The Church of England voted overwhelmingly today to relax the laws on where couples can get married, giving them new rights to marry in a parish where they have a "connection".

The change will broaden the choice of churches for couples to get wed in. At present, unless they obtain a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, they can only marry in a parish where one of them lives, or goes to church regularly and is on the parish electoral roll.

Under the Church of England Marriage Measure, passed by a large majority at the General Synod in York, a couple will be able to marry in a church where they can prove a "qualifying connection''.

This would include a church where they had been baptised or prepared for confirmation, or where a parent or grandparent lived or had been married themselves.

However, the Synod resisted earlier calls for couples to be able to marry wherever they wished. Church leaders feared this would lead to couples choosing the "prettiest" churches, placing a burden on non-stop Saturday weddings on the vicar and other clergy of those parishes.

The move has been brought in as a response to demographic changes, where young adults have become more mobile and often move away from home. But when they marry, those who want to wed in the church where they grew up have often been unable to do so.

It is also thought to be a response by the Church to a decline in church weddings. According to figures published last month by the Office of National Statistics, 84,400 religious ceremonies were held in 2005 compared to 88,710 in "approved premises" such as stately homes and hotels. The remainder of the 244,710 marriages in 2005 total took place in a register office.

The Dean of Wakefield, the Very Rev George Nairn Briggs, told the Synod that most of the law on where marriages can take place had been set out in the 1949 Marriage Act.

He said: "Needless to say, society has changed a great deal which 1949. Nowadays, young adults in particular often move from one place to another fairly frequently. However, when they decide to come to the Church for marriage, and to enter into the permanent commitment to one another before God which that involves, they often wish to do that in a place with which they feel they have some enduring connection."

He said the new law would play "an important part in the Church’s task of supporting and upholding the institution of marriage, as well as in helping and encouraging individual couples."