I have to say that I completely missed the “owls bearing rings” fad.

Oh dear.  I thought this was from The Onion.

What a bizarre concatenation of facts, fantasies and falderols.  First of all:  they want to reverse the trend where only one in four weddings takes place in churches - by making church ceremonies virtually indistinguishable from secular ones.  But in that case why should anybody choose a church over a night club, a sports ground, a luxury hotel, where they can go straight to the reception?  Second, Abp Sentamu avers that there is a hunger for the sacred and churches out to be more flexible so that this hunger can be met.  But again, if you have horses cantering up the nave (one of the examples given) the sacred has gone out of the window.  It all sounds self-defeating to me and a sign of loss of confidence.

This seems backwards to me.  They want couples to have church weddings so that they will continue (start?) coming to church.  I always thought that you should be a regular attender (if not member) of a parish BEFORE you asked the priest to marry you.  Maybe since the C of E is the established church they have to “provide the services” for anyone who asks but, whatever The comment that some felt “unworthy for a church wedding” or that it would be “hypocritical” to have one (since they don’t attend church) actually is a good thing.  If one is not a practicing Christian, why should one be “entitled” to a Christian Marriage Service?

This is a repeated pattern in the COE (one thinks of the various liturgical changes over the last 50 years) and I know of no long term evidence that it ever achieves its intended “mission”. The reasons that folks are declining to have their marriages solemnized, and the bodies buried and so forth in the context of Christian prayer and faith, are complex, long term and implausibly related to the absence of performing animals.

Perhaps this is the future of CofE weddings?