Tag Archives: Dating & Engaged

Counting the Days Until Marriage, Not the Wedding

The countdown to the biggest day of my life flashes prominently on my carefully-crafted wedding website and my thorough Knot.com profile, quantifying just how much time I have left before my CatholicMatch boyfriend turned CatholicMatch finance becomes my husband.

Even though there is a lot of time before our big day, the how-to books and online guides have almost convinced me that time is running out before the save the dates have even hit the post office. The wedding world that I am now immersed in might as well just plainly say that each hour, each minute and each second not spent obsessing over table linens, first dances and my honeymoon packing list are wasted.

The element of time drives every vendor meeting as we count backward from our wedding date, but even the questions from my friends and family suggest that the clock is ticking.

When is your wedding again?

How many days?

Stressed yet?

The countdown to my wedding has already begun.

Like most brides, I have years of hopes and dreams bundled into a delightful feeling of anticipation for my wedding day. I joined CatholicMatch like many of you did – unsure and skeptical, with a small dose of hope – and the fact that I can even write about my experience as an engaged woman is an answered prayer. An Autumn wedding may not be logistically perfect, but I will walk down the aisle and recite ancient vows in front of God to the faithful man whose last name will become my own.

It’s not a fairy tale. It’s real life and a blessing from God that I am just beginning to comprehend.

I find it interesting that the majority of people ask, “When are you getting married?” It’s as if everyone is asking me when I will don a beautiful white gown, carry a bouquet and become a bride. I give them the date, but it’s not just the day I become a bride – it’s the day that I become a wife.

I will say “I do” and forever join myself to another in the sacrament of marriage. “Two will become one,” and I will no longer live for just me. I will die to myself every day and selflessly love my spouse more than anyone else.

I’ve already spent hundreds of hours preparing for my wedding day from the Mass to the dinner to the dance, but when the final guests retreat to their hotel rooms after a night of dancing, I will no longer be a bride. I will be a wife.

As Catholics, we know that a wedding is not just a big party. It’s a holy sacrament and as our priest recently pointed out in a marriage prep session, it’s the only sacrament that we as lay people completely control. While a priest is present as a witness and a symbol of God, the priest does not marry us. We marry each other as we recite our vows. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, we know that in our wedding-obsessed culture, the focus is much less on the sacrament and much more on the show. I’ve read stories about brides that became so consumed with their wedding plans that they experienced “wedding blues” following their nuptials. One wedding planner summed it up by saying:

You always had something to do, decisions to make, places to be, people to not only spend time with, but who were desperately trying to assist your every whim. And now it’s over…Whether you choose to admit it or not, wedding planning became your pastime.

In the days before my wedding, I may do my fair share of wedding planning, but my only true “pastime” will be preparing for the commitment I will make and live out every day after that. The countdown is not just for that day – it’s for a lifetime together. No wedding planner or Pinterest board can prepare us for that. Only prayer, thoughtful conversation and a commitment to our core beliefs will carry us to the altar.

So perhaps my countdown has been off all along. Maybe my master wedding timeline should point to the day after my wedding, the day after the party has ended and my new life as a married woman begins.

Article originally published by CatholicMatch Institute, which provides resources to help single Catholics develop a strong foundation for marriage through advocacy, programs, and scholarships. Used with permission.

3 Modern Obstacles to a Healthy Marriage

If this story, about a couple married for 62 years who died 4 hours apart, does not make you sigh just a little, well … I’m not sure you have a soul.

Or how about the story about Fred Stobaugh, the 96-year-old widower who wrote an ode to his late wife, “Sweet Lorraine,” and entered it in a song-writing contest? If you can watch the video without tearing up, don’t bother reading on. You’re just not human.

Why do stories like these touch our hearts in such a moving way? I think it’s because stories like these so clearly demonstrate the lifelong commitment marriage is meant to be. Till death do us part. We say the words, and we see in them an ideal to aspire to, something we all long to attain, and yet not all of us do.

It’s cliche to lament divorce statistics, but in an attempt to combat the problem of rising divorce rates and declining marriage rates, let’s take a look at some cultural problems that can be obstacles to healthy marriages.

