CHURCH MARRIAGES IN DEDHAM

"Hello, is that the Parish Office? I want to enquire about getting married in your lovely church." "Have you, or your fiancée been married before?" "No." "Does one or the other of you live in the Parish of Dedham? "No".

This is a typical start to one of as many as fifty enquiries a year to our Parish Office, about the possibility of getting married in Dedham Church. It is always worth having a word with the Vicar about your plans, but the following points (which are an update of those published in this Magazine a decade ago) may be of some use to those who are contemplating marriage.

If you are unmarried,
you do not have a partner from a previous marriage still living,
you are both British subjects,
one of you lives in Dedham
and neither of you are serving in the armed forces,

then it is probably straightforward; you may get married in Dedham, after the ‘reading of Banns’, with due notice, and the Vicar can conduct the service without permission from anyone else.

In other cases a marriage licence is needed, either granted by the diocesan bishop (for foreign nationals and those in the armed forces) or, in the case of a special licence (which is always needed if a person neither lives nor has a family home in the parish), by the staff of the Archbishops’ Faculty Office in London.

It is important to note that a special licence is not automatically granted just because the Vicar asks for one. Some years ago the Archbishop of Canterbury's Registrar wrote to the Vicar of Dedham, "His Grace is only prepared to grant his Special Licence for marriages where there are strong and continuing connections on the part of the applicants".

Although plans have been announced that the Church intends to change the method by which permission is granted (parish clergy may be given authority to agree some cases where once they had to apply for a Special Licence) there are, as far as we know, no plans to change the conditions whereby a church may conduct a marriage. The C of E has yet to follow the civil law and allow couples an open choice of the venue in which they may get married.

If you have questions about this matter, please telephone the Parish Office for an appointment with the Vicar, who’ll do his very best to help.