How Do I Get Married in the Parish

We will help you on each step of the journey towards your wedding day. To get things underway, contact the parish office by phone or email.

To marry in the Catholic church, either the bride or groom needs to be a baptised Catholic. You also need to live in the parish or have a strong connection to it (perhaps you were brought up here).

If you are getting married abroad or in another part of the UK, but your main home is within the parish, you will need paperwork from here – please do get in touch at least six months before you are due to be married.

Westminster Diocese requires that the engaged couple complete a marriage preparation course covering the nature of Marriage and the promises that they will be making. Taking part in a preparation course is not as onerous as it may sound, indeed, preparing for your wedding is a great joy.

We use the SmartLoving Engaged Online course for marriage preparation.

SmartLoving Engaged Online is an online course that will lead you and your fiancé through your marriage preparation process; there are nine lessons in total, each taking about 1.5 hours to complete. We recommend that you do one lesson a week and take your time to understand the content and practice the life-changing tools you will be learning. We will assign you a mentor couple from the parish to accompany you in your preparation stage.

SmartLoving Engaged is the most sophisticated, flexible and user-friendly Catholic Marriage Preparation Course available anywhere, equipping you with the tools to make your marriage the best it can be. To sign up for the course follow the link to the right in 'Resources' section of this page. There is a £98 sign up fee for the couple.

It may be that you already have children and think that means you can’t be married in a Catholic church. It doesn’t – you are welcome here.

Or it may be that your intended husband or wife practices a different faith, or does not have a faith, and you or they are worried we might ask them to convert to Catholicism. We won’t. We’ll ask them to support you in bringing any children up as Catholics, and above all we will simply welcome you both.

As we journey towards your wedding day there will be many opportunities for you to ask any questions that you have.

Please give us at least six months notice, and please get in touch with us before you confirm any dates with a wedding venue. This will avoid the disappointment of the church already being booked or any other complications. We need six months notice as there is a fair bit of paperwork and preparation. Whether your wedding is a year or even 18 months away, it is not too early to get in touch.

If one or both of you have been married before, or if there are other aspects of your relationship, that could mean you cannot be married in a Catholic church. For example, for a Catholic, to validly marry a non-baptised person, a dispensation is necessary. Everyone’s circumstances are unique and sometimes very personal; you will be listened to carefully and gently, and you will be helped in every possible way. Please contact the parish office for further assistance

Once again, congratulations! We look forward to celebrating with you.