1. We have a mixed-up idea of married love.

It’s normal to go into marriage with some expectation of romance and lovey-dovey stuff. After all, that’s how people wind up wanting to get married in the first place. They fall in love, they have a romantic relationship, and they are so crazy about each other that they can’t wait to start “together forever.” That’s awesome. That’s fun. That’s how God intends for couples to begin.

Every healthy marriage, no matter what stage its in, does have some measure of romantic love. Just as people have different personalities, though, different marriages do too, and most marriages don’t maintain that full-force “romantic” feeling forever. And we should not expect them to.

When people mix up married love with romantic love, they wrongly feel that their marriage is in decline when the romance begins to fade. There are fewer rose-petal baths and more insurance premiums. There are no more love songs and an awful lot of day-to-day drudgery.

Fading romance in a culture that tells couples they can quit when it gets hard, leave when they “fall out of love,” or their spouse “doesn’t make them happy anymore,” is a recipe for discouragement and the kinds of negative, selfish thoughts that can lead to divorce.

2. We fail at self-giving love.

This is a problem I have observed even among very “faithful” Catholics who know and love a lot about their faith. Somehow, we as a Church have failed to help some husbands and wives hear and understand that their call to marriage is a call to make a total gift of self to their spouse.

St. John Paul II emphasizes the importance of “self-gift” in Gaudium et Spes:

Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.

That “sincere gift of self” he mentions is a daily call to sacrifice, and I will let you in on a little secret: It’s not feel-good stuff. It hurts. Like sacrifice always does. That’s why they call it sacrifice.

In my own life, I have seen what look like “perfect” marriages on the outside fall apart on the inside because of a failure of one or both of the spouses to recognize this simple fact: Love comes first. Charity above all things. You can be an otherwise “perfect” Catholic couple–earning a decent living, setting up a home, having children and educating them well–but if you fail to recognize the importance of loving your spouse with self-giving love, you are failing. At the most important thing. None of that other stuff matters.

We aren’t all perfect at self-sacrifice, of course, and in a healthy marriage there is plenty of room for mistakes, mercy, and forgiveness. The fundamentally important call to hear, however, is the call to love one another and to fully find yourself through a “sincere gift of self” to your spouse. That kind of love isn’t just “nice if you can find it”; it’s what marriage is.

3. We misunderstand the importance of vocation.

Vocation is a tough concept for many of today’s younger generations to understand. The idea of a calling–not a job, but a calling–to marriage, priesthood, or religious life is a foreign one to many. When we fail to recognize marriage as a calling, however, we belittle it. Culturally, it becomes a hobby or something nice to do “if you’re into that kind of thing.” It certainly isn’t something you would sacrifice your career for.

But our culture lets young people know that career goals can trump marriage. Travel plans can take precedence. There’s no hurry.

The sad result is that when people get married later in life, there is less likelihood that they will meet their spouses when both are ready to make a commitment, and there are fewer marriage-ready men and women in the dating pool even for those who are looking seriously for a spouse.

If marriage is a vocation, that means it’s your life’s work; it’s not a job and not something you do on the side. It’s something you do first, and then build to rest of your life around, not something you try to fit in later, once you’ve saved up enough money and you’ve accomplished “more important” things.

The saddest part of cultural obstacles to healthy marriage is that they negatively affect a lot of innocent people who desperately want to answer a call to marriage. They want to find their spouse, get married, begin a life-long commitment, and practice self-giving love. But our culture sometimes gets in the way.

The good news, though, is that our God is an awesome God. The power of an anti-marriage culture may be great, but God is greater and He works with what we give Him. All of us, married, single, divorced, widowed, dating, or something in between, can pray every day for the grace we need to live out Christ’s call to perfection in an imperfect world.

Let’s support marriage. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s encourage each another.

Things You’ll Wish You Knew Before ‘I Do’

One of my favorite parts of my engagement to my fiancé George, (whom I met on CatholicMatch), came after I said, “Yes.” In the days and weeks following that sunny Saturday in June, treasured nuggets of information began to trickle out from our family and friends, cluing me into the behind the scenes planning that led to George on bended knee.

