Elaine Murray MSP: Wants restrictions lifted

There have been moves to ease restrictions on where registration officers can conduct marriage ceremonies.

Dumfries Labour MSP Elaine Murray has backed moves to lift that restriction to ease the pressure at Gretna.

The initial growth in the town's weddings industry was in civil ceremonies.

A new registrar's office with three marriage rooms was built to cope with the demand.

But then, a new trend developed with more and more couples seeking religious weddings within the village.

These have gone up from 27 in 1991 to nearly 3000 last year.

Lovers

Some have been conducted by local ministers but clergy also travel regularly from the central belt to perform marriages which they cannot profit from.

At present, registrar's staff can only carry out marriages in registration offices.

More than a fifth of all Scottish weddings take place in the town, where the industry generates millions of pounds a year for the local economy.

As couples prepared to celebrate the most romantic day of the year, a survey suggested Scotland boasted the most red-blooded lovers in the UK.

The survey by condom manufacturers Durex, said Scots have sex more times a year than anywhere else in the UK - 117 times a year, compared to a national average of 110.