I got married last year and was shocked to find that it would be more than three times as expensive to get married in the church as it would be in the town hall. There will be many people that can pay the extra £500. But others cannot: the young, the poor, those without the help of parents, a price like this could turn them all away. I had naively assumed that because the church, unlike the local registrar, has a history of being vociferously pro marriage it would translate into lower barriers to entry. Apparently not.
Most people have no idea what General Synod – the national assembly for the Church of England – is. The Church’s parliament, of which there are 483 members, considers and approves legislation across the Church of England. They get to decide the price of marriage fees, and voted this week that from 2027 until 2032 a Church wedding will cost couples £566.
We do not need another reason to not get married. The age of first marriage in the UK is constantly rising: the average marrying man is now almost 35. In the 70s, he was 24. In fact, according to CSJ analysis of last month’s marriage data, the rate of marriage is now higher for pensioners than men in their early 20s.
The obvious question is why does this matter? Surely this is to be expected in a time where more people are going to higher education, house prices are untouchable to the average young person, and near half of men have never asked a woman out in person. If young people thought marriage had something to offer to our groundless generation, then we would have grasped it with open hands.
And this is precisely it. Marriage, far from being simply unfinanced, has been left undefended. Removing the barrier of cost is a starting point, but more important is the signal this would send. Marriage is now viewed as the capstone of a fulfilled life – once I have the job, the house, the kids, then I will top it off with a wedding. Rather, marriage should be the cornerstone – from the security of this relationship I will build a career, a home, a family. It is this attitude that causes married couples to continue to have significantly higher rates of home ownership, earn more money, and live longer, happier and healthier lives.
More widely, half of children in the UK were born to married parents, the other half to unmarried parents. Yet, when a child sits their GCSEs, if they still live with both of their parents there is a 93 per cent chance that their parents are married. If the outcomes really were similar between cohabitation and marriage, then cohabiting partners would not all but vanish by the time a child hits 16. Children are now more likely to own a smartphone than live with their dad. This is the culture that the church is ministering to.
The Bible starts and ends with a wedding; marriage is both a private and a public good. It is a shame that the General Synod did not properly put its weight behind marriage in word and deed. I’m sure Saint Valentine would agree with me.
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