Couples attending this year’s biggest wedding shows will be able to ask for prayer to calm their wedding day nerves – by visiting the Church of England’s stand and filling out a specially designed prayer postcard. A priest on the stand will promise to pray for the couple the week prior to their big day.

Revd Rosie Harper, who will be on one of the stands and has conducted more than 150 weddings in the course of her ministry, said: “Your wedding day is the best day of your life. The last thing you want is to feel terribly nervous, worry about a speech or fret about the arrangements. If couples tell us what they’re worried about, we’ll remember them in our prayers in the run-up to their wedding. It demonstrates how we’re not just there for the big day, we're there for them beforehand, and for their life together afterwards.”

The Church of England’s stand will be at the UK Wedding Shows in Newcastle (30-31 January) and London (6-7 February), and the National Wedding Shows in London (19-21 February) and Birmingham (5-7 March), where it is designed to look like the nave of a beautiful church.

As well as offering prayer, the team aims to take the stress out of organising a wedding by offering couples help with making choices about their ceremony. Couples can get expert advice from clergy on the stand about the best wedding hymns and readings, as well as help with thinking about any personal touches they would like to make to the service. They will also be pointed towards the Church of England’s weddings website, www.yourchurchwedding.org. There they can listen to the most popular wedding hymns before making their selections and printing out a ‘first draft’ to take to their marrying vicar as a discussion starter when organising the ceremony.

The stand and website are the best places to go for questions on anything to do with planning a church wedding. 

Rosie Harper continues: “Research tells us that more couples would marry in church if they knew they could. But they worry that they aren't eligible for a church wedding, especially if they don't go to church or they aren't baptised. It's great to be able to meet couples and reassure them that we'd love to marry them. Many also like to talk about personal touches, like whether they can also book the church for a reception, perhaps to make a saving, or if they can have a combined wedding and baptism service.

“Of course some people just like the idea of being prayed for and we are happy to do so whether or not couples are having a church wedding.”

Notes

Surveys conducted in recent years indicate that around two-thirds of UK adults pray, leading the Church of England’s Head of Research and Statistics, the Revd Lynda Barley, to describe prayer as “one of the best kept secrets in modern Britain”. A Populas survey for The Sun, June 2005, found 65 per cent of adults in Britain said they prayed; The British Social Attitudes survey, 1998, found that 66 per cent of adults pray.

The Church of England’s wedding stand is an initiative of the Archbishops’ Council’s Wedding Project.

Research by Henley Centre Headlight Vision indicated that 53 per cent of the general population think that church weddings ‘feel more proper’.

Research conducted by Confetti.co.uk indicated that 25 per cent of couples who otherwise would not have a church wedding would opt for one if they knew that they could have one.