Weddingbee Blog

Once it was decided that we would have a Catholic wedding ceremony, the next step was to find a church that would marry us. This was much harder than I imagined, mostly because we are out-of-towners and Mr. Radish’s family is not from Syracuse either. My parents live there, but they don’t go to church. So because we are not members of any church in the area, and neither are any of our family members, it made it a little bit harder for us to find a church. I think that is the case with just about any religion, though, for out-of-town couples. I guess it only makes sense that they give their own parishioners preference.

Mr. Radish called just about every church in the area to find out if any of them had our date open and if they were willing to perform our ceremony. Many churches were already booked (over a year in advance, yikes!) and there were a few priests he spoke with who were very strict. And since Mr. Radish and I live together before marriage (a sin in the church’s view)… that was a bit of a problem for them. Eventually we found St. Matthew’s in East Syracuse, NY. It’s only a few minutes away from our reception venue and the priest there, Father Clemente, is very relaxed and didn’t have a problem with us living together or the fact that I’m not Catholic.

The church itself is huge. We weren’t necessarily looking for something this big and fancy but because of our circumstances, we needed to find a church that was available and would agree to marry an out-of-town interfaith couple, so we weren’t that picky. I was hoping for something a little smaller and more intimate, but I think this will be fine. We will just make sure the ushers seat people as close to the front of the church as possible.

The colors are a little bolder than I would’ve liked, but that means we can just do something really simple for our flowers and decorations. I don’t want to try and compete with so much color. But hey, that’s a good thing. Now I don’t have to worry as much about decorating. I think just a plain aisle runner, simple pew flowers, and some altar arrangements will be more than enough.

We were glad to finally find a church to be married in, but since we are not members of St. Matthew’s, that means we have to do all of our pre-wedding stuff (pre-cana, having witnesses meet with the priest, getting all of the appropriate paperwork, etc.) here in Chicago at Mr. Radish’s church. This makes everything slightly more complicated, especially since they are in different dioceses, but everything has gone relatively smoothly so far.