Weddingbee Blog

Hello ladies,

I have a bit of a dilemma. My fiance and I have been together for eight years, and have known each other for fifteen years. For the past two years we have been living together. We get along great. He is my best friend in this entire lifetime. We are supportive of each other, a great team and have a high sense of mutual respect. Some people may call this “shacking up” but we have had every intention to get married from the moment we moved in together. It wasn’t just to “test-drive” each other, or to save money.

Anyway, we have both been registered at the same Roman Catholic Church since we were thirteen years old. Throughout the years the priests have come and gone, and we didn’t really get to know any one of them… until we set up a meeting to get prepared for marriage. When the priest interviewed us, he asked us for each of our addresses, he looked in the system and found that we had different addresses. The records haven’t changed since we were thirteen. Anyhow, oblivious to it all, we confirmed that the information in the system was correct, since both our parents still resided at these particular addresses. We didn’t think he was going to ask us if we were living together. And anyway, we felt uncomfortable to tell him that we were living together because of how strict the church is. We thought this information was irrelevant. However, when the topic did come up, we did mention that we had plans in the works about us moving in together before marriage.

I know what most of you are thinking by now… big mistake!!! No priest would condone living together before marriage. Naturally, the two of us received a long two-hour lecture on “cohabitation” or “shacking up” and discouraged us from doing it. To add to this, the priest preached about it in the Sunday mass homily. I was mortified!!!

Now I’m in a serious bind here… what should we do??

We are already living together. I can’t turn around and say, “By the way, we didn’t tell the whole truth.” I also don’t want to continue with the lie. Nor, do I want to change churches. But it looks like we might have to do just that–get married at another church and start anew with the whole truth. It’s not rare that cohabitating couples are permitted to marry in the church by the priest. It’s just the fact that we… kind of… lied.

I seriously don’t know what to do. Any advice, comments or opinions will help. Please don’t judge me. I am not the first person in this world that decided to live with my future-husband before we were officially married. It is not a trend; it is a personal choice to build a good rapport and harmonious system with my other half before we are officially united. Please help!! I am going out of my mind

anniebear

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Dear anniebear,

The priest may have given you the lecture so forcefully because he thought he had the opportunity to prevent you from moving in together. He may have reacted less harshly (although maybe not) if you had said that you were already doing so.

I see several options:

1. You come clean in the manner that rosychicklet mentioned (”don’t argue with us, help us in any way you can”).

2. You don’t bring it up unless it comes up. If it comes up, you can say “we’ve moved in together already” and not be clear on when exactly that happened. This may be the path of least resistance—you’re not lying, but you’re not volunteering the information either (especially when doing so might cause a snafu).

Finally, as you stated, you are hardly the first person to be in this situation. My fiance and I moved in together shortly before the wedding too and we got married in the Catholic Church. Like rosychicklet, we just put the same address on the forms and nothing was said of it (but we were in a very liberal parish). My inclination would be toward door #2.

Chelseamorning

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