Weddings
...beginning something beautiful
We welcome enquiries for Weddings at either of our two church buildings, St Marks Avalon or St Davids Palm Beach. There are four main steps in being married at our church:
1) Submit the MARRIAGE APPLICATION FORM;
2) Attend an INFORMATION MEETING with one of our ministers;
3) Complete an approved MARRIAGE PREPARATION COURSE;
4) Two or three INTERVIEWS with the Minister.
An appointment for the interview is made after the first three steps.
1. Marriage Application Form
Please download this Marriage Application Form, fill in and return it to our church office. This will establish your booking and begin the remainder of the process. If either you or your fiancée have previously been divorced the process may involve some extra step. Please see below for more details.
2. Information Meeting
Our information meetings have two functions:
i) We discuss the service and details like music, flowers, etc., and answer any questions you may have about your wedding day.
ii) We give you a form: Notice of Intended Marriage. This is a government form, which you take away to fill in, but do not sign until the interview with the Minister. It must be signed no earlier than 18 months, and no later than 1 month and 1 day before your wedding day. Please note you will be required to produce a Birth Certificate (or a Passport if you were born outside of Australia) for identification purposes.
You will also need to come to the church or office 2–3 days prior to the wedding to sign a Statutory Declaration.
3. Marriage Preparation Course
The biggest commitment of your life needs preparation. We want your marriage to be strong and stable. Thus a pre-requisite for marriage at St Marks Avalon or St Davids Palm Beach is that every couple must attend an approved Preparation Course. We recommend the Anglicare Growing Together courses, although we may accept a similar course supervised by a recognised provider. For further details of the Anglicare course, click on this link.
At the completion of these steps, we would arrange a series of two or three interviews with one of ministers to plan your particular wedding and to discuss any issues that may have emerged from your participation in the Marriage Preparation course.
Making it personal
When marrying a couple on their Wedding Day, it is warmer and friendlier if we have come to know each other beforehand. One way of doing this, and a helpful preparation for a Church Wedding, is to attend regularly one of our Sunday Services. Our meetings are at 8am, 10am, and 6:30pm at St Marks Avalon, and at 9:30am at St Davids Palm Beach. You are welcome to attend any of them. Please do come and introduce yourself to our ministers.
Christian Marriage
Another consideration, of which many couples are unaware, is that a Church Wedding pre-supposes a belief in God and the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Service those assembled call on God to bless the union, and the bride and groom make certain obligations to one another in God's name. They also undertake to arrange their married life in such a way that in everything God will be honoured. However, if you do not have a basic belief in God there will be an opportunity to explore what it means to have a personal faith.
Remarriage of Divorcees
A person whose previous marriage has been terminated by Divorce needs to make a special time to talk with the minister prior to proceeding with the wedding arrangements. We do marry divorcees under certain conditions and assess each application individually. Please phone the office to arrange an appointment before lodging your Marriage Application Form. Please bring your Marriage Application Form to this meeting.
Your Next Step
Having given careful and thoughtful consideration to the above (and if you are not a divorced person) and you wish to be married at St Marks or St Davids, please return your written application. When we receive it, the time and date you ask for will be reserved for you. Any phone booking is tentative until we receive this form. If we do not receive it within 20 days, we shall assume you have made arrangements elsewhere.
If you decide, after booking the church and sending us the application form, to proceed no further with St Marks or St Davids please let us know as soon as possible. There are people we need to advise and cancellations that need to be made. It may also be that another couple wish to book the church at that time.
If you would like to discuss any further matters in relation to your wedding, or if there is anything else you would like to know, please do not hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, we wish you every joy and happiness as you make plans for your life together.