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News & Events: Weddings

        St Giles the Abbot is a very attractive venue for weddings and Blessings. With the approach through the Lych Gate, along a winding path and into the delightful, heavy beamed church on the Hill overlooking the magnificent Kent Countryside. It also has many favourable areas for the photographs. For more details and information please contact the Parish Office or the Rector.

Marriage in Church – A Change to the Rules

Under the Church of England Marriage Measure, passed by a large majority at the recent General Synod in York, a couple will be able to marry in a church where they can demonstrate a “qualifying connection”.  This would include a church where they had been baptised, or where a parent or grandparent lived or had been married.”

This measure marks a significant change to the present situation whereby, unless couples obtain a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, they can only marry in a parish where one of them lives or is on the parish electoral role.

The Synod did not agree that couples could get married wherever they wished as this might present problems for some churches that were perceived as the prettiest.  Nevertheless, it was recognised that with the increasing movement of young people away from home, it would allow them to get married in the parish where they grew up.  The Dean of Wakefield, the Very Rev George Nairn-Briggs drew Synod’s attention to the fact that most of the law on where marriages can take place was set in the Marriages Act 1949.  He said “Young adults often move from one place to another.  When they decide to come to the Church for marriage, and to enter into the permanent commitment to one another before God, they often wish to do that in a place with which they feel they have some enduring connection.”       

                    Edited from an article in THE TIMES by Ruth Gledhill

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