Do you take this man to be your train station..?  

A priest caught out a bride during a sham wedding ceremony when he recited a list of train stations instead of vows and she repeated them.

The incident prompted Father Tim Codling to tip off police about another potentially fake marriage, leading to the arrest of another couple.

Officers and UK Border Agency staff hid in the vestry and arrested the Nigerian man and Dutch woman as they walked up the aisle this week.

Mr Codling said he became suspicious after the groom supplied the church with two different addresses on his paperwork.

The couple also spoke poor English, he added.

‘This must be stopped, not just for genuine applicants who have every right to be married here but also for people who work hard to maintain the church,’ he said.

‘These people have shown disrespect for this church.’

Mr Codling, of St John the Baptist Church in Tilbury, Essex, said by law he cannot refuse to marry couples who have wedding licences.

‘We can only stop weddings if we have reasonable grounds to suspect they aren’t genuine,’ he added.

‘Once, I was asking the bride to repeat the vows and I knew something wasn’t right.

‘So I started calling out the names of stations on the c2c line: Pitsea, Benfleet and Leigh-on-Sea.

‘The bride started saying them back. She clearly couldn’t understand anything I was saying.’

The Nigerian man and Dutch woman, plus three others involved in the incident this week were arrested on suspicion of assisting a breach inimmigration laws.

Det Sgt Andy Harvey, of Essex Police, said sham weddings were ‘big business’.

He added: ‘Organisers charge £10,000 to arrange ceremonies and pay “brides” and “witnesses”. metro