Quoth dangermom:
Does that imply that most couples don’t bother to get married until they have a child, or is the usual sequence civil wedding - pregnancy - childbirth - church wedding?
IME it’s pretty normal to get married after having a baby–you’d have the civil ceremony at the same time as the church wedding and do the baptism too. Or plenty of people raise a family and never get married at all. But AFAIK your average Danish person still gets baptized, confirmed, and married at church–they just don’t attend otherwise. Confirmation is a big social deal, involving a special outfit (a fancy white dress for a girl), a large party, and big presents.
Yeah, I noticed that too, after I already posted. I’ve never actually been to a wedding in a church. Or any religious type place. Art gallery, reception hall, little league baseball field, (non-religious) chapel in Las Vegas, yes. Church, no. So it’s not like all Americans are having church weddings, either.
(One of my cousins was married in a Catholic ceremony, but I was unable to attend. AFAIK, that’s the only church wedding I’ve even ever been invited to.)
A Swiss woman I knew was amazed by the fact that in the US (and Canada) clergy were licensed to perform weddings. In Switzerland, weddings were performed by a public official and, if you wanted to also have a religious wedding, that was your business and no business of the state.
On the other hand, when I first moved to Quebec, civil weddings were not permitted; only authorized clergy were licensed to perform marriage. Then they introduced civil weddings, but made them quite expensive ($100 for the license, but that was 100 1968 dollars, more like $1000 today) in order to “not compete with the churches”. A friend of mine, an impecunious grad student, found a church that would do it for $15 and that’s what he did.
Almost the same for Spain. During most of the time since the creation of the civil registry, a religious ceremony doubled up as a civil one automatically; either one of the spouses (or a duly authorized third party) would take the wedding certificate issued by the pastor to the registry in order to get the new civil status registered and the “family book” issued.
In the early 1990s, the government declared that procedure invalid: if you wanted your wedding to count for legal purposes, you had to get married in front of a judge or city councilor. They did this thinking it would lower the amount of church weddings, but it led to an increase instead: most people would get “the real wedding” (the one with friends and family) at the church as intended, and either a few days before or a few after have the civil ceremony in the presence of the civil officer and the two witnesses required by law (the two nearest civil servants). The increase was due to elderly people who hadn’t wanted to get married because it would have meant a loss of pension benefits - but, since now the wedding that they really cared about (the one in a church) did not have legal consequences, they felt free to have it!
Nowadays the old procedure is back in force, but if you wish to have a religious wedding with no civil consequences you can.
Chronos, I’ve known people in Spain who got married (in a church) when their firstborn wanted to have first communion and a family (in Mexico) where the marriage took place when the grandchildren were asking “why are grandma and grandpa still ‘dating’?” (Spanish uses the same words for bf/gf, groom/bride and newlyweds: this was the word being used). I understand this second example also took place in a church: the same one where the happy couple’s five children had been baptised…
Where is that please? It looks bit like Port Lympne, where my sister got married, but I’m not sure it is. (Yes, my sister got married at an animal park. After dark we went and saw the wolves.).
Another Brit chiming in with “married in church but not religious”. (actually here)We married well before the changes in 1995 opened up the options and in those day the Register Offices were generally drab and miserable (having been to a Register Office wedding last year I have to say this has really changed).
They’ve always varied a lot. Some are in gorgeous old buildings, the type people might choose as a wedding anyway.
Or a Jewish ceremony at a synagogue, or a Quaker ceremony at a meeting house.
There are two sets of factors that complicate the situation in the UK regarding the automatic legal recognition of religious marriages.
Firstly, the UK is made up of three separate legal jurisdictions:
[ol]
[li]England and Wales[/li][li]Scotland[/li][li]Northern Ireland[/li][/ol]
(For the purposes of marriage law, these jurisdictions can be considered as equivalent to the individual states in the US.)
Secondly, England and Scotland each have their own established Christian churches (i.e. “state religions”), whereas Wales and Northern Ireland do not.
Logically enough, the clergy of the established churches have the power to perform marriages that are automatically recognised in law. For England, this means the clergy of the Church of England; for Scotland, this means ministers of the Church of Scotland. In Scotland, parallel legal powers have also been granted to the clergy (or equivalent) of various other Christian churches and denominations, including to those of the Roman Catholic Church.