For weeks, my laid-back then-boyfriend carefully crafted a proposal involving our closest family and friends. From contacting my best friend and her husband to take photos and video footage to coordinating an engagement party at one of our favorite restaurants and swearing everyone to secrecy, he planned every detail, including the perfect location—under the iconic arches at our shared alma mater.

He was intentional and purposeful as he prepared to ask me to be his wife, even incorporating details from my carefully-laid hints during our courtship. Perhaps subconsciously, George was setting the foundation for our time as an engaged couple preparing for the sacrament of marriage and later, our journey as husband and wife.

We’re approaching this life-changing commitment in a different way than many of those around us. I’ve posted before about our wedding plans from choosing the venue to booking our honeymoon, but at the core of each of these choices is a focus on why we’re doing each of these things.

I’m called to be George’s wife and he’s called to be my husband. That’s a reality that goes beyond each of us, and we still do not know exactly what impact our union will have on each other, those around us and the rest of the world. What I do know is that we’re intentionally creating a marriage, not a wedding, through each month leading up to “I do.”

We’re intentionally doing marriage prep. Intentionally not cohabitating. Intentionally planning the wedding Mass. Intentionally planning a life based on faith.

Weddings are commonplace in our society, but not marriages. Among my peer group, I hear many reasons of why couples get married, and in so many instances, they accidentally fall into married life because of outside circumstances and not the prompting of the Holy Spirit. For some, they’re living together already and presume marriage is the next logical step in life. For others, they’re struggling with finances individually and hope that two combined incomes are better than one. Or maybe they just think they’re at the age where they should be married. And so they move forward, promising “‘til death do us part” at a wedding ceremony that they happen to be a part of.

Catholic writer Matthew Warner wrote about accidental living in a recent issue of the magazine Shalom Tidings:

“You were made to live intentionally. You were made to choose how you live your life, not to let life simply happen to you…If life is just happening to you, then you are caught up in the mire and mediocrity of accidental living. An accidental life will never be fulfilling to a creature that was made to choose.”

Just as we were made to choose a life that honors God, we were made to make intentional choices in all other aspects of life, including whom you marry. Living an intentional life is not taking the reins and being in control of every detail of your life. It’s choosing to allow God into your heart to guide you in all of your actions and decisions.

In our careers, we don’t expect promotions to get handed to us. We have to make a series of choices to prove ourselves along the way. You don’t accidentally find yourself in a dream career, even if every stepping stone magically aligned in the perfect way.

The same applies for relationships. You don’t accidentally find yourself in a happy, spiritually-centered marriage. You have to intentionally choose to search for the spouse God has planned for you (like by joining CatholicMatch!) and then live that call out with purpose.

Addressing volunteers at World Youth Day, Pope Francis encourages all of us to fight against the temptation of accidental living to not only follow God’s plan for each of us, but to live a life of happiness:

“God calls you to make definitive choices, and He has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move forward toward personal fulfillment…Have the courage to swim against the tide. And also have the courage to be happy.”
– Pope Francis, Sunday, July 28, 2013

Don’t walk through life waiting for the next accident to occur. Live each day with intention—intention to bring glory to God through your future marriage and your life.

When a Man Likes a Woman: 5 Do’s

In my then-boyfriend’s apartment, I smiled while I quietly asked a question:

“What crossed your mind the first time you saw me?”

He thoughtfully paused, and aligned his eyes with mine, before he answered without blinking (and, apparently, without thinking):

“I want a piece of her.”

You want a piece of me? The line led to fightin’ words, words that build walls between a woman and a man, which—in that case—was for the best. But the line also led to a realization: When a man likes a woman, he doesn’t do what that guy did (including but not limited to “objectify her”). So what should a guy do when he likes a girl? I’ll tell you:

1. Ask questions. Few pursuits bear less fruit than those of men who desire to find and marry the right woman but refrain from asking women questions. A woman needs to know who you are, but a woman also needs to know that you want to know who she is. We are generally delighted by a good guy’s desire to tell us about his life, but a guy who shares information and doesn’t solicit it does a disservice to a potential relationship. If a man likes a woman, he ought to ask what her goals are, and what she values, and how into comics she is before he lists all the titles in his collection. A man who doesn’t ask a woman questions sends a sign that he isn’t interested in her.

