Tag Archives: Eucharist

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 26th.

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.

This Is My Body

Did you know that marriage is the one sacrament that priests do not administer?

When I married Stacey 15 years ago, the priest led the ceremony and gave us cues as to what to say, but his role, in essence, was to witness—more properly, “to receive”—our vows to love each other till death. He stood as witness with the whole community of faith to hear us say those words to each other, and in the name of the Church he received and blessed what we had done.

This means that the true ministers of the sacrament of marriage are the spouses. I minister the sacrament of marriage to Stacey, and she ministers it to me. Not only did we minister the sacrament of marriage to one another on our wedding day, but we also ministered the sacrament of marriage to one another on the day after the wedding. And the day after that.

In fact, every action and behavior of our married life together is an expression of the sacrament of marriage. When I fill a hot-water bottle to heat the bed for Stacey on a cold night, I am ministering the sacrament of marriage to her. In another 40 years of married life, God-willing, when Stacey parses the week’s medications into daily segments for me, she will be ministering the sacrament of marriage to me.

When we are talking to couples preparing for marriage, this sounds like a beautiful vision and ideal. And it does transform the way we see the life we share together. On the inside, however—in the day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground reality of family life—love takes shape in messy, demanding, frustrating ways. It often feels like death by 1,000 cuts, and that is because love is sacrifice—it means giving yourself away for the good of another.

Sometimes I envy the martyrs who could give their lives to love in one final decision. Marriage presents me with 349 decisions to sacrifice myself every single day. It makes me wonder why anyone would choose this life. It seems like a small miracle that people go on marrying and raising children at all.

Certainly our culture does not value self-denial. Our economy is built upon consumption, and advertising and media barrage us with the idea that autonomy and status are paths to happiness. Love in marriage and family life is an emptying and a binding, and it stands in stark contrast to what we see on TV.

For someone looking for freedom, emptying and binding sounds like the last thing they could want. Yet, paradoxically, generations of faithful people have given themselves away in marriage and family life and found exactly that—freedom.

Freedom is a slippery word, especially in America. True freedom is the freedom to grow in goodness, to become the people we were created to be. And because we are created in the image of God, who is love, we are most truly ourselves, happy, and free when we love.

That is to say, we experience true freedom when we discover that we are becoming holy because we are offering love to our spouses and children. Our culture twists that notion to try to fool us into thinking that freedom is about the open road with a new Chevy Silverado, but that is just silly.

The good news is that we participate in the mystery of God when we love, and this brings us new life. Marriage and family life is a way for us to give our lives over to love 349 ways every day, and it gives us glimpses of heaven every single day, too. To see our children love one another, for example, is just a miracle. There is no way that on my own I can account for the magnitude of that kind of goodness.

Now I’m not saying that every moment in our household is accompanied by a chorus of alleluias. The bulk of our experience is filled with the mundane: getting kids to school, working, making dinner, doing dishes, cleaning the house, shopping for groceries, and so on. But I don’t know of any life that isn’t full of the mundane.

God wants to be discovered within our human experience, not in some abstract ideal. Stacey and I have certainly discovered the truth that marriage is a school for love—that we are working out our salvation with one another, helping each other get to heaven.

This is the kernel of truth behind what we discerned when we decided to get married—we knew that we were at our best together. I knew that a life with Stacey would make me a better person than I could become on my own. A decade and a half later, I’m utterly convinced of this fact—Stacey calls me to growth and encourages me to continue striving for perfection. I’ll never reach that perfection in this world, but sharing a life with her gives me a concrete way to pursue holiness.

As humans, we are tied to sense and corporeality—if we can’t see, smell, taste, touch, or hear something, it is difficult for us to grasp it. Marriage and family life allow us to experience love with our senses. Yesterday, for example, love smelled like toothpaste, steaming vegetables, strawberry-scented shampoo, and popcorn.

Though sex is a part of the physicality of love in marriage, it is a very small part. Mostly, we communicate and care for each other’s bodies—we wash children’s bodies, we feed each other’s bodies with shared meals, we transport bodies to and from school and work and activities, we nurse sick bodies back to health and help tired bodies rest. It was the same with Jesus—he made his body an instrument of love. He still does.

