- guardian.co.uk, Thursday January 11 2001 02.37 GMT
The office said 62% of marriages in 1999 were conducted by local authority registrars in civil ceremonies, rather than by church ministers, a marked rise from a decade earlier when most weddings - just -still took place in church.
Now that wedding services may take place in hotels, stately homes and even restaurants with special licences, nearly a quarter of all civil marriages are now not even held in a register office. Five years ago just 2,496 ceremonies took place in such places but by 1999 that figure had risen to 37,416.
The Church of England was yesterday relaxed about no longer being the prime location for weddings: "As long as people are getting married and are having well thought-out, well planned marriages that is the important thing," a spokesman said.
There was a drop in the number of weddings in 1999, 263,515 in England and Wales compared with 267,303 in 1998. It is thought the slight decline may have been because couples were delaying getting married until millennium year.
