Just wondering if any is having/has had a Catholic church wedding and could give me some advice or help?
I have not been to a catholic church wedding before and just wondered what to expect?
How long do they generally take? How many readings do you have? Do the guests have communion? Do the church pass around their collection basket? (this will annoy me if they do!) Do you get a say in what the priest is to say and the vows etc?
I live in Coventry and want to get married in Newcastle - I am probably going to get married at my Nana's church, how often do we have to go to a service before the wedding (I only ask because of the cost of going up and down the road a number of weekends!)?
My family is catholic and it is tradition for us to get married in a church, OH's family are half COE and half catholic and neither side actually go to church, or ever have I think! I have a feeling they will all be bored(!) so I want to let them know what will happen.
So sorry for all the questions!!!
CommentAuthorsusan1990
the only thing i no about catholic weddings is that they dont usually charge you to get married they just ask for a donation, round here anyway. im marrying in a church of england so wouldnt like to say but i assume it would be the same as any other wedding i dont think they would do communion during your wedding and usually they just leave a collect box by the door at least in my church anyway. my wedding is an hour long so its probably about the same and you can hae as many readings as you like we are haing 2 and getting family members to do them to make them more personal. x
CommentAuthorCrawf
thanks susan for your help! I suppose the best way to get all the answers is to speak to the priest, but with the wedding being up in Newcastle I have to wait til I am up there! There is too much to think about it and is still 2 years away!
CommentAuthorSam
From what I understand there are a lot more restrictions/requirements in order to have a catholic marriage service. Ideally both of you need to be baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church. If he is not catholic you would need to get permission to marry within the Catholic church. Even though you have two years to plan you should speak to the priest soon just so you can find out what needs to be done so you can marry in the church.
CommentAuthorHollyB42
Hi hun I'm getting married in a catholic church, you will need to ask permission from the parish priest first he will usually want you to go and visit him and have a good chat, be prepared for a bit of a grilling about why you want to get married in the church, we still got a full interview even though we practice at the church every Sunday and it is my H2Bs family church since he was born!
There are 2 types of service in a catholic church either just a wedding ceremony which takes about 20 mins or the full nuptial mass which is over an hour usually. You may find that as your H2B isn't catholic you may not be allowed to have a full mass anyway. If you just have a service there is no communion and if you have the mass your catholic guests will be invited to take communion.
You won't get any say in the vows there is just one set for the catholic church as far as I know.
How often you will need to attend church will be up to the priest he may understand the distance and just expect you to attend your local church, our priest didn't say anything to us about going to mass but that may just be because he knows we go anyway. You will have to attend marriage preparation classes though!
As you would be getting married outside of the parish you live in you will also need to go to see your local parish priest as he will need to send a letter to the priest who would marry you to give his permission too.
I am not sure what the priest will require but here are the legal requirements:
It is unlikley your local reg office will believe Newcastle is your "usual place of worship" so you will need to do a residency notice e.g. reside in NCL for 9 days before giving notice to marry : ) Check it out with reg office as they are very nice (my mate just given notice there :))
This is the alternative of the CofE "banns".
CommentAuthorLauraJo87
You might run into a few problems if it is not your resident place of worship, aside from the legality of the residency clause as even if you satisfy the legal requirements the priest still needs to agree.
He will probably also want your h2b to attend a marriage course.
Best thing to do is chat to the priest - some are more lenient than others over such matters xx
My Beating Heart Belongs To You
30 August 2013
The First Day Of My Happily Ever After
CommentAuthorBethS11
Hi, i'm also getting married in a catholic church (and i'm from newcastle too!) My OH is CoE whereas my family are catholic. we opted for the shorter service which will be around 30-45 minutes long (we couldn't have communion in our church because of the difference in religions). we have 2 friends doing readings, which we chose, and then our priest reading from the gospel. they will usually pass around collection baskets (our church especially) because they rely on parish donations to keep them going, it's usually when the priest is speaking, so it doesn't really affect your wedding ceremony. also, the church doesn't have a fee for a ceremony, they just ask for a suitable donation which you can afford. our priest gave us a booklet with all the different readings we could choose from for both him and our friends to read, and we were asked if we wanted to write our own vows or stay with the traditional ones.. which we did.
as for the marriage course, we attended a 3 hour 'workshop' style course one saturday morning (our priest openly admitted that nowadays people tend to turn up for the first couple and then stop going when they're spread out over a number of weeks). this was held in another local church and was for all of the couples in our area marrying over the next year.
