Weddings In The Parish 2025

Some practical information …..

Costs for 2025

                                                                                                        £

Wedding and Marriage Document                                                  544

Publication of Banns of Marriage                                                      37

Organist  (or you can bring your own)                                               85

Verger                                                                                                70

Total costs                                                   736

Plus Optional:

Bell ringing before (or just after) service                                          200.00

Bell ringing before and after service                                                280.00

Ringers are volunteers who give up a main chunk of a day to ring at a wedding.  Depending on what the couple wants, ie, both or just after, it can mean them being around for 1.5-2 hours and then there’s travel time as we don’t always have enough ringers in the village so we have to call around for a good team and of course, they then have travel expenses.  But bells are totally separate and are optional.

NB. Wedding Fees are set nationally by the General Synod of the Church of England every July. 

A deposit of £50 is payable once the Vicar has agreed any legal issues, and the church’s availability.  Most couples pay in instalments, which will be acknowledged direct by our Treasurer. The balance is payable one month before the wedding, either by cheque (payable to Stanford PCC – St Denys Church) or via on-line banking (we can provide BACS details).  If payment is not complete, the wedding cannot go ahead.

Flowers & Church Decoration

You are very welcome to bring in a professional florist to arrange your flowers in church or, do them yourself with volunteer help from family and friends. We always reserve the church for you for the day before your wedding so you/florists can go in an prepare, and/or for you to decorate, as agreed with the vicar.  The church will be locked once you have finished to maintain security.

Arrival of the Bride and Wedding Cars

Please time how long it takes to drive from the place you will be getting ready on the day of the wedding, to the church, around the same time as the time appropriate for your wedding.  Please also check RAC/AA Roadwork warnings in the week leading up to the wedding and make any necessary adjustments. Please allow 10 minutes for photographs outside the church with you and the bridesmaids before lining up in the porch before the bride’s entrance.  We start weddings on time here at St Denys.  With simple preparation it is possible.  If you are using the same car to transport Mother of the Bride, Bridesmaids, and then Bride and dad, do allow time for the extra journeys so that the bride arrives no later at Church Green than 10 minutes before the official start time.

Toilets

Unfortunately, at present, there are no toilets in the church.  We strongly recommend, therefore, that you contact the Hire Secretary of the Stanford Village Hall and ask for the toilets in the Small Hall to be open and available.  There is a very small charge payable direct to the Village Hall.  To hire, call Janet Warren on 01367 710789.

Car Parking

For St Denys:  We would encourage you to ask your guests to park, in the first instance, in the Village Hall Car Park (Huntersfield), and then along Huntersfield, leaving Church Green free for the arrival of the Bride and Bridesmaids, and for your wedding photographs.  The Parish Council has asked us to request there be no parking of vehicles on Church Green itself.

For All Saints Goosey:  Please ask guests to park on the main road through the Common, and not up by the church.  The Bride’s Car needs to be able to turn, the path is narrow and cars have been known to get stuck in the boggy grass of the common.

 

Photographers and Videos of Weddings

I am more than happy for your official photographer to take pictures during the wedding service, and I shall discuss this with you when we meet.  I would ask, however, that the photographer contact me two weeks before the wedding so that we can liaise.  There are some particularly nice shots inside the church which a visiting photographer would not know about.  Many photographers arrange to come and visit the church beforehand and have a quick chat with me. Please give your photographer my telephone number, 01367 710267.

I am also happy for your wedding to be video recorded.  The usual arrangement is to have two fixed places where cameras can be set on stands.  This prevents recording distracting you as a couple, and the congregation. Please also be aware that in some cases, children are not able to have their pictures taken and/or video footage to be uploaded of them on social media for safeguarding reasons. if in any doubt, please contact their parents in advance of the wedding.

Orders of Service

Once we have met and agree the full contents of your personalised service, I will email you all that you need to go inside your Orders of Service.  You can then design them yourself or give to a professional wedding company to design for you. Using my agreed version ensures no mistakes are made and everything is in the right order!

Passports

If the bride wishes to go on Honeymoon straight after the wedding, or shortly thereafter, in her new married name (if it is to be changed), it is possible to obtain a Passport in the new name from the Passport Office, with a start date being the date of your wedding.  The procedure is to pick up a new Passport Application Form from the Post Office and ask for the Form for a Church Minister/Registrar to sign with details of the pending wedding.  I will then happily complete this for you, and you can send off in advance.  My experience from couples who have done this, however, is that it is vital to leave plenty of time for the Passport Office to process your new passport. 

