Church Weddings, Suffolk and Essex

If you are thinking about having your wedding at St Mary’s, we would love to hear from you.

We will do our best to make your wedding day truly memorable for you, your family and your friends.

The first step is to make an appointment with the Vicar, Revd Steve Morley, to fill in an application form and to talk about dates and times, the content of your service, wedding fees and the legal requirements for your marriage.

You will be given a booklet with further details and some useful contacts, but for the moment here are some answers to a few of the questions most people start with:

Can we get married at St Mary’s?

In recent years the Church of England has made it much easier to get married in the church of your choice, but the Vicar has to be satisfied that you can lawfully marry in the parish before the arrangements can be fixed. You can generally get married in St Mary’s if one of you:

lives in the parish
was baptised here or your name is in the confirmation register
has at any time had your usual place of residence here for not less than six months
has habitually attended worship here for not less than six months
has a parent who has resided in the parish or habitually worshipped here for not less than six months
has a parent or grandparent who was married here.

If none of these circumstances apply, it may still be possible to marry you by obtaining an appropriate licence or Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate. We can advise you more fully if necessary about the circumstances in which these may be appropriate for you.

What if one of us has been married before?

If either of you has been married before and your former wife or husband is still alive, we will sensitively discuss the background circumstances with you. We cannot promise that we will always be able to marry you, but we believe in a God of renewal and new beginnings and so our policy is to accept couples for marriage whenever we properly can.

In cases where we cannot marry you, we may be able to conduct a service of blessing where you have had a civil marriage ceremony.

What about wedding preparation?

In order to help you think about your future life together, we encourage all wedding couples to spend some time meeting with someone from our marriage preparation team. This will usually involve one or two meetings and the completion of an on-line questionnaire. Many couples have said that this is a lot of fun and how much they valued the chance to discuss things away from the pressures of organising the big day!

What will it cost?

The current cost for your church wedding is £476 which includes the cost of the service, the calling of banns, your marriage certificate and the optional marriage preparation course.

Please note that this figure does not include the cost of additional items such as an organist, choir, bells or flowers.

For more information

on Weddings

For more useful wedding information, take a look at the Church of England weddings site here.

Church Weddings