WE’RE just coming into the weddings season here at St Michael’s, in the City of London. I hope I don’t have to endure a repeat of last year’s shenanigans.

A couple came in off the street and asked if they might be allowed to make “alternative vows”. With divorces ever on the rise you wonder what’s coming next. Do they want to replace “Till death us do part” with “...until a week on Tuesday”? Not quite. He, of the David Beckham haircut and his expensive clothes with that designer-ragged look, wanted to stand at the chancel steps and begin his lifelong vows with the immortal words: “Ever since we met last year in the Maldives...”

At least in the summer months the happy pair don’t ask me if they can adorn every flat surface with little candles like night-lights and make the church look like a tart’s boudoir.

For the lesson, I try to get couples to choose something luscious and sensual from the Old Testament Song of Songs: “Thou hast ravished my heart. Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love!

How much better is thy love than wine, and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!”

But recently, there has been a fashion for a bum-clenchingly awful poem, Invitation, by someone with the preposterous name of Oriah Mountain Dreamer. This starts by hoping the bride has not been “shrivelled and closed”. No doubt the bridegroom hopes not, too. It goes on to wonder if the couple have “touched the centre of their own sorrow”.

This is at a wedding, mind you, not a wake.

Then it says: “I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me.” But won’t her dress melt? And: “I want to know what sustains you from the inside,” – to which the only possible response is “Tripe and onions, love.” But the best line must be: “I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone.” Well, it’s going to be a rough honeymoon.

We use The Book of Common Prayer, so we don’t go in for any of that crooning, sentimental guff you find in the strange new marriage service – hideously mawkish phrases such as: “All that I am I give to you.” What, does he give her his indigestion and bad temper?

Then, incredibly, the priest prays: “Let them be tender with each other’s dreams.” It sounds like a schmaltzy song – all Candle in the Wind-ish. I think there should be a rubric printed at this point in bold type in the margin of that godforsaken new service: “The congregation shall here throw up – bride’s family’s side first.”

There’s no end to weirdness in the Church of England these days. I read about a vicar in Lincolnshire who has devised an order of service for couples divorcing. I could have a go at this myself:

Dearly beloved, we are here,

To split this incompatible pair;

Love, honour, cherish and obey?

Ah, that was only yesterday.

So give the rings back, sell the dress,

Put a notice in the press;

Let all the people gaze in wonder,

As what God joined, church puts asunder.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.