In fact, the Eucharist is the best way for us as spouses and parents to connect our 349 acts of love each day with the one act of love that God has given the world in his Son. We can say with the priest, who repeats these words from Jesus himself: “This is my body, given up for you.”

Eucharistic Adoration

Does your parish have Eucharistic adoration? It’s the practice of devout prayer before the body of Christ in the Eucharist, displayed outside of Mass. Once very widespread, it became less popular after the Second Vatican Council, which placed a greater emphasis on the active participation of the faithful in the liturgy itself. Although some liturgical theologians find Eucharistic adoration at odds with the purpose and practice of the Eucharist at Mass–that is to say, Communion–in recent years Eucharistic adoration has become more popular, particularly among younger Catholics.

The origins of Eucharistic adoration are not well-known. One of the first references to reserving the Blessed Sacrament for adoration is in the life of St. Basil the Great in the late fourth century. St. Basil supposedly divided the consecrated Eucharistic bread into three parts during the liturgy at his monastery. One part he consumed himself; the second was given to the monks; and the third portion was placed in a Golden Dove suspended above the altar. It seems likely that this reserved portion was kept for those who were unable to attend the liturgy because of illness or travel.

The practice of Eucharistic adoration among laypeople is thought to have begun in Avignon, France, on September 11, 1226. King Louis VII, having just won a victory over the Albigensians, asked that the Blessed Sacrament be placed on display at the Chapel of the Holy Cross. This exposition was so popular that the local bishop asked to have it continue indefinitely. Pope Honorius III gave his consent and the practice continued, nearly uninterrupted, until the French Revolution in 1792.

The longest-running Eucharistic adoration in the United States is with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Crosse, Wisconsin, who have been praying nonstop for more than 130 years.

Finding Help When Your Marriage Is in Trouble

This document was developed as a print resource by the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2011.

For Sue and Carlos, married for eight years, life is hectic as they try to balance his full-time job, her part-time job, and the needs of three children. Even when they manage a date night, conversation tends to revolve around the kids. Sue misses the connection she felt with Carlos as newlyweds. Carlos loves his family but wonders if there’s something more than the endless routine of carpools and shopping. Both worry that the spark has gone out of their marriage.

Nearly a year after Tom admitted his affair with a co-worker, Sally cannot forgive him. She considered divorce, but Sally takes their wedding vows seriously and doesn’t want to abandon nineteen years of marriage. Besides, Tom is a good father to their teenagers. Tom wants desperately to regain Sally’s trust but doesn’t know how to begin to repair the damage to their marriage.

On their wedding day, when a bride and groom promise to be true in good times and in bad, the hard times seem far away. The Church rejoices with the couple, even as it reminds them of what lies ahead. In the Nuptial Blessing the priest or deacon prays, “Lord, may they both praise you when they are happy and turn to you in their sorrows.”

The Church understands that problems are part of every marriage. The reality of human sinfulness can impair the ability to achieve a happy and holy marriage. Modern stresses on marriage can take their toll.

Nevertheless, God’s plan for marriage persists. He offers forgiveness and healing so that couples might learn to grow in self-giving love and thus become an image of the relationship between Christ and his Church.

How can this happen, however, when couples face the difficulties of married life? In their pastoral letter on marriage, Love and Life in the Divine Plan, the U.S. bishops offer an answer: “We bishops urge couples in crisis to turn to the Lord for help. We also encourage them to make use of the many resources, including programs and ministries offered by the Church, that can help to save marriages, even those in serious difficulty” (24).

This brochure identifies a variety of resources available to couples experiencing marital problems. Some couples, such as Sue and Carlos in the above example, can benefit from marriage education. Others, like Sally and Tom, often need more intensive help, such as counseling. All Catholic spouses can draw strength and healing from the Church’s spiritual resources.

The Parish as a Source of Help

Catholics experiencing problems in their marriage often turn to their parish for assistance. For many, a first step is to discuss their situation with their pastor, who can often offer support and guidance. Although most are not trained counselors, an experienced pastor knows what to listen for and what kind of help to offer. Couples like Sue and Carlos may simply need reassurance that their marriage is going through an unsettling but normal phase.

In some cases, a pastor may identify and challenge an addictive behavior. He may also determine that professional help is needed and recommend a qualified counselor.

