Shropshire Star

Decline in religious wedding venues chosen in Shropshire

Fewer couples are choosing to tie the knot in a church, synagogue or other religious venue in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, new figures reveal.

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For the first time ever, across England and Wales, less than a quarter of marriages were religious ceremonies.

In Shropshire, there were 515 religious weddings in 2016, compared with 592 five years earlier, according to the latest Office for National Statistics data.

In Telford and Wrekin, the number dropped from 195 in 2011 to 143 in 2016.

A quarter of marriages were held in religious venues throughout England, while in Shropshire the proportion was higher at 28 per cent.

It was lower in Telford & Wrekin at 23 per cent.

The figures only include opposite-sex marriages.

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Across England and Wales, three in four religious weddings were Anglican, while a further 11 per cent were Catholic.

Non-Christian ceremonies only amounted to four per cent of the total.

The Canon Sandra Millar, who heads the Church of England's work on weddings, says many couples might think they have to be regular parishioners to get married in a church.

She said: "We want to reassure couples that they don’t have to be churchgoers to have a church wedding.

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"They don’t need to be christened, and we welcome couples who already have children.

"We’re working hard to encourage couples to ‘just ask’ at a church about getting married and all the creative possibilities that there are for their service."

Telford & Wrekin saw a 10 per cent fall in marriages from 2011 to 2016, when 647 couples got married.

There were 1,890 couples who got married in Shropshire in 2016 – a similar number to five years before.

Across England, the number of marriages has remained steady over the last five years, with 236,238 in 2016.

Kanak Ghosh, from the ONS, said: “Marriage rates remain at historical lows despite a small increase in the number of people who got married in 2016.

"Most couples are preferring to do so with a civil ceremony and for the first time ever, less than a quarter of everyone who married had a religious ceremony.

"Meanwhile, the age at which people are marrying continues to hit new highs as more and more over 50s get married."

Of the weddings held in the county, only 2.3 per cent were between same-sex couples in Shropshire and 3.4 per cent were between same-sex couples in Telford and Wrekin.