BRIDES and grooms have been counting the ways they loved each other in church weddings ever since Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the famous sonnet 150 years ago.

But in civil services, the poem is banned — because of its last line: “if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death”.

It is that mention of God that has made Barrett Browning persona non grata in register offices for decades. And she’s not alone. Scores of poems, songs and even letters are barred from being read or sung in civil weddings if they contain even the most oblique religious reference.

But now couples will be able to choose their favourite works under an unexpected shake-up of marriage laws being planned by the Government.

An imminent relaxation of the law will mean an end to the ban which prevents anything with religious connotations being included in civil wedding services.

Ministers have let it be known that they will also be content for hymns to be sung and extracts from the Bible to be read, although they accept this may be too sensitive for churches and faith groups.

The rules set out in the 1949 Marriage Act were intended to draw a sharp distinction between the decision of couples to opt for a church wedding or for a non-religious ceremony. It says that: “No religious service shall be used at any marriage solemnised in the office of a superintendent registrar.” Civil marriages started in 1837.

But it has led to the banning from civil services of a vast array of readings. Barrett Browning’s poem is prohibited because of its references to “grace”, “being” and “God” despite it being a love poem and not a religious text. Even Robbie Williams’ bestselling Angels is barred, because of that one word.

With 181,000 civil marriages in 2003 compared to 86,000 religious ceremonies, the Government is to start consultations on whether the law should be changed and couples given the chance to hear their most cherished words on the biggest day of their lives.

The move was quietly started by Gordon Brown after a letter to him from Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and his party’s culture spokesman, who had been contacted by several people with grievances about censorship of readings.

Don Foster had been alerted to the current rules by Nick Rijke, who was barred from having Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem read when he got married in Oxford register office in May last year.

Mr Rijke, 39, a public relations executive with the Environment Agency, said of the review yesterday: “It is a very positive step in the right direction because it would have allowed readings like the one that we chose, as that was an incidental reference to religion.”

It came to the Chancellor’s desk because the Treasury has oversight of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which is in turn responsible for the registration of marriages.

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