Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Marriage a la mode.

I don't normally pick these things up, but there is a piece in the Independent that caught my eye. When Elizabeth Hurley got married recently at her local parish church, the vicar waived the usual £1000 fee in the expectation that a larger donation would be forthcoming. None was.

Maybe we were naive and should have stuck with our normal charges," the church treasurer added ruefully. "We'll know next time she gets married."

Quite apart from the fact £1000 seems a bit extortionate the whole point of a church marriage seems to be lost. No wonder young people choose to live together instead.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, they should have charged the usual fee and would have probably (possibly) received more. But what caught MY eye is the vicar saying "we'll know next time she gets married." I'd be less than eager to be married by someone of faith who expects it not to last.

Terry Hamblin said...

Yes, I imagine it was said with a large streak of irony and not a small degree of cattiness.

Anonymous said...

Ms. Hurley is a pretty woman, but if you look closely, she has noticeable acne scars on her cheeks. Just goes to show you nobody's perfect.

Let's hope her marriage in fact lasts.

Anonymous said...

Initially I thought that a £1,000 charge seemed excessive, however after consideration and bearing in mind the average wedding costs £11,000 I do not feel it is necessarily the case.

I should point out at this stage that I am a divorced 43 year old and may seem rather hypocritical when I say that in my view the church ceremony is the most important part of the wedding day, this is when the couple makes their solemn vow in front of God, the cost seems minimal when put alongside the cost of cars, dresses and other material goods that are rolled out to impress family and friends.

Although I am not a practising Catholic and like so many individuals these days only turn to God when in time of distress, it has not passed unnoticed that as the nations church attendance figures drop so does the countries moral standards, I cant help but feel the two are directly linked.

I can well remember as a young man upon joining the military being informed by a very large and highly decorated Sergeant Major Bowen that all of us would be attending weekly church parade, he didn’t care if we believed in God or not as the reason we would be attending was that it would teach us how to live and conduct our lives in the ‘correct manor’, I am not certain if Sergeant Major Bowen is still mobile but if he is I am certain he would have no hesitation in speaking to Madam Hurley about priorities, standards and outstanding church debts !