Foreign Nationals

If either/both of you is NOT a British Citizen, please contact me ASAP as there are legal processes you need to complete with the Registry Office before I am allowed to accept a wedding booking here under the Home Office rules.

Marriage in Church after Divorce

It is sometimes possible to have a wedding in church if one, or both of the parties has been married before, and that marriage has been legally dissolved. I will go through some Pastoral Guidelines from the House of Bishops with you before making my decision.  This is to ensure the life-long commitment of marriage is honoured and, that if it is a second marriage, the lessons from the first marriage are clearly understood by both parties.

Wedding Fraud

Church of England clergy act as Registrars of the Home Office when it comes to conducting weddings.  As such, we have to abide by very strict regulations, updated every year.  You may have read in the newspapers of ‘wedding scams’ that have been caught out?  It is, sadly, a very big industry as creating new names can, apparently, help with Fraud.  As a result, I am now under a legal obligation to ask to see either your Passport, or your Birth Certificate, and to make a photocopy.

In addition, if either party is a Foreign National, I am now under a legal obligation to send you to the local Registry Office where you will need to complete additional forms and for them issue me with a document authorising me to conduct the wedding.

Please do not be concerned or offended by this.  It is simply a formality that I have to comply with, and it is easily dealt with.  We can then get on with far more exciting aspects of planning your personalised wedding!

Marriage Preparation

As part of the planning for your wedding, I will offer to you some Marriage Preparation resources.  The preparation does NOT involve discussing things of a personal nature with me (unless you wish to do so), but rather, three exercises for you to go home and discuss between yourselves. 

The first exercise looks at the Baggage we all bring into any relationship, and how it can affect the new relationship, unless fully understood, and in some cases, dealt with. 

The second is a fun exercise looking at what aspects of life are important to you, and guessing how important they are to your partner, then comparing your answers.  This exercise is always enjoyed by couples but does show accurately where conflict and tension can arise. 

The third exercise is to find your own, personal ‘Love Language’.  That is, what is it that makes you really ‘feel’ that you are loved?  For there are times when we all get tired, are ill or perhaps, life is tough and we have nothing to give.  Yet at these key times (and others), unless we really know how to express love in a ‘language’ the other person understands, they will not ‘feel loved’ and people can easily drift apart. 

The fourth part of the preparation involves reading through your Wedding Vows and really understanding the depth of the vows, and the life-long commitment you are making to each other.

None of the above is scary, or hard to do.  All my wedding couples have said how much they have appreciated working through the exercises, one to one.  Even those who have lived together for many years before marriage comment how helpful it was.  So, I offer it to you.  You won’t be quizzed on it, but if there is anything you’d like to talk about when we meet, I would be very happy to discuss. in the past 14 years I have taken over 80 weddings and to my knowledge (I keep in touch with all my couples via social media), only one has divorced.

Family Politics

On occasions, couples are concerned how things will work out on the wedding day because there are tensions in one or both of the families.  Eg. your mum and dad have broken up and don’t want to sit/walk with each other on the day, or some other practical issue.  All families have their tensions and from experience, I understand that at a time of a major family occasions such as weddings, old issues can emerge. 

As we meet to plan your wedding, I will ask if there are any issues we need to bear in mind on the day regarding ‘family politics’. My experience is that if we have discussed these fully beforehand and made clear plans, there will be no problems on the day.  In addition, families, meaning well I am sure, can put a lot of pressure on couples to include things in a wedding service that the couple does not wish to include. This is your wedding, your wedding day and only what the couple wants shall be included.  I never discuss wedding plans with anyone other than the couple, and if it helps, you can always bat-off suggestions from people with “well, we will have to discuss that with the vicar”!  It’s a surprisingly good strategy for deflecting unwanted suggestions.  You then blame the ‘no’ on me!

Conclusion

I take great pleasure in helping couples prepare for their special day.  As the day approaches nearer and nearer, it is natural for pressures to mount as you balance work and planning.  I am always available to talk to wedding couples at any time in the build up to the wedding, so if I can help in any way, or you have any questions, however big or small, please do contact me. 

I look forward to working with you to put together a very special service which you will look back to with great pleasure. 

Revd Paul Eddy, FRSA

The Vicarage, 24 Church Green, Stanford in the Vale, SN7 8HU

Tel: 01367 710267.   Email: [email protected]

Updated: 31.12.2025