Catholic couples say ‘I do’ to traditional nuptials
In what seems like a generation of overwhelming, over-the-top Bridezillas and big-budget weddings, religious tradition is again a priority for many young couples getting married in the Catholic Church during this summer’s wedding season.
Not so long ago, plenty of Catholics resented requirements that marriages be performed in the Church and according to specific liturgy. Today’s young Catholics are turning against the rebellions of their parents and their peers by marrying young and choosing traditional Catholic ceremonies.
“Marriage in the Catholic Church is a sacrament,” said Christine Flood, 22, a Catholic living in Columbus, Ohio, who’s finalizing plans for her August wedding. I’ve had all my other sacraments in the Catholic Church, and it just wouldn’t feel right to have it any other way. My religion is something that’s un-compromisable.”
Flood grew up in a committed Catholic family and attended Catholic high school in Bethpage on New York’s Long Island. Her 22-year-old fiancé, Phil Jones, raised in the Episcopal Church, is in the process of converting to Catholicism through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, or R.C.I.A. He will celebrate the Eucharist at Mass for the first time at their wedding in month.
So much of current data points to a country trending towards marrying older and in less traditional ways. Some elope. Some marry outside their faith to make the wedding fit their dream rather than their religious practice. So the couple feels pressure, from nearly all sides, to defend their plans to marry young —except for their friends at church, she said.
According to the Census Bureau, the average age for men at the time of their first marriage is 28 and for women, 26. That’s about five years later than the figures from 1970.
When Fr. Ken Simpson served as a campus chaplain at Northwestern University in Evanston, he counseled Catholic couples drawn to the sacrament of marriage, but feared how their peers and families would react to their decision to marry young.
“I think college students are looking for something in their life that represents some kind of stability,” said Simpson, now the pastor of St. Clements Catholic Church in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. “The (nuptial) ritual is supposed to be dependable and predictable.”
These young couples want traditional church weddings, he said, unlike Catholics in the 1980s and 1990s who tried to push for more creative ceremonies, requesting to write their own vows or “get married in a forest.”
While young Catholic couples often prefer conventional ceremonies, they favor a more contemporary lifestyle after getting married, where both spouses will keep their jobs and will likely wait several years before having children, Father Simpson said.
By tradition, the Catholic Church holds marriage to a high standard, as a sacrament that cannot, except in rare instances, be dissolved. Their position against divorce has caused some controversy in church circles. Though many Catholic marriages do end in divorce, the rate is lower than that of other denominations. Consider: Christian researchers The Barna Group Ltd., found that 28 percent of Catholics who have been married have gone through a divorce, compared to a third of the overall population.
Rusty and Deborah Richards, newlyweds living in Ypsilanti, Mich., outside of Ann Arbor, were drawn closer as a couple by their shared Catholic faith when they began dating in college. For their first date, the two attended Mass and ate brunch afterward. So when Rusty, now 26, proposed three years ago, the Richardses knew they’d remain true to their Catholic roots.
“Deciding to be married in the Church may have been the quickest and easiest decision ever made,” said Rusty, who married Deborah, 23, in October 2007. “It is not related to and not affected by secular marriage. So even though divorce and broken families are so prevalent, I know that Deborah and I have a more special union.”
In addition to discouraging separation, Catholic bishops have adopted a more encouraging approach to marriage and are offering practical ways to foster healthy relationships.
The Catholic Church in the states is halfway through a six-year initiative by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to reemphasize the religious and social value of marriage amid high rates of divorce, growing numbers of children born out of wedlock and the move to legalize same-sex unions. The conference launched a campaign that asks couples “What have you done for your marriage today?”
“Our hope is that people will look at the Catholic Church as a pro-marriage church,” said Sheila Garcia, the associate director at the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat for Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth in Washington, D.C.
With its focus on problem-solving and compromise as well as church doctrine, the “For Your Marriage” campaign and Web site, foryourmarriage.org, are directed to both Catholics and non-Catholic couples.
“They just want your marriage to succeed and for you to be an active participant in your marriage,” said Flood, who recognized the themes of the campaign in a retreat she and her fiancé attended as a part of the church’s marriage preparation, or “pre-cana,” requirement in which couples learn techniques for effective communication, conflict resolution techniques and ways to incorporate God and church-life into marriage. “Any couple could benefit from attending a program like that.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also released statements outlining the church’s positions on the sacrament of marriage and the nuptial mass itself, some of which don’t match up with Catholics’ idea of a typical wedding.
For example, both the bride and groom should process with both their parents as a way to symbolize two people coming together as equals, but for brides who actually dream of being “given away” by their fathers, it’s a frustrating change.
Take Deborah Richards. As she began her walk down the aisle, wearing a white, strapless gown with beaded detail across the top and a row of satin buttons down the back, her handsome, redheaded groom was still on his way to the altar.
“We were also required to enter in a continual procession, so there wasn’t time for Rusty to get to the altar and turn around to see me walk down the aisle,” Deborah, now in graduate school at Eastern Michigan University studying accounting. “That was very disappointing for all of us, but the priest and the church staff would not budge on that rule.”
While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops offers suggestions for elements of the wedding ceremony, ultimately each diocese and each parish can make its own requirements regarding readings, music, decorations and other details.
“Most couples are looking for a traditional wedding, but what makes it a Catholic wedding is only the exchange of vows and rings before us in a church.” The rest of what a bride and groom might imagine—a unity candle, a prayer in front of the Blessed Mother or praying the rosary—aren’t part of the Catholic nuptial liturgy, according to Simpson.
Although some ceremonial practices have grown more popular in the last decade – such as having both the bride and groom process down the aisle and allowing the bridal party accompany them on the altar – most wedding trends involve elements of the reception.
Working with couples, “we get a comprehensive view of their whole wedding,” said Jo Ann O’Brien, the wedding coordinator at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago’s Loop, where weddings are held nearly every Saturday of the year. “Receptions are a lot more elaborate these days, but the basics of the Catholic ceremony are the same.”
Bride-to-be Christine Flood is sorting through the details for both her ceremony and reception, choosing Bible passages and favorite hymns while also finalizing decorations and seating for her reception, which will take place in a cabin-style lodge in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
“The dynamic at the ceremony is going to be different than the reception,” Flood said. “I’m going to have a full nuptial Mass, but at the same time the reception, it’s going to be untraditional, fun and elegant.”
For more about the contemporary Catholic weddings, check out Busted Halo’s video series “The Princess and the Priest and the War for the Perfect Wedding.”
Photo courtesy of the Richardses.
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January 16th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Catholic couples definitely say ‘I do” to traditional nuptials.
Recently, two different couples chose to ‘tie the knot’ in an Ann Arbor wedding featuring a Traditional Latin Mass.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:16 am
I’m a redhead and nothing is different about me.
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