The Man Standing At The Altar
April 6th, 2007 @ 1:43 pm by Mrs. Lemon
We finally got to meet the deacon who will be presiding over our wedding ceremony this past weekend! I understand this might sound silly to those of you who are getting married at your local church or have a friend helping you out as an officiant, but for us, this was well needed closure to our first “wedding drama” incident last year.
You see, getting married to a Catholic boy when you’re not Catholic isn’t too difficult, but finding a priest who will marry you in your hometown (again, where your family is not Catholic) in an independent chapel is QUITE difficult. In fact, we couldn’t even reserve the date until we could find someone who could commit to helping us over a year in advance. Add to the mess the fact that the diocese was currently in search of a new bishop, which meant that no priests could be certain of their assignments over the next 18 months and no one wanted to commit to anything, and you’ve got quite the religious doozy.
Lead after lead failed us, and all hope of getting married in our chapel was almost gone until I got an email answer from Fr. Roy. He said that he’d love to help us find a “newly minted” deacon for our ceremony, and if for some reason something wacky occurred, he would step in and be our pinch hitter. Wow. Mr. Lemon made a special trip in the fall to visit and chat with him, but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him until this past Saturday.
Not only did I get introduced to Fr. Roy, but we also met our deacon! He’s very fun and energetic, a physics teacher (like me… well, except that’s he’s an insanely smart professor), a former Bruin (I mean… how do you get THAT lucky??) and his son attends the school where the ceremony will take place. He also has a divine Spanish accent and laugh! Everyone got along great in our short meeting, and my worries about the ceremony faded away. Now we just have to take care of designing our ceremony, and all will be ready to go! If I had only known a year ago that things would take care of themselves… 
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3 Responses to “The Man Standing At The Altar”
My fiance was raised Catholic, and I am not. We’re not even trying to get married by a priest. We’re getting married in a protestant church. I hope there isn’t any drama because his family is all Catholic and I’m not. *sigh*
I like hearing these stories–I just got randomly linked to this site from another bridal site–
Anyways, way way back in the day my Mother who is Jewish married my Father who was Catholic. They had a hell of a hard time finding both a Jewish Cantor and a Catholic Preist willing to do a mixed-faith wedding in a Unitarian Church. The really sad thing is that the Cantor lost his position for doing it and the Preist was officially reprimanded.
Best of luck with this! My fiance and I are taking the easy way out and having a civil ceremony 
Mrs. Lemon, Los Angeles/Monterey
Age and Occupation in 06: 26, Graduate Student (Public Policy)
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Environmental Consultant
Engagement Date: April 7, 2006
Wedding Date: July 7, 2007
Venue: Rosary Chapel & Monterey Marriott, Monterey, CA
About Me: My FI and I met online, but we like to tell people that we met at a "cookie shop" which is the technical location of our first encounter. He proposed exactly 1 year, 1 month and 6 days after our first date (it's the only part of his proposal speech that I remember), and we're planning long-distance from Los Angeles for a July wedding in my hometown of Monterey, CA. I have a passion for all things "cool, cute and quirky" and I enjoy video games, reading blogs (WeddingBee, trashy celeb, consumer & political) and crafting in my spare time, if I have any!
It’s so good to hear a positive story along these lines. A Catholic friend of ours married a non-Catholic last fall, and had nothing but trouble–we saw him at a party two weeks before the wedding, and his contact at the diocese had lost all of his paperwork! The first thing I did when I got home was to email our officiant, just for reassurance. (He, my FI, and I are all different flavors of protestant, so there shouldn’t be big issues, but it was comforting to check in.)