Who should officiate my wedding?

Question

My fiance was raised Catholic. He's okay with that but not practicing right now. I was raised atheist. I'm okay with that but not atheist anymore. We're getting married next fall, and his all-Catholic family wants a Catholic priest. Miracle of miracles, my family is okay with that. Even my crotchety, cranky, atheist mom. She thinks it's a great idea. I nearly passed out from shock when she told me.

Now, the problem is with me. My fiance doesn't care how we do it, or even if we do it on schedule. He's fine with whatever, so long as I'm still in the picture. What do I do? I'm an ex-atheist as of a couple years ago, still hugely uncomfortable with religion (I've worked hard not to let that show when we go to services with his parents), and not comfortable dedicating my marriage or promising myself to a church. Should I get comfortable, or find another option?

Answer 1

Choosing a church or denomination now days is far less important than it used to be.  Before, once you committed to a church you were stuck there but now it does not seem to matter to many people.  It really only matters to you, so in the end its up to you. Just know that whatever you choose, in the end it will not make much difference in your marriage.

Answer 2

Well if you have a traditional Catholic wedding then you will have to commit/promise a lot to the Catholic church, but you could always have a Catholic priest "bless" your marriage and perform a Christian ceremony to make his family happy (always important) but not do an entire strictly Catholic ceremony.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

It's not really the wedding - its the rest of your life.

A catholic wedding is nice and pretty - as long as you're comfortable with a mass, and with not being able to personalize it very much.  You can survive it, and enjoy the candles and the setting, yadda yadda.

But it's all about the children.  A catholic wedding requires that you both agree to raise the kids in the catholic faith.  You will probably have to take classes, get baptized, and become a (nominal) Catholic.  

Other churches, like a liberal Episcopal church, United Church of Christ, I think, (and of course, Unitarian) don't require 'conversion', and will marry you in a simple Christian or spiritual ceremony without requiring 'classes' and professions of faith.  It's a compromise. And it won't make his parents any happier than a civil wedding, I'm guessing.

It's your wedding (and you don't want to be 'crossing your fingers' during it, I expect) and either you're going to go along and keep your scepticism to yourself, or you need to be direct and ask for a civil, humanist, non-religious, or unitarian-y wedding. You can have candles and readings and even prayers - but no mass.

I'm an ex-catholic, so my daughter was baptized in the Catholic Church - a requirement -, but the priest would not marry them unless she was also confirmed, and agreed to raise any kids catholic. They said 'nope', and hired a hippy episcopal priest to marry them.  The catholic in-laws were really really upset, and actually had the wedding blessed by a priest in secret.  (they could do that, because she had been baptised, and their diocese recognized Episcopal ritual as 'catholic'.)  The new pope, by the way, says no dice, He's a rules guy.  Better check with your local priest to see how much leeway you have, and sit down and talk about the kids and sunday mass and all that stuff.  Good luck!

Answer 4

Your wedding day is one of the few days of your life when EVERYTHING is about what YOU want and you should go with whatever makes you comfortable. You don't want to look back on what's supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life and have bad memories. If your fiance doesn't care then why not do a non-denominational wedding. Or if you don't want to upset the future in-laws offer to have his father or a member of their family ordained to perform the wedding that way they are still involved. Bottom line this is YOUR day. Here is one of many links on becoming ordained.