The wedding day is only 24 hours, but a marriage should last a life time.
It’s not that the wedding day is unimportant, it’s just that the short term pressure to get it organised often distracts people from the need to prepare for a life long relationship.
At St James and Emmanuel we aim to support wedding couples with both their short term and long terms plans. We do this by asking everyone who is going to get married with us to join us for a marriage preparation day early in the year.
Couples have sometimes been nervous beforehand; what will it be like?! In fact, it’s a wonderful day, held at St James, where couples meet each other, share in a hot meal with wine and meet the organist, bell-ringers and find out which clergy person will be taking their service and how to plan an order of service. We do talk about negotiating the big issues of marriage like money and conflict but there is no sharing in groups, or embarrassing questions – just a really helpful video presentation from an organisation called Care for the Family. All our couples go away having had a great day.
Next: Attending services
