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 22% (all churches together account for about 33% of all weddings). So the Church of England could easily conduct double the number of weddings by just marrying the people who thought that church was the right place for it, never mind persuading anyone else about it.
A ‘proper’ wedding
This word ‘proper’ has become a key for the Weddings Project and it is packed with meaning and application. To help us understand it, we spoke to academics including sociologists of religion. What they told us lay behind the word ‘proper’ gave us so much hope for the spiritual seriousness of England that we weren’t sure whether to believe them. So in a more focused survey of 822 people marrying in Bradford and the Buckingham Archdeaconry of Oxford our research team probed more deeply. They asked them what the main reason was for choosing church for their wedding. Not a reason, but the reason. They asked people in groups, at three points along the journey:
at the moment of first contact (before they were married but when they were first in touch with the church)
around the time of the ceremony
and a year later.
One option researchers gave as the main reason for marrying in church was this: ‘The main reason for choosing church for me personally was the appearance of the church or chapel.’ And here’s what they found: before the day only 4% said the main reason they chose church was because of its appearance. Of those questioned around the time of their wedding, only 1% said that was the main reason. And a year after the day, not a single person questioned could say that the look of church was the standout reason they chose it for their wedding.
On the other hand, a number of other reasons were advanced by more than 80% of the people questioned as the main reason for choosing church over any other venue. And they were all God reasons. They were things like this: ‘We wanted to make our vows before God’; ‘We wanted to ask for his blessing’; ‘We wanted a spiritual side to our wedding’; ‘We wanted the sacred ambience of the church’; ‘It was something to do with my family’s faith or mine’ (or my partner’s faith or mine); ‘We wanted a proper wedding’; ‘We wanted a traditional wedding.’
Our researchers found that for about two thirds of couples the appearance of the building is a reason to choose a particular church over another. But when it comes to choosing to be married in church at all, it hardly figures. Only one in a hundred would say they had originally chosen church for what meets the eye.
So this word ‘proper’ comes to the Church from a wordless world, tied up in all these other high-scoring phrases about God and his felt presence. It’s a word more commonly used by couples in the south of England,