A "demonstrable connection" with a local church will still need to be shown before the knot can be tied.
The virtual wholesale slaughter of the restrictions – which includes one requiring either bride or bridegroom to live in the parish where they w
ant their wedding to take place – was voted down by 15 bishops to 14.
Clergy rejected it by 89 to 88 and lay leaders by 104 to 97.
As a result most of the restrictions will remain in place, at least for the time being.
This means another requirement will continue for the foreseeable future – that one partner of the proposed marriage, if not living in the parish, has "habitually" worshipped in the parish church for the last six months.
But the synod did edge towards a considerable possible relaxing of the restrictions.
It did so by agreeing to the framing of legislation to allow weddings in a church if the couple could show the "demonstrable connection" with the place.
But just what a demonstrable connection might be has yet to be worked out and it may take up to two years to agree.
It could still involve a residential element, but this might embrace one of the pair having gone to a local school years ago or his or her parents, grandparents, step-parents or godparents having lived locally – possibly many years before.
The relaxing of the rules comes as the number of marriages taking place in Anglican churches has almost halved over the past 20 years, dropping from 112,000 in 1981 to 61,500 in 2000.
At the same time, civil marriages in approved places such as hotels, stately homes and even zoos, have risen sharply over the last 10 years and now exceed those in the Church of England and the Church in Wales.
The free-for-all was unsuccessfully suggested by Paignton vicar Brian Tubbs who called on the synod to allow couples "the right to be married in any parish church or other parochial place of worship of their choice".
His demand initially appeared to be backed, on a show of hands, by 200 to 185. But when a request was made, on the grounds of the closeness of the figures, for a division to take place for voting in the lobbies – a more reliable system – it fell.
