Luke, I am your father....

Last year I went along as a spectator, and spent about 20 minutes hanging around. This year I spend nearly 3 hours being measured and trying on clerical garb at what is known as the Tat Fair.

My fashion consultant accompanied me, to ensure that I didn't make any expensive mistakes or choose unwise colours - this is easily the most expensive clothing I've ever bought. But most of what I've ordered today will last me for the rest of my life, unless my shape changes drastically. I've ordered a cassock, a surplice, a preaching scarf, a clerical hoodie and a dual purpose cloak / Jedi costume - which unfortunately doesn't have an internal lightsaber pocket.

It's amazing how casually you can spend hundreds of pounds when you know somebody else is paying for it - we all get a grant to cover the cost of equipping ourselves with the right clothing for the job, and I went with what felt and looked right, rather than looking too closely at the price tag. Some of my colleagues have spent the bare minimum, but that tends to reflect the fact that they will wear the formal robes very little in their weekly duties. Where I'm going I'll be wearing robes Sunday by Sunday, conducting funerals in blustery country churchyards, and hunting down Darth Vader in my spare time.

Look away now if you don't want a preview of the future.

I've yet to order any shirts or stoles (seasonal coloured scarves) as the huge range on display left our heads spinning. Apparently the choices available have considerably widened since women were ordained. And that's a good thing - there is a core set of traditional vicar's shirt colours which I don't particularly like, and it's nice that I can pretty much nominate a colour and find that there will be a shirt available in it. So there's a lot to thank the girls for!!

I did try a couple of shirts on. It's a scary moment when you put that stiff piece of plastic in your collar. Keep this photo to yourself. Don't tell the rest of the internet about it. I think it's an offence to impersonate a clergyman!

Next I just need to find some nice jackets, comfy shoes, some important looking service books, office equipment.....

The Cost of Marriage

...there, that's got you reading on hasn't it? What's been going on in the vicarofdidley's household? Actually nothing of excitement or intrigue....but I did read this article on the BBC website, with marriage being the subject of a new green paper.

There's so much in there that I could talk about. Labour seeing any "stable and lasting relationship" as a good basis for child welfare, versus the Tories arguing that marriage helps keep couples together for the benefit of the children. I'm with the Tories on this one.

They then go on to talk about tax breaks for married couples, something which has been slowly pulled apart by the last few governments (of both flavours), but it's at this point that I start to fall asleep. However, there's something else they don't expand upon, which surely is a major obstacle for getting married, and that's the perceived cost of the wedding day itself.

The current figure for the 'cost of a wedding', based on newspaper and magazine articles that I've read seems to be around £30,000. Now I don't know how much my own wedding cost, as I only paid a small part of it (the bits that the groom traidtionally pays for), and it was 15 years ago, but I'm sure it was nowhere near this. Only a couple of generations ago a wedding reception was a simple meal back at home. Now it's been turned into an industry of 'essentials' that are mostly superfluous trimmings.

The actual cost of a church wedding = the ceremony, registration fees etc, is around £300 - 1% of that £30,000 figure. How do people manage to inflate it so much?

I'm going to enjoy meeting and preparing engaged couples for their marriage. I'll do everything I can to encourage more to get married, maybe by attending local wedding fairs (most people don't realise they are entitled to get married in church) but there's little I can do about the things people tack onto the side of a wedding, that build a huge financial hurdle that will burden somebody for a long time.

And finally, the Tories green paper will suggest "the offering of relationship advice at civil ceremonies". That sounds awfully like a wedding sermon by another name. The last time I went to a civil ceremony the mention of God was banned, so I wonder on what basis that relationship advice will be given?