mission reading will have picked up that most people today don’t necessarily look to the Church as a place where they encounter God.
Belief in marriage So it’s time to do something about it! The first thing I want to say is we need to own and be quite unashamed about our belief in Christian marriage. It’s the best thing since sliced bread! We then need to say so, and say so where we will be heard, and there’s a sporting chance we might make people think. That to me says we need to be in the wedding market place. We have something unique to offer people: a lifelong package of support, and we’re not out to make money out of them! So we need to place ourselves and the package we are offering to people alongside others who are competing with us. In the wedding fairs. To put my money where my mouth is, we’ve had one very successful wedding fair in St George’s Church, Wolverton and we’re hoping to have another in the near future. When we do, come along and see how the church can creatively engage in the wedding market place.
Using our assets The second thing we need to do is to make the best possible use of the assets we have: our church buildings and our vast experience at conducting weddings. We know what we are doing! That’s not complacency: it’s fact! Where we let ourselves down is in the little things, like working with a local photographer to select A+ conditions. Photographers want to take good photographs and will talk up the places where they know they can do so.
But there are two more things that need to be done. We need to try to get down the cost of a wedding to an ‘affordable price’ without compromising on the memorable occasion. How do we do that? By looking at the possibilities for holding the wedding breakfast on site as near as possible to the church. We need to have the confidence to form our own little local businesses to compete with the ‘everything on site’ option at the hotel or stately home.
That’s exactly what we’re trying to do in Wolverton. In our case we have no church hall, but we do have a lawn. So we’ve entered into an informal partnership with a marquee firm and team of caterers to offer the complete ‘on site’ wedding. Our early sums suggest that we’ve chopped a considerable sum off that average cost. We do aim to make money, but this is what we plan to do with it. We will put 25 per cent into a fund run by a local parish based charity to help those who cannot afford to get married with the cost of their weddings.
Of the rest of the income, 10 per cent will go into the Deanery Share account, 40 per cent to cover what we see as the need for additional pastoral and ministerial hours, and 25 per cent into maintenance That’s our vision. It all started from our belief that Christian marriage is so good we’ve got to share it, and make it as accessible to people as we can. What will turn our vision into reality is prayers, yours and ours.
Jeremy Trigg Rector of Wolverton
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I didn't want a church wedding, but did want a religious blessing at a wedding venue. Unfortunately, we have found that our chosen venue won't let us have a blessing (even if we have a civil ceremony beforehand), and this is the case in many locations- because they do civil ceremonies. We are now having to go through the pa lava of finding a church, but from the prices I have seen, other wedding venues charge around £500 too for a civil ceremony on their premises.
will feel God's presence. To charge us to say our vows in His presence is a sin. I find churches that charge disgusting and a message is being sent to non-believers that is not biblically based but based on mans greed.
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