The pastor represents a Church that is committed to saving marriages, if at all possible. He promises to offer spiritual and emotional support as the couple works through their difficulties. He asks the couple to make a similar commitment by trying in good faith to save the marriage. (An important note: In Love and Life in the Divine Plan, the U.S. Catholic bishops state that “no one in a marriage is obliged to maintain common living with an abusing spouse” [24]. See also When I Call for Help: A Pastoral Response to Domestic Violence Against Women.)

In some parishes, deacons and lay ministers are able to provide pastoral care to married couples. Other parishes have pastoral counselors—trained mental health professionals who integrate sound therapy and spirituality. If no help is available, it may be possible to find assistance at a neighboring parish. This is also an option for couples who are reluctant to discuss their marital problems with their own pastor.

Helpful Resources for All Couples

  • Skills-building programs. Research has shown that marriages are more likely to succeed when couples acquire certain skills such as communication, conflict resolution, financial planning, and time management. Some parishes and community adult education programs offer skills-building sessions. The diocesan Family Life Office may be familiar with programs offered in the area.
  • In-home resources. Many couples appreciate the flexibility of in-home resources such as books, DVDs, and web-based marriage enrichment programs. These are readily available online and in bookstores. The For Your Marriage website includes lists of recommended books and programs.
  • A Marriage Mentor couple can be helpful for any marriage, especially one in trouble. Some parishes have programs to match couples; otherwise, a pastor might suggest someone, or a couple might look for a more experienced couple whose interactions they admire.
  • Group-based encouragement and enrichment. Various enrichment programs are offered in group settings. Some, such as Marriage Encounter and the Marriage Encounter Weekend Program, bring couples together for a day or a weekend to focus on improving their marriage. Others, such as Christian Family Movement and Teams of Our Lady, offer a chance to meet regularly with other married couples for mutual support and spiritual growth.

For Your Marriage has more information about these and similar resources.

Resources for Couples with Serious Issues

  • Support groups. Addiction to drugs and alcohol, gambling, pornography, and similar behaviors, if left untreated, worsen over time and can destroy a marriage. Twelve Step programs such as A.A. and N.A. can be effective, alone or in combination with other therapy. The spouse of someone with an addiction can benefit from Al-Anon or Narconon. Many parishes have a list of such programs in their area.

See the article on Addictions for more information.

  • Retrouvaille and The Third Option. Retrouvaille is a weekend program with follow-up, designed for couples with serious problems, including those who are separated or divorced. Weekends are offered around the country. The Third Option combines skills-building workshops, sharing with mentor couples, and a support group. It can be used for marriage enrichment or crisis intervention. Spouses may come alone.

Counseling

Sometimes a problem becomes more than a couple can handle alone. Indications that a couple might need counseling include ongoing conflict that does not get resolved; poor communication patterns; disruptive life transitions; substance abuse; disagreement over a child’s needs; and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. A positive outcome is more likely when help is sought sooner rather than later.

A major challenge is finding the right counselor. The therapist should be committed to saving the marriage, if at all possible, and should respect religious values as a resource for strengthening the marriage. The therapist should have specific training in marriage counseling, with a practice that includes a significant amount of couple work.

The best referrals come from people whose wisdom and integrity can be trusted. This might include a friend, family member, physician, or mental health professional. It could be a pastor or parish staff member. Another referral source is the diocesan Catholic Charities Office or Family Life Office.

See the article on counseling for more information.

Spiritual Resources

Jesus promises to be with those who are dealing with difficulties: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).

Couples can experience Jesus’ presence through the Catholic Church’s rich treasury of spiritual resources.

  • In the Eucharist, Catholic married couples encounter the one who is the source of their marriage. Jesus’ self-giving love sustains their own union. Sometimes, however, couples slip in their Sunday Mass attendance, or they do not attend Mass together. A first step might be to make a date for Mass and start to reclaim the spiritual foundation for the marriage.
  • Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Jesus offers mercy and healing and the opportunity to make a fresh start after inevitable stumbles.
  • Personal prayer, Bible reading, and devotions such as the Rosary or eucharistic adoration can help couples discern God’s will for their marriage.
  • Some parishes and dioceses offer a day of reflection or weekend retreat for married couples.