In Northern Ireland, the clergy of the [Anglican] Church of Ireland, and of the Roman Catholic Church, and apparently also Presbyterian ministers, all also have the power to perform legally-recognised marriages. In Wales, only the clergy of the [Anglican] Church in Wales have this power.
Note that Roman Catholic clergy do not have the power to perform marriages in England or Wales that are automatically recognised in law.
In addition to the above, Jewish marriages are also automatically recognised in at least England and Wales, and Quaker marriages are automatically recognised anywhere in the UK.
Marrying in accordance with the rites of any other Christian denomination or of any other religion requires the presence of an authorised person to deal with the registration (at least in England). My sister used to do this for her church.
More confusing details here:
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_family/family/getting_married.htm
and here:
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/scotland/your_family/family_and_personal_issues_index_scotland/getting_married_scotland.htm
Incidentally, it used to be the case until comparatively recently in Scotland that you could pretty much get legally married however you wanted, wherever you wanted, by whomever you wanted; this would give you an “irregular marriage”. Obviously this could easily present practical difficulties in proving that you were in fact legally married (since no formalities need be complied with).
Not “Brit”: Gretna Green was the destination of English (or Welsh) couples.
My hometown offers three non-church places where the city official will perform a wedding. Two are castles. One castle is used as a restaurant, the other as a conference center. The third place is a theater.
This is incorrect. A church wedding counts in itself in Denmark (though you do have to sign the same papers, only it is done in the church office). About 40 % of Danish weddings are church weddings, the rest are civil ceremonies.
What’s the logic in making you have to have an actual civil ceremony rather than just letting you sign a certificate while an official watches and verifies? I get letting you do both at the same time if you want to, but not forcing it.
Several reasons, but the main ones off the top of my mind are:
- most religious ceremonies take place on the weekend; civil servants work M-F.
- like in the Spanish case, an actual attack on religious institutions.
- those governments which accept certificates from people who aren’t civil servants usually have some procedure to define who can issue/file them: people who aren’t using someone with these qualifications still needs to get the civil paperwork, if they want their marriage to count for legal purposes. Note that this also applies for weddings performed abroad.
The barebones “civil ceremony” is actually tiny (this is true for some religious ceremonies too, such as Catholic weddings), filling up a piece of paper and filing it doesn’t take much longer than filing the pre-filled paper. It takes more people but not more time. My aunt’s second wedding was civil and it took longer for the guests to file in than for the actual ceremony.
It’s Tylney Hall, in Hampshire, which strangely enough was a hospital in WWI. No wolves, though.
Edit - looking at this photo of Port Lympne, the terrace and gardens look very similar indeed, although the building is quite different.
In France it has been the consequence of the long-lasting feud between the Catholic church and the Republic. The state didn’t want the church to have any authority in civil matters (and didn’t think such authority could be “shared” with a religious organization, in a more theorical way).
In fact a church is forbidden to marry people who haven’t yet been married at the town hall.
In France it has been the consequence of the long-lasting feud between the Catholic church and the Republic. The state didn’t want the church to have any authority in civil matters (and didn’t think such authority could be “shared” with a religious organization, in a more theorical way).
In fact a church is forbidden to marry people who haven’t yet been married at the town hall.
It’s probably for the same reason that French civil wedding was made quite a bit ceremonial, as an alternative to a religious ceremony.
In Norway most marriages still take place in church, but otherwise the situation is very similar to Denmark. Couples may have had one or more children before getting married - in fact I’ve known several couples who have chosen to wait until the children would be old enough to remember, and even take part in, the wedding. And the fact that the couple chooses to get married in church does not necessarily mean they are regular church-goers or otherwise particularly Christian. For many people, churches are for baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals - plus perhaps a Christmas Eve service every few years.
Scot here, got married in a civil ceremony in Sweden at the Ice Hotel. It was rather cool 
If I was religious, I could have had a legally binding Christian ceremony in their Ice Chapel, but apparently it was a rather long service, and at -5c in a silk dress, only recommended for the really devout!
I got married in a hotel in Torquay in Devon, Southwest England in 2001. The registrar was very strict in stipulating that no religious material whatsoever be included in the ceremony. No hymns, and my wife wasn’t allowed to wear anything like a cross on a chain round her neck for instance. She doesn’t, but they checked. This was all fine with us of course, but we were surprised at the strict enforcement.
Things were much more relaxed at my brother’s hotel wedding last summer. Probably down to individual registrars.