2. Use words. It is equal parts liberating and alarming to acknowledge this important truth: we can’t not communicate. A person says as much by not talking as he or she does by speaking up. But there is a big gap between somebody who doesn’t talk and somebody who does. A guy who crosses his arms, audibly sighs, and rolls his eyes over and over when he is frustrated speaks in code. A guy who tells his date he is frustrated is a grown-up. A woman can’t read anybody’s mind but her own, and a man who doesn’t give her a reason to try to read his is a man who spares her stress. By default, human beings constantly communicate. But when a man likes a woman, he uses words to do it.

3. Seek counsel. Dating is hard. Dating is potentially harder when half a couple seeks advice from somebody who isn’t qualified to give it. When a man likes a woman and needs advice, he considers a person’s credentials before he solicits it. If he wants to know what a woman meant by what she said, he doesn’t poll his friends; he asks her. If he isn’t sure he knows what his vocation is, he doesn’t tweet about it; he meets with a spiritual director. If he struggles to practice chastity, he doesn’t vent to his single but sexually active friends; he asks his friends who are good at chastity to hold him accountable. A man’s respect for a woman and his relationship with her is evident when he seeks counsel about it wisely.

4. Follow through. Actions indeed speak louder than words, but that doesn’t mean what somebody says is irrelevant. When a man likes a woman, he does what he says he’s going to do, and in doing so, he proves he is worthy of her trust. If he tells her he’ll text her, or call her, or DVR a How I Met Your Mother re-run for her, he gives her an expectation. But a man who gives a woman an expectation and then does not fulfill it gives her a reason not to trust him.

5. Save sex. A practicing Catholic woman expects a man to believe before he pursues her that preparedness for marriage is more important than preparedness for a wedding night. As Catholics, we are not called to have sex because sex is pleasurable. We are called to create a pleasurable sexual relationship with the person to whom we are united in marriage.

Marriage, a vocation, is designed to result in the destruction of self-absorption. Saving sex while we date aligns us with that purpose. When a man likes a woman, he does what he can to prepare for the patience, sacrifice, and self-denial that a marriage will require—and saving sex is an exercise in all three.

The One Wedding DIY Project You Can’t Do Without (And the style blogs won’t tell you about)

Anthony and I are married.

It’s surreal to type that sentence.

We’re on our honeymoon as I write this, and we’ve had several moments together in the last two weeks when we look at the other and think, “what did we just do?” The reality of our marriage seems so much bigger than us, and, like all Sacraments, I doubt we’ll ever truly understand the enormity of what happened on July 26^th.

But this isn’t a post about wedded bliss. This is a post about how we spent the months and weeks leading up to the wedding. Basically, this is about how we survived “wedding crunch time.”

Like many brides-to-be, I spent a fair amount of time on wedding blogs in the last year. Some of them were helpful, some were hilarious, and some were downright intimidating. But one element connected them all: they each promised to help me plan a wedding that was truly beautiful and unique. In fact, “unique” seems to be the cardinal virtue pedaled by the wedding industry. Apparently, all you need to do to have the most unique and beautiful wedding – a wedding that really says something about YOU – is follow several dozen DIY wedding boards on Pinterest, buy a small Amish village out of their entire stock of mason jars, and prepare for many long hours in front of a computer planning and re-planning, as you slowly assemble the perfect day.

For us, there were a fair amount of preparations, to be sure, and we were blessed with a small army of dedicated friends and family to help us along the way. But when Anthony and I reflected on what made our wedding the deeply beautiful experience it was for us and for our guests, it wasn’t primarily because of the preparations we made. It was because of the prayer we brought to the preparations.

