Your Wedding: Planning the Ceremony

When planning your ceremony, it helps to set a theme or idea that pulls the celebration together. You should look over the readings for the liturgy, music available, and the uniqueness of yourselves as a couple to choose an idea or theme. Themes may vary from ideas like your unity or oneness, to the fruitfulness of your love, to the everlastingness of your love, to friendship, to growth, etc.

Within Mass or Not? Normally it is presumed that the wedding vows would be shared during the Mass. For a mixed faith wedding, we would often use a liturgical service instead of Mass. However, there may be reasons to choose another liturgical service, such as when another minister is participating or when the majority of the congregation is not Catholic. Please don’t decide to avoid the Eucharist thinking it will be shorter or that non-Catholics won’t understand (we can help them). If you’re not sure which is best for your wedding, please discuss this with Susan Ratigan, she can give you some guidance in making this decision.

Once you have decided whether your ceremony will be within or without Mass, you will need to make decisions for the liturgy: readings and readers, music and musicians, Prayers of the Faithful, etc. Below are worksheets for planning your liturgy. These are fillable PDFs. You will need to download the form that applies to you before filling it out. Once you have filled it out, please email or deliver it to Susan Ratigan.