Wedding Fees
Dear Resident Reverend,
Me and my fiancee want to get married in church and have selected our local parish church in Marlow Buckinghamshire called All Saints.
We looked up first the costs to get married in church and the fee on most websites we looked at for an anglican church wedding is £240-this is for the service the reading of banns and the certificate. (organ,bells etc extra)
I have recieved a copy of the fees from our church-and its more than double!
The fee is a huge £600 just for the service banns and cirtificate, plus£200 to allow our videographer to film the wedding and as we wanted to bring in a Gospel choir an extra £45 just for the privilage of having them there as well.
This is turning out to be costing us nearly £850 with no organist or bells (plus we are paying for the outside choir seperatly)
I don't understand if the 'normal rate' is £240, why is it that our church is so expensive? its not very fair as we can't even go to a cheaper church further away as its not within our parish.
Can you help explain-I understand that there are costs and it cannot be free but to me this seems more like making a large profit rather than covering costs and allowing me to get married in a church to feel closer to god.
Its sad to say but no wonder why people are abandoning the church for civil ceromonys as they are much less expensive.
Kind regards,
Tracy
Comments
Hi Tracy
Hopefully the Vicar will have given you a breakdown of fees. Costs for Ministers fees, certificates, banns etc are set centrally and are fixed, but most churches charge extra for vergers fees and heating,which usually costs the church a fortune if it is a big old building.
I'm guessing the problem is actually the videographer and most charges (particularly for musicians) double when the ceremony is being filmed - wherever you are.
At a wedding show recently I was told that a hotel charged an extra £300 for the Marriage Room and there was a fee for the registrar plus musicians - on top of the fee for the hire of the dining suite. So the price was comparable to a church wedding in the end.
The Church service IS the wedding - the rest are just add ons and with the average cost of wedding days being in double figures of thousands of pounds we still offer a good service for a fraction of the cost of the day.
It is possible to keep costs down on a Church wedding but you'll have to decide if having the Videographer is worth the additional fees incurred.
Over to you
Jan
Hello Tracy / Jan
I'm also hoping to get married in the same church but am really worrying about the fees being charged. It's quite likely to make us have to change and have a less meaningful civil service despite the fact that so many of our family have been baptised or married in this church (and my grandmother to whom I was very close is buried in the churchyard).
Unfortunately it's not the videographer that puts the charges up for Tracy's wedding. Just the standard service at this church comes in at £634 or £754 with an organ (and an organ is pretty much necessary for a wedding even though I take your point that it's the service that counts).
As we're the second wedding to take place on that day, I can't believe it's all being spent on heating and the time for a verger.
I know there's nothing you can do about the situation. However, it's a real shame that the Christian church is becoming only an option for rich people. It may be that some people have very expensive weddings but ours is a really simple (and necessarily very budget conscious) occasion.
Em
Hi Em
Many thanks for your comments and I'm so sorry that you feel that the price of this wedding venue is prohibitive.
Tracey will have read an old price list on the internet as the basic fees are now £306.50. You can read a breakdown of these fees at the new CofE weddings website
http://www.yourchurchwedding.org/your-wedding/the-cost-of-church-wedding...
I don't have any say on this unfortunately. The Vicar and or the PCC will have set the fees so it may well be worth a chat with them and be polite but frank about how you feel.
I hope you can come to a decision about the choice of church and have your dream wedding - organs and all - and have peace about it.
Kind regards
Jan Harney (Rev'd)
http://www.asineden.co.uk