Conclusion

The Catholic Church wants couples to have a holy and happy marriage. Addressing problems as they arise helps spouses develop the skills and behaviors that lead to a happy marriage; it also leads them to a holy marriage, as they grow in virtues such as patience, perseverance, and forgiveness. Couples who have worked through serious difficulties often emerge stronger and more committed. Hand in hand, they lead each other to heaven as they witness to God’s own faithfulness and abundant love.

About the document
The document Finding Help When Your Marriage Is in Trouble was developed as a resource by the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). It was reviewed by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, and has been authorized for publication by the undersigned.

Msgr. David J. Malloy, STD
General Secretary, USCCB

Scripture texts used in this work are taken from the New American Bible, copyright © 1991, 1986, and 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC 20017 and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved.

First printing, May 2011

ISBN 978-1-60137-199-7

Copyright © 2011, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

This resource is also available in a printed brochure format (Publication No. 7-199). To order copies contact USCCB Publishing or call 800-235-8722.

Is a Divorced Person Excommunicated?

A reader has asked the following question:

How do you respond to someone who says he is excommunicated from the Church so he no longer attends because he’s divorced and did not receive an annulment? I know it isn’t true but I don’t know the details.

Answer:

Some people believe that a Catholic who divorces is excommunicated. Not true! Divorced persons are full members of the Church and are encouraged to participate in its activities. The U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults says: “When divorce is the only possible recourse, the Church offers her support to those involved and encourages them to remain close to the Lord through frequent reception of the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.” Read more about the Church’s teaching on divorce.

Should a divorced Catholic wish to remarry in the Church he or she may need an annulment. Read more about the annulment process. Even if a Catholic has divorced and remarried civilly, the Church does not want them to be alienated. The Catechism of the Catholic Church urges attention to them, “so that they do not consider themselves separated from the Church, in whose life they can and must participate as baptized persons” (no. 1651).

The Order of Celebrating Matrimony Within Mass

“The engaged couple…should be given catechesis not only about the Church’s teaching on Marriage and the family but also about the Sacrament and its rites, prayers, and readings, so that they may be able to celebrate it thoughtfully and fruitfully.” – Order of Celebrating Matrimony, no. 17

When two Catholics marry, the Sacrament of Matrimony normally takes place within Mass. This is fitting because of the connections all sacraments have with the Paschal mystery of Christ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1621) and because it is in the Eucharist that Catholic married couples “meet the one who is the source of their marriage” (USCCB, Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, p. 52). Receiving the Eucharist as their “first meal” together is a beautiful expression of the newlyweds’ reliance on God to sustain and strengthen them throughout their lives.

When the Sacrament of Marriage takes place during Mass, a priest (or a bishop!) is the main celebrant for the ceremony. If other priests or deacons are also able to be present, they may concelebrate or assist as usual at Mass, and could even be invited to preach the homily. In many respects, a wedding Mass is like any other Mass, but with the addition of the ritual for marriage, the heart of which is found in two key moments: the Consent exchanged by the bride and groom, and the Nuptial Blessing that is given to the newly married couple. The consent is “the indispensable element that ‘makes the marriage’” (Catechism, no. 1626). In this moment, the bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament to each other; the celebrant receives their consent in the name of the Church (see Marriage: Love and Life, p. 33). The beautiful Nuptial Blessing includes an invocation of the Holy Spirit, whom the Catechism describes as the “seal” of the new spouses’ covenant and “the ever-available source of their love and the strength to renew their fidelity” (no. 1624).

In addition to the Consent and the Nuptial Blessing, the Order of Celebrating Matrimony contains two other important elements. Before exchanging vows, the bride and groom are asked a series of questions, called the Questions before the Consent, to determine that each approaches marriage freely, intends a lifelong union, and is open to children and to rearing them “according to the law of Christ and his Church.” Then, after the exchange of vows, there is a Blessing and Giving of Rings. The spouses will wear the blessed rings as a sign of their covenant with each other and with God.