We prayed a lot. We prayed when we wanted to. We prayed when we didn’t want to. We prayed for the people helping us. We prayed for the people praying for us. We prayed when we were joyful. We prayed when we were frustrated. We prayed when prayer seemed like the least practical response to the situation at hand.

Sometimes the results were immediately apparent, and most of the time they weren’t. But regardless, we prayed. We prepared for the practical things that we could, and everything else we entrusted to God. I even started writing to random monasteries a few months before the wedding begging the nuns for their prayers.

About a month before the big day, we decided that we should offer a holy hour the night before our wedding with the friends and family who wanted to attend. I had heard of the practice before and thought it might be something cool if for no other reason than it would give us the chance to be silent for one glorious hour before the madness of the wedding day descended upon us.

We realize now that that hour may have been the most important and greatest gift we could have given our guests and ourselves the whole weekend. It was also, in our opinion, what made the wedding as beautiful – and unique! – as it was.

True beauty is a divine attribute in that it comes directly from God who is Beauty, Truth and Goodness. And each soul He creates is a unique and unrepeatable reflection of His Divine Beauty. So, true beauty can only come from God.

It is absolutely impossible to recreate this unique beauty off a Pinterest board. But the unique wedding of your dreams can be yours if you surrender to the Source of Beauty.

Our wedding wasn’t beautiful because of centerpieces and carefully planned reception seating. It was beautiful because God made it beautiful.

Little by little, through our prayers and the prayers on our behalf, we invited God into our preparations and He helped us surrender our will to Him even in the smallest details.

If we were to offer any advice to a couple preparing for marriage it would be this: Pray. Pray a lot.

When Anthony and I left the holy hour the night before our wedding, we realized more deeply than we had before that the next day was completely in God’s hands. Our wedding was perfect. It was peaceful, it was joyful, and it was a unique and unrepeatable reflection of God’s beauty through two imperfect souls who tried their best to get out of the way.

Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in Sara & Anthony’s blog on For Your Marriage, School of Agape.

“Just Wait”: A Letter from a Newlywed Couple

Photo by Mike Nelson, www.mknlsn.com.

Dear The Dating, The Engaged, The Married,

Valerie: “Just wait. It’ll get worse when you’re married.” “Just wait until you’ve been married for a year…” “Just wait until the seven year itch…“ “Just wait until you’ve been married as long as we have…”

The “just wait until…” scale seems to be sliding further and further away no matter how long you’ve been married. My husband, Rocco, and I have been married for a little over a year and a half and are determined to tell anyone who will listen just how amazing marriage is! Marriage is a gift from God!

Rocco: I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “Oh, you’re engaged? Congratulations, but just wait for marriage…” or “Oh, you’re newlyweds? Congratulations, but just wait until after the ‘honeymoon’ phase…” These are messages delivered with a sense of impending doom. At work or elsewhere, these “just waits” are often accompanied by comments about “the old ball and chain,” snide remarks about spouses, and all kinds of dubious marriage advice.

Valerie: I guess we are never quite married long enough to be considered to know what married life is like, but we would disagree. At no point do Rocco and I think we know everything about marriage. We are learning more and more about one another and about married life every day. But to those who are engaged, to those who are dating, to those who believe their vocation is to one day get married, to those who have already spoken those vows, take heart: Marriage is an amazing, life changing, ridiculously fun adventure!

Rocco: I’m on a mission: God created me to love Val and sacrifice my life for her. He created her to be my perfect match and for those whom God calls to the vocation of marriage, He’s created a perfect match for you as well. Forget anything you’ve heard from people who’ve become disillusioned and instead “just wait” for the joy, the excitement, the laughter, and the sheer fun of what’s to come!

Just wait… until you come home and your husband, who has just come home from work, has the fire going in the fireplace, Christmas lights plugged in and hot chocolate set out for you.

Just wait…until you come home to a house full of balloons and a gigantic card on your birthday and you realize how hard your wife worked to see your joy and that she’s been planning this moment for a long time.

Just wait… until the first snow since you’ve been married and your husband goes outside and creates a huge heart in the road to show you from the upstairs window.

