One of the ways by which I pay for the maintenance of my two Inigo Jones pavilions at Stoke Park in Northamptonshire is to let one of them out for wedding receptions. These buildings, originally a chapel and a library, were once attached by colonnades to a large country house; but this burnt down in the 1880s, leaving only the pavilions and the colonnades still standing. They had fallen into an advanced state of dilapidation when my late uncle Robin bought and restored them in the 1950s.
I suppose that, if I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t hold these events here, for they always involve dancing to loud pop music that reaches a deafening climax just before closing time at midnight. But money is not the only compensation; for the wedding guests are usually very happy, and the newly-weds often express their appreciation in euphoric terms. This is not only thanks to the brilliant management of Sarah, my wonderful and charming events organiser, but also to the romance of the buildings themselves and the landscape that surrounds them. They command a fine view over parkland where Henry VIII once hunted deer with Anne Boleyn.
But that said, this place is not to everyone’s taste. A slight air of neglect hangs over it. The garden is unkempt, and until recently the large ornamental pond below the pavilions was choked with weeds. Chickens and ducks wander around among the wedding guests. It is not for show-offs or fusspots. It is not for Elizabeth Hurley or Victoria Beckham.
And it has to be said that business lately has not been as good as it used to be. This is partly because people are poorer, but also, according to Sarah, because competition is becoming ever more intense. The hard-pressed owners of country houses and other potential locations for such events are increasingly seeking salvation in the marriage market. Now I read that the Church of England is gearing up to fight for its share.
Stoke Park doesn’t yet have a licence to conduct weddings on the spot, but lots of other places do, including now the old Royal and Derngate theatre in Northampton, where some ostentatious couples choose to get married on stage. And the Church of England is in a flap because fewer than one in four weddings now take place in Anglican churches. Its response has been to offer control of the marriage service to the couples themselves, whether or not they have any religious beliefs.
A four-year review has resulted in a book, The Church Weddings Handbook, recommending that vicars should accept more or less whatever arrangements couples request. If they want to be married on golden thrones, surrounded by popping flashbulbs, like Mr and Mrs Beckham, that should be fine, as it should be for the bride to ride into church on a horse, or for the wedding rings to be delivered up the aisle to the best man by a flying owl.
Let the bride and groom leave church to the theme tune of Test Match Special instead of Mendelssohn’s wedding march if they want to; let them marry underwater in frogmen’s outfits. It should all be welcomed by the vicar, who is asked to acquire a store of wedding jokes to recite in his sermons. The vicar, says the book, should regard himself in marketing terms as the Church’s ‘unique selling point’ and, while always wearing a dog collar, should be friendly, funny and reassuring with the often nervous couple. (In other words, he should learn the tricks of the salesman.) One thing he mustn’t do, however, is insist on a course of marriage preparation lessons, since couples are often living together already and sometimes even have children.
One justification for this secularisation of the marriage service is that it would make couples feel warmer towards their local churches and therefore make them want to visit them more often in future. Since it is not suggested that they should also adhere to the Christian faith, what purpose can there be in this other than more bums on pews and more money in the collection box? Another justification is that God would approve. If a couple wants to emulate Posh and Becks, writes Mark Bryant, the Bishop of Jarrow, ‘I think God can cope with that. And if God can cope with that, it’s probably up to me to try to cope with it as well.’
‘God does not only listen to Radio Three,’ says the handbook in defence of pop music in church. But how do they know what God thinks, or what radio programmes He listens to? They don’t, of course. It’s all rubbish. And this ‘modernisation’ threatens merely to undermine the only reason that people get married in church, which is to endow their union with some sense of the sacred.
Comments