booking a church

fireyfirenze

sorry if there is a thread about this somewhere already, i just wondered if somebody could help me as I'm very new to wedding planning and quite confused!

for people getting married in a church then having a reception
elsewhere, what do you book first?! we have provisionally booked a date for our reception and were planning on putting the deposit down this week however what if we can't have the date that we wanted for the church and it's booked up?

also how do you choose a church? iv been on the website yourchurchwedding.org and found out which churches are near me, do we just ring up and ask them? are some stricter than others? do they take bookings years in advance like hotels do for weddings? I'm confused! any help would be appreciated.

newthrift

Normally you go for the church within your parish, there will be a list online and just telephone up and ask for a meeting to look at dates ect.. Then you go through applying for licences which the church normally can help with. Best would be to ring the church ASAP and at least check they have your date before paying deposit, unless you have a couple of churches you are flexible to book with. Also some are more strict than others and I believe it comes down to the vicars discrepancy a lot of the time.

fireyfirenze

thanks. iv done the online thing and it says there are 2 churches in my parish, one is not very nice at all and the other looks very posh! so I am restricted to those 2? this might sound daft but how do i know of the church is catholic or not? I'm not catholic.

Ruby_Roo

fireyfirenze wrote: »

thanks. iv done the online thing and it says there are 2 churches in my parish, one is not very nice at all and the other looks very posh! so I am restricted to those 2? this might sound daft but how do i know of the church is catholic or not? I'm not catholic.

The Your Church Wedding site is a Church of England website, so there won't be any Catholic Churches!

I believe you're restricted to Churches the Parish you live in or have a connection to, such as your parents living there, if you marry in the Church of England. I don't believe there is any such restriction if you marry in a Methodist Church.

endoftherainbow

We booked our church before the reception venue. We did it this way round because there was a specific church we wanted to get married in (this wasn't our local Parish church). We booked church about 9 months before wedding. Interestingly the Rev'd did comment that although he still had a few people who had booked years in advance, more and more couples these days were booking for the same year.


Best to get the service/venue provisionally booked at roughly at the same time. You could ask the venue to extend the provisional booking to give you time to secure somewhere for the service? If venue can't do this without taking deposit, they would probably offer some flexibility if you can't get dates to match up.


As Newthrift suggests above, your Parish church is the best starting place. Even if you want to get married in a different church, they will help. You'll need to be in contact with your Parish Council any way to organise reading of Banns. Our Parish church were most helpful, explained everything we needed to do step by step.
Good luck with it all. Enjoy every stage of the planning and don't let it stress you

Mojisola

fireyfirenze wrote: »

also how do you choose a church? iv been on the website yourchurchwedding.org and found out which churches are near me, do we just ring up and ask them? are some stricter than others? do they take bookings years in advance like hotels do for weddings? I'm confused! any help would be appreciated.

If you never go to church normally, why do you want to have a religious wedding service?

fireyfirenze

Mojisola wrote: »

If you never go to church normally, why do you want to have a religious wedding service?

I knew somebody would pipe up with that you can believe in god without being a regular church goer, you know?

thanks to everyone else, it's become a little clearer

Modgepodge

I contacted the church I wanted (attended as a child for a bit, it's near where I grew up) and the reception venues at the same time, then once I had the reception venue provisionally held (before I paid) I checked the church was available and booked it. I was allowed to as my dad still lives in the parish.

I'm not a church goer, tbh I don't really believe in god though I wouldn't say I'm an atheist, but my partner does believe in god and goes to church occasionally so he was keen to marry in a church. I'm happy to marry in a church for his sake. Plus, I'm paying the church almost £500 for babe privilege so I won't feel guilty about it!

Mojisola

fireyfirenze wrote: »

I knew somebody would pipe up with that you can believe in god without being a regular church goer, you know?

That's a good reason for wanting a religious service.