Just wait… until she hatches a plan to feed the homeless and you remember how much you love her generosity and compassion.

Just wait… until you find the love note he hid around the house for you to find during the day.

Just wait… until you get to open your lunch bag to read the love note she wrote you that morning.

Just wait… until your husband comes home from work and the first thing he does is run, literally run, to find you, lift you up in an embrace, spin you around, and give you a “hello” kiss.

Just wait… until you see your wife waving from the window as you come home from work, with a huge smile on her face, so happy to see you, and she surprises you with a scrumptious meal, a clean house, and plans for the future: fruit of a grueling day while you were at work, and all out of love.

Just wait… until your husband pulls a dozen beautiful red roses from behind his back, in the middle of the week, for no other reason than he loves you and knows you love surprises.

Just wait… until when you serve food for the two of you and she insists you have the warmer dinner, the choicest portion of meat, and the bigger cookie, just because she loves to see you smile.

Just wait… until he changes his routine and brings his laptop over to work with you on the couch because he knows you enjoy his presence.

Just wait… until you two really realize for the first time that you are not just “her” family, not just “your” family, but your own family.

Just wait… until your husband tells you every day that you’re his most beautiful bride and he’s the luckiest guy in the world.

Just wait… until she giggles every time you surprise her with kisses on her cheek.

Just wait… until your husband asks to hold a friend’s baby for the first time, and he instantly melts, and you are reminded for the billionth time how good of a dad he will be one day.

Just wait… until you see your wife cradling a friend’s infant in her arms, and she instantly knows everything to do to calm him, and you are reminded for the billionth time how good of a mom she will be one day.

Just wait… because you have so much joy ahead of you…

About the authors
Valerie is a worship leader in the Washington, DC area and is the music director for campus ministry at George Washington University. (www.valerierepetski.com) Rocco is an engineer and does youth ministry with Youth Apostles, a community of Catholic men. (www.youthapostles.org) Valerie and Rocco also do ministry with their Catholic rock band, The Restless. (www.therestless.net) This article originally appeared on http://valerierepetski.com/blog/ and is used with permission.

How Much Does it Cost to Marry in the Church?

How much does it cost to get married in the Catholic Church?

Actually, nothing. Sacraments are not for sale. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2121) makes clear that the First Commandment forbids simony, which is the buying or selling of sacred things.

It’s appropriate, however, for the bride and groom to share their joy and, in generosity, to contribute to the support of the Church and its ministers. The donations and stipends associated with a wedding fall into three categories:

1. Donation to the church. Traditionally, the couple makes a donation to the church in which they are married. Sometimes an amount—or a range—is suggested, but often it’s left to the discretion of the couple. If the bride or groom or both are registered parishioners, the suggested amount may be minimal, or none. The assumption is that they are already supporting the parish with their regular financial contributions.

Some couples marry in a historic chapel or church. Keep in mind that wedding donations can be an important source of support for older buildings.

Couples should ask about the suggested donation if it is not specified in the written marriage policy. A helpful rule of thumb is to consider the donation in relation to the total amount spent on the wedding. In no case, however, should financial circumstances prevent a couple from approaching the Church for marriage.

2. Music ministers and others. In addition to an organist, weddings may feature instrumentalists, a cantor and other singers. Musicians’ fees are often explained in the parish’s marriage policy, or they can be discussed when the couple meets with the music director.

If the celebration includes a Mass, altar servers should be given a small offering.

3. Celebrant’s stipend. The services of the priest or deacon are free, but it is customary to offer a stipend. Usually, no specific amount is suggested. Couples may want to consider not only the time devoted to the rehearsal and wedding, but also the effort put into the marriage preparation process.

A final note

Donations and stipends should be placed in clearly marked envelopes and given to the intended recipient. Celebrants are not usually expected to distribute the stipends.

Some parishes require that certain fees be paid in advance, for example, a deposit to confirm the date, or the musician’s fee. Any remaining donations and stipends should be taken care of prior to the wedding day.

