January 15, 2014

Wedding Things IV: The Ceremony

When we hit the 8 month mark on Monday, I was a little bit flabbergasted. Really?? That's it?? The start of 2014 meant no longer saying "September of next year" and instead, saying "September!" which is really exciting!

Last week, The Pilot and I went to a liturgy planning workshop at our church to start planning our ceremony.

The first thing they asked all of the couples was, "How many of you have your venue? Your photographer? Your flowers, etc." Everyone raised their hand. Then they asked, "how many of you have your ceremony planned out" and no one raised their hands.

It's not that we hadn't thought about it. The first thing we did after getting engaged was head straight to the church to find out what the pre-cana requirements were and start trying to find a date.

The Pilot and I are both Catholic, which, if you know anything about the Catholic church or Catholic weddings, makes things wayyyy easier on us. I had just always assumed that because it was a Catholic wedding, and every Catholic wedding I've been to has been exactly the same, that they would give us a few readings from the bible and tell us to pick our favorites and call it a day.

Our church
I was so happy to find out that that isn't at all the case! We can basically pick any readings we want and we have a lot of of freedom in how we want our ceremony to go. We are having a Mass, rather than just a ceremony, so there's a lot more planning involved than I thought, but I'm not worried about it! There are of course, some restrictions. We can't play 'All You Need is Love' as a recessional, but within the context of the Catholic setting, we have a lot of freedom.

We can even bake our own bread and supply our own wine if we really wanted to. (We aren't going to bake bread, we might supply the wine).

Growing up, I went to Catholic school, so I have a pretty good idea of the music I want for the ceremony.

There's even a website, Catholic Wedding Help, with so many valuable resources for planning a Catholic wedding. I'm so excited that this part of our wedding, the part that's most important, is something that can be just as much 'us' as the rest of the wedding. I had no idea that we would have so much flexibility with our Mass.

More shots from our church! {via}
The Pilot and I are planning to sit down together over a long brunch with all of the resources they gave us to plan out our liturgy.

I'm glad we're starting to figure all of this out because the pre-Cana process has been a huge headache. The church changed their process right after we got engaged and never told us, so we ended up missing out on important things and it's been a nightmare to reschedule with The Pilot's work schedule. I know it will all turn out ok, but this has definitely been the one thing we've been stressing about with the wedding.

So, we're 8 months out and we're planning our ceremony. Like I said in December, I took a break from wedding planning over the holidays. At the recommendation of Jenn, we did book our florist who is amazing. She's s super detailed and despite the fact that I really didn't care about flowers all that much, I absolutely love the bouquet she's designed for me!

Tell Me: Have you ever been to a Catholic wedding? What were some of the most memorable things for you? Did you have your own Catholic wedding? Any planning tips?

3 comments:

  1. We've been to a few Catholic weddings, and the one I remember the most was NOT for a good reason. It seemed to go on FOR EVER. I know Catholic weddings can be longer than others, and Ive been to OTHER Catholic weddings but this one was endless. And we couldnt really hear anything going on, so it was super boring on top of that. I'd try not to make it ExTRA lengthy since people may lose focus. Thats one of the things we heard over and over about that wedding--how long that ceremony was./

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  2. I've only been to one Catholic wedding. The venue was gorgeous, and the couple chose not to do a full mass, which kept it shorter. I remember they had a friend sing, which was beautiful and touching, but much of the ceremony seemed bogged down...It wasn't "romantic" so much as "Biblical", if you get what I mean.

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  3. Mike and I also had a Catholic mass, and I am really glad we did so. While it is longer than a ceremony, it was really beautiful. We ended up paying a bit more to hire a trumpet and flute player just to add a little "something" to the music over the traditional piano. The priest also made his homily really personal, and mentioned specific family members by name, so that definitely kept everyone's attention!

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