The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church, is tweaking its rules about weddings to accommodate couples whose family and friends are not members of the church. Nonmembers are still banned from attending wedding ceremonies inside a Mormon temple. However, the change would open the door for couples to hold civil ceremonies right before temple services, meaning non-Mormons can watch couples exchange vows, walk down the aisle and participate in a number of other traditional American wedding customs. The change, announced Monday, eases strict rules that essentially excluded non-Mormons from most of the formal aspects of a couple’s wedding day and caused tension and grief for some U.S. families with mixed-religious affiliations. “We anticipate that this change will provide more opportunities for families to come together in love and unity during the special time of marriage and sealing of a man and woman,” the church’s First Presidency, its highest governing body, wrote in a letter.

jhack via Getty Images A couple poses outside the Salt Lake City temple in Utah.

Temple wedding ceremonies are important to Latter-day Saints because their faith teaches that people who are only civilly married have no claim on each other in the afterlife. Church doctrine states that temple wedding ceremonies allow relationships to continue after death. On their wedding day, couples are “sealed” in a church temple for this life and all eternity. To participate in ceremonies at a temple, members need to have an active “temple recommend,” a card that shows they are deemed worthy of entering the sacred space. People seeking temple recommends must be interviewed by local church leaders and demonstrate that they are abiding by key church teachings. Since the temple ceremony is the most important part of a couple’s wedding day, it’s considered inappropriate to exchange vows after already having been married in the temple. The church advises couples to make sure that receptions that occur after weddings are “simple” and don’t resemble an actual wedding ceremony. According to the church’s Handbook, that means no extravagant decorations or wedding marches down the aisle. Photos are also not permitted inside temples. Due to all of these restrictions, full-blown civil weddings ceremonies need to take place before a temple sealing. However, to encourage members to center their wedding festivities around temples, the church also had a policy dictating that members in the U.S. needed to wait a full year between a civil wedding and a temple sealing, making it impossible to have two formal ceremonies on the same day. As a result, many U.S. couples in the church decided to forego a civil wedding ceremony altogether.

Robert Alexander via Getty Images A couple poses for a photograph with members of their wedding party on Sept. 27, 2014, after their wedding ceremony inside the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City.

The church’s rules created issues for converts in the U.S. whose family and friends are not part of the church, made more complicated by the one-year waiting requirement. Fiona Givens, a convert, told the Salt Lake Tribune that her mother was “overcome with grief” upon learning she couldn’t attend Givens’ wedding ceremony. “I was her only daughter and she had spent years anticipating the festive occasion, having even picked out the church in which I was to be married,” Givens said. Aubri Alvarez, another convert, told The Associated Press that she was sealed in the Albuquerque temple ― while her evangelical Christian mother cried outside. “My parents also love God and are very nice people and they couldn’t see their daughter get married,” Alvarez said. “You really had to choose between the church and your family.”

Robert Alexander via Getty Images A newlywed couple poses for photographs with family members and friends after their wedding ceremony in Salt Lake City on Sept. 27, 2014.