Wedding Liturgies

Stephen Elkins-Williams

The variety of wedding liturgies at the Chapel of the Cross is striking. It arises not only out of the two worship spaces available to us — the smaller, warmer, and more intimate chapel and the larger and more majestic church — but also out of the circumstances of the couples and the congregations they gather around them. While the framework of the service is common to all our weddings (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 423), the flesh and blood put on this skeleton can be very different.

Contrast several weddings here just in the past few months. One was an overflowing church in the evening with formal dress, the organ leading the congregation in thunderous praise of God. Another was less than twenty people in the chapel gathered just outside the communion rail with no music used and the scripture lessons read by family members. Yet another in the church had a high degree of
university student involvement and utilized guitar accompaniment to a favorite folk hymn as well as the organ and trumpet for others from The Hymnal 1982. Still another wedding involved the sacrament of Holy Communion for the whole congregation, and the newly married couple ended their procession out by walking under a military sword arch just outside the church door.

The constant for Chapel of the Cross weddings (even for those rare ones celebrated off the church grounds) remains the words and actions of “The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage,” in the Prayer Book. But the clergy and staff help each couple to implement that common liturgy in ways appropriate to their particular circumstances.