THE wedding season is here, meaning many of us can look forward to scanning gift lists and donning our best outfits to celebrate marriages in the next few months.

Despite statistics which tell us that around one in three marriages will end in divorce, the British public's optimism remains intact and most people still marry at some stage.

But the traditional image of the solitary blushing young bride and groom perched on top of a wedding cake no longer gives a full picture of the thousands of marriages that take place from June to September in this country each year.

Hovering in the background of a significant slice of marrying couples are a pair of ex-spouses and a handful of children who rearrange to create new families after, or often before, the big day arrives.

But so far the Church of England has refused to formally allow these couples to marry in church, even though in reality 7,500 church marriages a year -- 11 per cent of the total -- already include at least one partner who has been divorced.

Now the church has taken a cautious step towards reforming its policy when a synod meeting in York agreed in principle to allowing divorced couples to marry.

It has once again re-opened the debate about whether this will pave the way for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles to marry, even though her husband is still alive.

Despite the official stance of the Church of England it has long been understood that individual churches are allowed to decide their own policies.

Rev Michael Williams from Bolton Parish Church of St Peter in Churchgate has been allowing divorced couples to remarry for many years.

"We do remarry divorced couples on the proviso that they have made proper provision for any previous children," he explains.

"Divorce is a very painful thing and we would not want anyone to remarry before they had addressed that issue in the interests of any children involved.

"When people come to get remarried the vows they make are very serious and solemn and we wouldn't want them given by someone who has reneged on their responsibilities."

Even though the Church of England does not formally allow divorced people to remarry in church, Rev Williams said he could reconcile his policy with that of the ruling body.

"I think we should allow people to remarry because marriages can die and remarriage can be part of the healing process. We have an overall ruling body which traditionally decides the overall policy but we can make our own decisions because churches are different.

"But I think it is something which I think the church has to face overall and it is good that there is an ongoing debate." The tentative step toward change follows more than 20 years of anguished debate and six years of a working party study -- and the new proposals recommend that remarriages would still only be allowed in 'exceptional circumstances'.

It is a stance which Rev Bob Horrocks from St Paul with Emmanuel Church, Deansgate, already supports.

"At the moment our general policy is not to marry anyone who is divorced. In certain circumstances exceptions are made although that is quite rare," he says.

"Such an exception might be where someone's divorce is a long way back in the past and that person has since become a Christian and is a regular member of the church."

It is unclear whether any new stance would apply to Prince Charles and Camilla since both were involved in infidelities, giving the church an extra problem sanctioning their marriage.

But Rev Williams would not be drawn on whether his church's open attitude would apply to Prince Charles and Camilla should they want to marry. "That is another debate altogether. You then have issues about the monarchy which makes it very different from two normal people just deciding to go ahead and remarry."

Advice to clergy issued by the church earlier this year urged vicars to consider whether the marriage would be likely to cause hostile public comment or scandal, consecrating an old infidelity or undermining of the church's credibility.

The debate has raged on for more than 20 years and it is unlikely that the Church of England will now be in any rush to commit itself to a dramatic change of direction.

But the fact that it accepts that many churches already remarry divorced couples shows a slow recognition that "till death do us part" can still be meaningful the second time round.

FACT FILE

There were 141,135 divorces granted in 2000 compared with 144,556 in 1999 - a fall of 2.4 per cent and the lowest annual number since 1979.

The divorce rate decreased to 12.7 people per 1,000 married population in 2000 from 13.0 in 1999.

Divorce rates are highest among men and women aged between 25 and 29.

70 per cent of all divorces in 2000 were between couples where the marriage had been the first for both parties compared with 82 per cent in 1981.

A total of 142,457 children aged under 16 were in families where the parents divorced in 2000, of whom a quarter were aged under five.

(Latest figures from the National Statistics Office issued in 2001)