. Asking around, the reasons are familiar. Most felt it disingenuous to make vows before a god that they don't believe in. Some liked the idea of it being cheap and cheerful, in a local town hall to their shared home, and not a country church whose door they've never darkened. Others didn't want to do 'what my parents expected of us, and they got over it'. Many used the registry office ceremony as a nice, but necessary box-tick and dress rehearsal before a fully-attended knees-up, complete with sham ceremony conducted by a friend, in the countryside at a later date. Divide and conquer; it's what we chose to do. A few days after 'the legal bit' and 10 days before our 'actual wedding', the only hidden cost seems to be wanting two outfits. Inevitably, families in which attitudes to weddings diverge between generations are being tested. One of the most popular articles on brides.com is: 'How to have a secular wedding when your family is religious'. (The answer, remarkably, is not simply 'elope'.) Not that registry office weddings don't involve faff or outgoings: for a marriage licence and venue hire in London, we paid a little over £400. And even with eight months' notice, we had to make do with our third choice of time, such was the popularity of Saturdays in the following summer. Churches can be lovely, but at £190 more expensive than even a grand Georgian town hall, you'd hope for something more comfortable than a pew to sit on. None of this looks good for traditionalists, and it may be about to get worse: last year, the Law Commission recommended that weddings should be able to take place anywhere, providing the presiding officials consider it safe and dignified. The rules at the moment require a civil licence and a 'permanent structure'. In the future, it'll be the wild we){kind=link}
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It was just about the first step we made towards wedding planning, once I’d (very) briefly got down on one knee. “We’re not doing it in a church, by the way,” my fiancee told me, matter-of-factly. “We’re not religious, it’d feel like a fraud.”
I was momentarily disappointed. On the one hand, she had a good point about it being out of character to marry into a faith we never practise; on the other, I like hanging out in churches and singing hymns, plus, Jesus always seems like a decent bloke – if a little whiny.
But she was right, of course, my now wife. (We’ve been married for five days: I’m not about to disagree with her.) I’ve lied about many things to get something good in return – that it’s my birthday, for a table; that I’m Irish, for a free Guinness; that I played Bernard in the 1990s ITV classic Bernard’s Watch, for a laugh – but pretending we’re churchgoers to a vicar who suspects otherwise, then proving we are by diligently attending services for weeks, then paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege… Well, it didn’t seem entirely worth it.
And so we became one of the increasing number of couples who choose a civil ceremony over a religious one. At the last count, just prior to the pandemic, the ratio was 81.8 per cent (179,905 marriages) versus 18.2 per cent. In three years, that trend is unlikely to have halted.