The structure of the ceremony for a Catholic wedding within Mass is outlined below, with various options in parentheses. Engaged couples are encouraged to work together with the celebrant (and perhaps the parish staff) to make their choices for certain texts of the wedding, such as the Scripture readings, the Prayers of the Faithful, and the musical selections. This will help make the wedding liturgy “a profound personal experience” of “full, active and responsible participation” by the bride and groom (Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, no. 213; St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 67).

A general outline for a Catholic wedding Mass in the Latin Rite follows, based on the new edition of the Order of Celebrating Matrimony (mandatory to use in the United States as of December 30, 2016). Because there are many options to choose from and various circumstances that can affect the planning of a wedding Mass, it is very important to work with the celebrant or his delegate in arranging the ceremony. Certain details might differ from what is outlined below.

The Introductory Rites

“The marriage liturgy is a unique event, which is both a family and a community celebration. The first signs of Jesus were performed at the wedding feast of Cana. The good wine, resulting from the Lord’s miracle that brought joy to the beginning of a new family, is the new wine of Christ’s covenant with the men and women of every age.” – Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, no. 216

  1. Welcome of the bride and bridegroom by the priest and procession into the church (the welcome can take place at the door of the church or at the altar, depending on the style of procession chosen)
  2. Greeting of the couple and congregation by the priest

Note: The Penitential Act is omitted from a wedding ceremony

  1. Gloria (said or sung, except on certain occasions)
  2. Collect / Opening prayer (six versions to choose from)

The Liturgy of the Word

In the Liturgy of the Word “are expressed the importance of Christian Marriage in the history of salvation and the responsibilities and duties of Marriage to be attended to for the sanctification of the spouses and of their children.” – Order of Celebrating Matrimony, no. 35.

Note: There may be two or three readings plus the Responsorial Psalm, and at least one of them must explicitly speak of marriage.

  1. Old Testament Scripture Reading (nine options; if it is the Easter season, a reading from the Book of Revelation should be chosen instead)
  2. Responsorial Psalm (seven options; many composers have set them to music)
  3. New Testament Scripture Reading (fourteen options)
  4. Gospel Acclamation
  5. Gospel (ten options)
  6. Homily based on the Scriptures, Church teaching on marriage, and the individual couple

The Celebration of Matrimony

“It needs to be stressed that these words [of consent] cannot be reduced to the present; the involve a totality that includes the future: ‘until death do us part.’” – Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, no. 214

“The consent by which the spouses mutually give and receive one another is sealed by God himself.” – Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1639

  1. Address to the couple by the priest
  2. The Questions before the Consent
  3. The Consent (two versions of the vows to choose from, and the couple can either say the words themselves or respond “I do” to the vows posed as a question by the priest)
  4. The Reception of the Consent by the priest
  5. The Blessing and Giving of Rings (three versions of the prayer to choose from)
  6. Optional: The Blessing and Giving of the Arras, a tradition important in Hispanic and Filipino families
  7. Optional: a hymn or canticle of praise may be sung
  8. The Universal Prayer / Prayers of the Faithful (two examples provided in the liturgical text; couples can also work with the priest to write their own)
  9. The Creed (said or sung only if Marriage is celebrated on certain days)

The Liturgy of the Eucharist

“The liturgical crowning of the marriage rite is the Eucharist, the sacrifice of that ‘body which has been given up’ and that ‘blood which has been shed,’ which in a certain way finds expression in the consent of the spouses.” – St. John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 11

“It is…fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice.” – Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1621

  1. The Preparation of the Gifts (the bride and groom may bring the bread and wine to the altar, or someone else may be invited to do so)
  2. The Eucharistic Prayer
  3. The Lord’s Prayer, stopping just before “Deliver us…”
  4. Optional: The Blessing and Placing of the Lazo or the Veil, a tradition important in Hispanic and Filipino families. This could also be done before the Lord’s Prayer, or even earlier, according to local custom.
  5. The Nuptial Blessing (three versions to choose from)
  6. The Sign of Peace
  7. Holy Communion (an appropriate Communion song should be sung)

The Conclusion of the Celebration

  1. Solemn Blessing of the newly married couple and the congregation
  2. Dismissal
  3. Recessional (a hymn could be sung, or instrumental music could be played)

Note: after Mass, the witnesses (usually the best man and maid of honor) and priest sign the Marriage record in the vesting room or in the presence of the people, but not on the altar.