Most vicars much prefer funerals to weddings. At a funeral, the meaning-of-life question is front and centre. Here, religion is important, even to the uncommitted. But a great many weddings have long been an “experience”, often only homoeopathically religious in character even when conducted in church.
It used to be the case that couples were not allowed to marry during the hours of darkness. This was to ensure that members of the local community could see who was marrying who, and could publicly acknowledge the new status that the couple had within the community. A wedding was a civic and public event, held in the parish church right in the heart of the community. Notice of a forthcoming wedding was published by banns in the church on three Sundays so that everyone knew. There wasn’t an invitation list for the ceremony because everyone was invited. It was in the church, after all.
The secular world has no such equivalent to this open space. Community has morphed into a byword for your WhatsApp group, for those gathered around a common interest or identity — the Colombian Community, the Lesbian Community, the Star Wars Community — rather than a shared and inclusive local space where all are welcome.
This week, the Law Commission proposed a set of reforms to Marriage Law that would enable couples to marry where they like — not just in licensed venues such as churches, registry offices or licensed premises. Soon you will be able to marry on the beach or in your garden, at a theme park or in McDonald’s — provided the presiding official thinks that the venue is safe and dignified. And yes, don’t be so snobby, of course there will be people who think McDonald’s is sufficiently dignified. The pool of people who can conduct a wedding is also being expanded. The Elvis impersonator wedding is not that far away, so long as it accords with your own deeply held beliefs.
All this is just another step along the road to the privatisation of marriage. Marriage used to be a community event; it is now a private ceremony. The Law Commission has also recommended abolishing the requirement for “open doors” at a marriage ceremony. “In fact, only some religious weddings and civil weddings are required to be open to the public, and that rule was a legacy from 17th century restrictions on Protestant dissenters meeting for worship,” says the report. As a legal requirement, that may be strictly speaking true, but the idea that a wedding was a public event goes back much further than that. But where there were once banns, now you will be able to fill in a form online. And the vows themselves can be made up to reflect whatever it is you think you are doing.
One advantage to these new proposals is that they will break the monopoly that the register office has had on secular weddings. Hitherto the register office heavily policed their ceremonies, refusing to allow the introduction of anything even faintly religious. I was once asked by a secular friend to say a few words at his register office ceremony. Having learnt what I do for a living, the panicked registrar demanded a copy of my address so that he could put a red line through anything that may allude to the divine. I explained that I extemporise. This too was refused.
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