Avoiding Wedding Photography Mishaps

A video on YouTube is making the rounds on photography websites and blogs. I decided to join the discussion here because it relates to photography in a religious setting.

In the video, a minister is leading an outdoor wedding ceremony. As he speaks, one can hear the sound of a camera shutter firing away. The minister abruptly turns his attention to the wedding photographer and videographer standing behind him. He tells them, “Please, sirs, leave. This is a solemn assembly. Not a photography session. Please move.”

The expressions on the bride and groom’s faces are of sheer horror, probably thinking about that huge check they wrote to have their special day recorded and photographed.

As the camera is removed from its tripod and the video loses its focus, the minister is heard ending his sermon to the photographers: “This is not about photography. This is about God.”

What a terrible ending to what should have been a magnificent, memorable day.

Who is to blame for this incident and how could it have been avoided? First, both the photographers and the minister share the blame.

As a Catholic press photographer, I have covered religious ceremonies and witnessed other photographers who seemed to operate with complete disregard for the sacred environment in which they were working. They see no difference between shooting a prayer service or a sporting event. Whether it is the attire worn inside a church (T-shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes or sandals) or the way he or she distracts the congregation by moving around at inappropriate times, unprofessional photographers can give their colleagues a bad reputation.

At the same time, some church officials (whether it’s a priest, sacristan or master of ceremony) need to understand the importance of capturing the moment for posterity. While covering the ordination of several priests at Milwaukee’s St. John the Evangelist Cathedral several years ago, I received an unpleasant look from the master of ceremonies. Apparently another photographer got on his bad side and he restricted my movement at the liturgy.

I’ve photographed weddings at churches and know that each priest or minister has his or her own opinions about wedding photographers. A photographer’s first task is to meet with the minister, ideally at the wedding rehearsal, and discuss limitations or concerns for taking photos. Priests are usually fine with photographers moving around the church to get the right shot, but some don’t allow flash photography. The use of a motor-driven camera, which sounds like a muffled machine gun, can also be a distraction and should be avoided in churches.

Catholic weddings, especially ceremonies that take place within the celebration of Mass, are indeed sacred, sacramental events. But this should not prohibit capturing the event on camera.

The outcome captured in this video should never have happened. The photographers and the minister could have prevented it if some preplanning had taken place. The obvious losers were the bride and groom.

About the author
Sam Lucero is news and information director for The Compass and a 30-year veteran of the Catholic press.

Re-posted with permission from The Compass, the official newspaper for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Original link here.

The Exchange of Consent

The exchange of consent – often called the marriage vows – is at the heart of the Catholic wedding ceremony. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, the consent exchanged between bride and groom “is the indispensable element that ‘makes the marriage’” (no. 1626). Without consent, there is no marriage. The consent is part of every Catholic wedding ceremony, whether it takes place within Mass, without Mass, or between a Catholic and unbaptized person. It takes place after the Questions Before Consent and before the Blessing and Giving of Rings.

The words of consent provide rich reflection both for couples preparing for marriage and those married for years. Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia that the words of consent “cannot be reduced to the present; they involve a totality that includes the future: ‘until death do us part’” (no. 214). By promising in the presence of God and the Church to love each other faithfully for the rest of their lives, bride and groom form an unbreakable covenant.

The Consent

The bride and groom declare their consent using one of the following formulas:

Option #1. I (name) take you (name) to be my wife/husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

Option #2. I (name) take you (name) for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.

Or, the bride and groom may use one of the following formulas in which each answers I do after the priest or deacon poses the question.

Option #3. (Name), do you take (name) to be your wife/husband? Do you promise to be faithful to her/him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love her/him and to honor her/him all the days of your life? I do.

Option #4. (Name), do you take (name) for your lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part? I do.

Saying I Do: What Happens at a Catholic Wedding

This video resource, produced by the USCCB Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, walks you through the Rite of Marriage, whether you’re marrying another Catholic, a baptized person who is not Catholic, or someone who is not baptized. It also answers several FAQs about Catholic weddings. Ideal for engaged couples, their families and anyone who is involved in Catholic marriage preparation.

The Consent

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