Love my nephew as I do, my heart sank when he chose a civil wedding in flaming Spain. Give me an English church any day

Y OU should try to make every night of your marriage like your wedding night. Or so the woman registrar counselled the happy couple at a wedding I attended a fortnight ago in southern Spain.

If she’d known how the festivities would draw to their close, she might have offered different advice.

On the night in question (or so I’m assured by those who stayed at the reception until the small hours), my wife’s beloved nephew — the groom — was simply so comatose with drink that he had to be heaved to bed by his sister and his bride.

The latter expressed her disapproval of his condition in the most forceful language. If every night of their marriage is to be like that, I wouldn’t like to predict how long it will last!

As it happens, this was the first of two weddings I have attended in the past fortnight, with yet another coming up next month.

After a hiatus of a couple of decades since my contemporaries were getting hitched in their droves, I’ve now reached that age when the invitations are flooding in again, this time to witness the nuptials of our sons’ generation. How weddings have changed in the interim.

Solemn

Those I’ve been to these past two successive Saturdays, at any rate, were a very far cry from mine in 1980, when the soon-to-be Mrs U joined me at the altar of St Aloysius in Oxford (with my wicked ancient grandmother hissing in a stage whisper as the bride walked past: ‘My God! She’s wearing white!’)

Take location. Back in those days almost every couple I knew, whether believers or not, chose to marry in the parish church of the bride’s parents.

There, they would repeat the sublime and solemn words of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and [bride only] obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.’

Even those few of our friends who opted for civil ceremonies went no further than the local register office.

But not so today, when the gilded young see the world as their parish, the wedding rite as a matter of personal choice — with favourite poems replacing St Paul’s reflections on faith, hope and charity — and almost every fancy hotel, stately home and museum seems to have a licence to host marriages and civil partnerships. Indeed, since 1995, any premises can secure a ‘grant of approval’ to hold weddings, as long as the local council is happy that they are ‘seemly and dignified’, regularly available and meet all of the relevant fire and safety regulations.

So it is that when the question has been popped, and answered in the affirmative, increasing numbers of today’s young log onto the internet to search ever further afield for that perfect venue for stag nights, hen parties and the big day itself.

Call me an old curmudgeon, but I must say my heart rather sank when I heard our dear nephew and his beautiful, clever fiancee were to be married in the furnace of Andalusia in late July (and this was long before we knew we’d be catching the beginning of ‘Lucifer’, the most ferocious heat wave for years).

Yes, of course this was to be their day — and if they wanted to get married in an oven of a hacienda, that was their choice. But I wondered if I was the only guest, among those used to the temperate climate of England, who wouldn’t normally have dreamed of venturing so close to the equator in high summer.

Melt

One thing was for sure. If I wore my new morning suit, acquired when I discovered the old one had unaccountably shrunk in the 37 years since I wore it on my own wedding day, then I’d melt.

On a miserly note, there was also the cost to consider — flights there and back, a hotel and the rip-off of hiring a car (the fabulous hacienda was, of course, miles from anywhere).

Clearly it would be a waste to go out just for the wedding and come straight home. We’d have to stay for at least a week on the Costa del Sol (far too much Sol, if you ask me) and call it our summer holiday for the year.

With many other guests making the same calculation, I dread to think how many tens of thousands of euros the couple’s exotic choice of venue will have cost their friends and families.

But enough! Blistering heat aside, the wedding itself was a perfect joy. The poetry readings, if unconventional, were profoundly moving — and our hosts’ generosity with delicious food, drink and friendship knew no bounds. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Nor would I have missed last Saturday’s wedding of a beloved goddaughter — another wonderfully moving occasion, held in another stunning location (though, mercifully, closer to home).

The setting this time, outshone in beauty only by the bride, was the newly restored Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, the 18th-century villa that pioneered the Gothic Revival style.

Like the Spanish wedding, this too was a civil ceremony, with readings from secular poetry chosen by the happy couple. There were other similarities, too — not least, the lavish generosity of our hosts.

But one marked difference was in the character of the two registrars. Our nephew’s wedding was conducted by an Irishwoman, based in Spain — she who offered the misguided advice that brides and grooms should try to make every night like their wedding night.

Radiant

It seemed to me that she belonged to a new generation of registrars who go out of their way to put couples at their ease, cracking risque jokes and dispensing folk wisdom such as: ‘Never go to sleep angry with each other.’ (Show me the married couple who say they’ve always abided by that advice, and I’ll show you a pair of liars — or saints).

By contrast, the registrar at Strawberry Hill House was a dry old soul, who went on at length about his duties under the law and the solemn legal significance of the step the young couple were taking.

Each one to his own taste, of course, but I have to say that I preferred his approach. In my old-fashioned book, the wedding ceremony itself should be a deeply serious matter — probably the most serious step any of us will take — and it’s no job of the celebrant to put anyone at ease.

Indeed, my only slight regret about my goddaughter’s wedding is that God himself didn’t get a look-in, which made me feel I’d failed in my godpaternal duty to steer her immortal soul towards the light. But bless her for sparing us the blistering heat and the airport queues by getting married from home.

I must end by saying that having seen the two happy couples’ radiant love for each other, I have a very good feeling that both marriages were made in heaven and will last.

I just hope, for the sake of my dear nephew’s bride, that most nights of her marriage will be unlike her first.