form the materials we offer to couples through churches. We are a female-led project, and we are communicating mostly, and particularly at first, with women. What the Project found out about men comes into sharper focus a little later in the church wedding journey.
But when the phone first rings it will usually be the bride on the other end. So, how is she feeling when she makes that call? And first of all, what is she thinking about marriage?
England is serious
Latest government research indicates that about 80% of people who marry have lived together first. This often gives rise to much chatter predicting the end of the road for such an ‘anachronistic rite’. In churches, and outside them, the accusation is sometimes heard that couples today cannot be serious about marriage, since it will not change much in their lives. When they eventually choose to get married, it must be because they love to party.
Jesus said that giving and being given in marriage will go on enthusiastically right to the end, meanwhile trends come and go. For a couple of decades it was the done thing for women to keep their maiden name when they married. Big stars like Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole changed all that when they chose to take their husband’s name and this is now the more usual thing among today’s brides.
To find out the broad themes among people considering marriage today, researchers took video cameras into couples’ homes and asked them what they really thought and felt. These were independent research teams and there was not a dog collar in sight when this research work was done. That’s how we met Dave and his partner from the Midlands. They own a home together and they live in it together. They have plans to extend it, but something is missing. What is it? Dave’s partner explains:
‘I’m a lot more old fashioned where it’s concerned. It’s not like I think ‘Oh it’s terrible that we live together’, it’s not that. I just want to be your wife [laughs] … whereas Dave’s not really bothered. It’s like the final show of your commitment. Dave says we will do it, maybe when the extension’s finished. Well if we wait till the extension’s finished we’ll never do it.’
You really have to watch this exchange to feel Dave’s discomfort. He appears to want to shuffle right off the end of his sofa. In fact some of us wondered if his partner had ever got round to saying these things before a research team and film crew turned up in their sitting room. Some of us in the team found it moving, even heartbreaking. But we were all listening to the laughter that accompanied the revelation.
In the Weddings Project we have found that laughter and seriousness go together a lot. We have banks of films of people laughing when they get to the point of expressing something serious, about God or each other. Anthropologist Kate Fox in Watching the English writes of a nation with an ‘oh come off it’ impulse that is uncomfortable with expressions of earnestness. That discomfort can find a release in laughter. And the evidence suggests that when ministering to a generation which is wordless when serious, the pastoral art is to listen for the yearning under the laugh.
The phrase Dave’s partner used, ‘the final show of your commitment’, chimes with others used by many couples in the research. Some spoke of marriage as ‘the last piece in the jigsaw’, ‘the final frontier’, ‘the gold standard’. And listening to this we began to learn that marriage occupies an entirely different place in the hearts and minds of contemporary culture. For my parents, my grandparents and generations before them marriage has been the gateway to adult life. Not any more.
So this is a view of marriage unique to this generation. Couples today see marriage as more like a crown on a relationship which has proved itself to be trustworthy and true, and not the threshold of adulthood, as it once was. It comes later in life, at an average age of 30, and rising. A question our researchers asked in a nationwide survey of the general population bears this out. They asked: ‘Which event best indicates to you and to other people that you are committed to each other for life?’
Almost no one thought that buying a car together expressed this very well, and other low-ranking options were making a will together, being engaged or ‘just knowing you were right for each other’. Closer to top of the pops, but not there yet, were moving in together (18%) and having children together (21%). But the absolute winner – nothing scored anything like as high – was getting married (42%). There is still nothing beyond marriage to show each other and the world that you are committed to each other for life.
Exclusive romantic relationship, as proclaimed in marriage, carries a high value. The evidence suggests there’s nothing higher. Perhaps it is valued more highly by this generation, for whom there is no social stigma in not marrying, because it is a positive choice, from a range of others, made freely, without strong social constraints.
So marriage may have a higher value in the mind of the bridal generation, but it shows its results, its consequences, less conspicuously. It is less likely than in the past to be accompanied by a new address, new habits or a van full of G-Plan furniture. Marriage today is a crowning glory on a love well lived and this is why there is this desire for a wedding to be perfect. If it’s a crown, it’s a reward, it’s a culmination, a haven, a longed-for destination. It’s less likely to be fully expressed with paper plates and cheap plonk. All the lavish feasting that can accompany a modern wedding is part of the same idea. Not every couple wants to spend a fortune, and as Christian people we might prefer not to either, but spending and lavishness is a corollary to this fact:
A perfect crown is what they are yearning for, when they yearn for marriage.
This seriousness about marriage has implications for the wedding day itself and the way in which we in the Church prepare couples for it. When people choose to marry, marriage is what they want, and nothing else gets near to what they want to say through it. They want to proclaim their seriousness about each other for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, it’s true that numbers of marriages, as a proportion of the population, continue to decline. It has never been so little undertaken since records began. But researchers of all kinds agree that delay, not necessarily disinclination, is one big reason why numbers are falling.
So this is what one thirty-year-old bride is thinking about marriage when she picks up the phone to you. No matter what her living arrangements are, she is super serious about marriage. However, it’s true that her idea of marriage is very likely to be categorically different from yours, and from all the generations of vicars before you.
A church wedding
Why does she want church for a wedding? She might say she would like to ‘book the church’ and that turn of phrase may irritate you. She may explain that she was just driving by one weekend and picked it because of its beauty. She may say that to compliment you. She doesn’t know it might not. But it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that the beauty of the building is what people want when they want a church wedding? Prettier churches do most weddings, so more brides must want a beautiful backdrop than want God.
We met vicars on our tour of England who really struggled with what I’m about to tell you. And we met vicars who always knew the truth of it, but who were glad to discover why they know what they know. This is what the Weddings Project found out:
Most people think a church wedding ‘feels more proper’.
That’s the finding of a poll of the general population by a national secular research agency. 53% of the population agreed with the statement, ‘Church weddings feel more proper.’ You are more likely to agree with this statement if you are a younger person and if you are a male person. So it is not a phenomenon that is due to die out, it is a research finding that is ‘future-proof’. You may not think it is a sky-high figure but it is, compared to the number of weddings we’re doing. We are not marrying 53% of the marrying population in the Church of England. We are only marrying
