Catholic Weddings Can Be Confusing
October 17th, 2008 @ 1:52 pm by Miss Dumpling
Image source
If you remember from a previous post, Mr. Dumpling is Catholic, and I am in the process of converting. One of the first things I asked our marriage coordinator at the church was about the difference between a Catholic wedding ceremony and, say, a Baptist or Methodist wedding ceremony. Being from the South, those were the sorts of weddings I attended. You know the ones—20 minutes max, I do, me too, kiss the bride. I now present…
Anyway, we decided that we wanted full Mass at our wedding. I was so shocked to find out that full Mass was an HOUR LONG. (*must not lock knees and pass out*)
Figuring out the Decorations
September 3rd, 2008 @ 11:59 am by Miss Dumpling
Our wedding is in March, and it’s a beautiful time of year in Vegas. It’s typically about 65 degrees, a bit breezy, and nearly every day is sunny. Vegas is known for its sunshine and lack of rain. Seriously, I think I’ve seen rain only a handful of times this year! So, needless to say, the weather will be delightful on our big day (knock on wood).
However, since our wedding is towards the end of March, it falls right in the middle of Lent. Lent is the 40 days before Easter (not counting Sundays), beginning on Ash Wednesday. It’s a time for fasting for some, and giving up a “vice” for others. If you want to learn more, you can read about Lent here. Because of Lent, we can’t have any flowers decorating the church. According to the church, flowers are a sign of celebration, and having them would not be appropriate. From what I’ve read on the Internet, all parishes are different. But, ours told us that we’re not allowed to have any floral decorations besides our bouquets (Phew! That would have been tough!). We will, of course, respect their policies. As a side note, Mr. Dumpling is Catholic, and I’m in the process of converting.
For now, I will just dream of these altar decorations:
From The Singing Rabbi
The Search For The Church
June 30th, 2007 @ 10:24 am by Mrs. Radish
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.
Our Day in Marriage Prep
May 27th, 2007 @ 1:10 am by Mrs. Kiwi
I’d like to thank all the readers who had given me the advice to just sit back and relax at my Church-Sponsored marriage prep class. I took your advice and really enjoyed myself. The morning began at 8:45am, and although hard to be bright and bushy-tailed after a late Dodger game the night before (Go Big Blue!), I was still a little nervous.
Our comfortable cushions in hand, we were led to the gym, and then down into the basement. A little grumpy at spending $70.00 for eight hours of what I thought was going to be the typical church fare of God-speak, I collected our packets of information and stuck on our nametags. There was a spread of bagels, donuts, fruit salad, coffee, juice and water; enough to sustain us until our lunch break.
As I perused our workbook and family planning pamphlets, I took a good look at the rest of the 30-some couples around us. At nine o’clock, the presentations got underway. We had two couples who were kindly spending their day helping us to learn to communicate and work together, taking time out of their day for this, and I would pay attention. At one point, the priest at the church we were at came in and gave a long talk, uncomfortably filled with the most politically incorrect stories, complete with the words “Negro”, “retarded” and “drunk”. The talk soon became less hysterical as he told us the different ways marriage could fail. He talked of young couples newly married, when one “dropped dead three weeks into the marriage” or when the wife soon finds her husband to be less than kind. This talk really brought the group down as a whole. You don’t expect to enter a marriage prep class being told marriage is all great times and easy streets, but to be separated into parts and told that “that side over there, in numbers, won’t have their marriage work out” was a shock.
My Kingdom For A Church
March 12th, 2007 @ 4:11 pm by Mrs. Pearl
Sorry I’ve been so MIA lately. I have been a bit sick and busy as heck with work! As a result, the wedding planning has suffered because I’ve tossed planning to the side as I try to deal with the curveballs thrown professionally.
That said, I did have a bit of “fun” to deal with on Friday. Mr. Pearl’s priest finally emailed me back with some awful news. As it turns out, the church will be undergoing some construction in July and they will not be performing any sacraments for the entire month. He left open the possibility of one date in late June and one date in August. Unfortunately, we already have a contract with our reception venue and stand to lose thousands of dollars if we changed the date. It’s frustrating because it’s due, in part, to his church’s lack of organization. We talked to them a long time ago about the new date, but I’d been calling and emailing recently to make sure we were on the church calendar. They are awful about returning calls though! Finally, I got the response when I emailed the priest, though it was definitely NOT the response I anticipated.
Pew Decor
February 20th, 2007 @ 8:28 am by Mrs. Peach
Thanks to my super lovely artistic friend, I’ll be having beautiful pew decorations! She made a variety and sent me some pictures of them hanging on our church pews. (Sorry for the bad quality pics- they were taken with her camera phone.)
Now for the hard part… which do I choose? And who best to ask than the weddingbee community! Don’t mind the random colors she chose or the varying fullness of the baby’s breaths. What I have to get back to her with is: what SHAPE I want them, paper COLOR, and ribbon COLOR and THICKNESS. So yeah, what combo do you like best? Or feel free to make up your own! Keep in mind my wedding colors are sage green and white with a accents of peachy pink!
Random in a row:
What To Say
January 29th, 2007 @ 6:35 pm by Mrs. Kiwi
Yesterday I was at Mr. Kiwi’s school for an open house, when I was asked where we’re having our ceremony. The woman who asked was a senior citizen who attends mass every day at the church that is part of Mr. K’s school. Somehow I knew I should tell her we were undecided, since I knew Mr. Kiwi would get the brunt of the criticism for not marrying at the church he was raised in.
To my family, the idea of marrying in a church is odd because we’re so non-denominational it’s not even funny. If we did marry there, the question would undoubtedly be “Why are you marrying in a church?” Mr. Kiwi’s side on the other hand, thinks of it as somewhat an oddity to not get married in a church - “You’re getting married in a tent?!”
Since I’m always open about things, I tend to talk a lot. Mr. Kiwi accused me of not knowing my boundaries the other day. Why? Because the officiant I was talking to asked me what kind of wedding I visualized. When I said, “Well, Mr. Kiwi works at a Catholic school, but doesn’t really like the father there…” I was given the eye of death, and an admonishment that people don’t need to hear every detail about. Well I guess he’s right, but it just wasn’t something that was a big deal to me, though I do understand that it was a big deal to him.
