The Church of the Holy City is Edmonton’s Wedding Chapel Our Wedding Chapel The Wedding Chapel is open to man and wife who love one another, are legally eligible to be married, and who want to be married in our church and receive God’s blessing. There are NO requirements that the couple must first be members of our church or any other church and we do NOT require that the couple first take a marriage preparation course (although these are a very good idea and we can refer couples to some excellent courses in the city). What we DO offer is a simple yet moving wedding ceremony in a lovely sanctuary. The ceremony can be modified to suit your needs and ensure that the day is meaningful and “just right” for you. Each wedding we do includes the following: • wedding conferences and other meetings with the minister* (*all weddings are performed by our minister) • the wedding rehearsal the day before • the ceremony itself • use of our special “bridal room” and other facilities • a “unity candle” and choice of flower arrangements for the altar • use of piano, organ, and four track sound system* (*musician may be arranged separately) • a family Bible, as a present from our church to the couple Be assured that we will do everything we can to make your wedding a very special and beautiful day! For further details and prices, please call our pastor, Rev. John Maine, at (780) 475-1620. IMPORTANT!! -- PLEASE READ!! We want you to know what our church believes about marriage. 1. MARRIAGE IS IMPORTANT. Marriage is extremely important for all God’s people. It is the most powerful and intimate experience of love we can have. It is a high and heroic endeavour, the journey of a lifetime, to live in faithfulness to the welfare of just one other, special person. It is the relationship upon which we, as adults, can most securely build homes and families and be witnesses to the mystery of this love, as it passes from generation to generation. 2. MARRIAGE IS SPIRITUAL. Why spiritual? Because a marriage is vastly more than a social arrangement or legal contract. Marriage is about what matters most: love in all its forms and learning how to love another person, and be loved by them, through all the years and all of life’s many changes. It’s a relationship which challenges you to “live your love”, to make your commitment to another person deeper and more real in all that you think, say and do, whatever the situation. The daily practice of this commitment will in fact lead us eventually to become the love that we share, a new and better person than we were before! This is why God has “ordained marriage from the beginning”, as a way to help each of us grow in his Spirit, for he is love (1 John 4: 8). True marriage is always, ultimately, a spiritual path and a spiritual practice, for its highest purpose is our regeneration, i.e. our re-birth into a new life. 3. MARRIAGE IS INTENTIONAL. Being “intentional” means that we work at something consciously, with the intention and determination to make it succeed. A marriage relationship, involving all levels of our being, clearly requires this kind of approach. There are many issues two individuals will need to explore and negotiate together: lifestyles, careers, finances, sexuality and parenting, to name a few. Then there are the unexpected challenges such as illness, unemployment, a job transfer and others. All these things demand a response of openness and honesty from each partner, a conscious determination to listen, learn and see it through together. Make no mistake: this takes real work! 4. MARRIAGE IS OF GOD. Okay, but we are “only human”. Where can we look for help when our reserves of love, patience and understanding are running low, when we’re feeling frustrated and weary? We live in a world that, with its hectic pace and constant change, is certainly not a very supportive place for long-term relationships! Our high divorce rates are witness to that. On what, or on whom, can we rely to make sure our marriages will survive and grow? Well, let’s face it: marriage – loving one person to the exclusion of all others, the best we possibly can, for the rest of our lives – is just too big a task for any of us to take on by ourselves. For it to work, we need a bigger picture of what life’s all about and a higher power to help us through it. We need to know, especially in the tough times, that there’s someone holding us close and showing us the way we should go. That “someone” is God, whose love and wisdom are the source of our lives and our marriages. Bottom line: we need a relationship with God to make our relationship with one another work. This is the significance of getting married in the church! What we are doing is declaring, before God and all those who care about us, that for our marriage to bloom and grow as it should, we recognize our need to have God at the centre of it. Only in this way can our relationship become the lasting joy and blessing it is meant to be, for ourselves and for others. This blessing is what we hope for all couples and therefore we welcome all couples to our church! Our Wedding Chapel