Catholic Weddings

Church Frustration

FI & I are getting married in 9 days. I have been asking/hounding the deacon to get our FOCCUS material review, and our witness interviews set up since January. We JUST finished the FOCCUS review last week, and yesterday, his 2 witnesses gave testimony. I tried to set up for my 2 witnesses to give testimony tomorrow; I left a message to confirm & haven't received a call back. UGH.

The ceremony musician, whom I have known for almost 30 years (he happens to be my BFF's uncle) has been completely non-responsive about the music-beyond saying that I'm on his calendar. We have no contract, haven't paid him, because he hasn't returned my calls. (He is also the music director at our church-not some random person.) I am at the point where I am going to send him the list of readings and the songs we've selected, because the programs have to be printed. If he doesn't show, at least we have some music on CD, and I have no problem leading the hymns. Apparently, he did the same thing to his nieces during their weddings...maybe I'm like family to him, then? Sigh.

I'm just SO upset that this last month before the wedding-even up to these last 2 weeks-has been so frustrating and stressful. It also has left a poor impression of my parish with my non-Catholic FI and his family.

Balls. 

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Re: Church Frustration

  • I'm so sorry you're going through all that.  FWIW, we paid everything for our church at the rehearsal -- church fee, priest fee, musicians' fees, all of it -- so try not to worry too much about that!

    Also, the ladies here who play for their churches are going to hate me for this, but it must just be a music director thing.  ;)  I had email correspondence with the music director at our church for MONTHS before our wedding, where we discussed the music and the fact that I wanted one of my bridesmaids to sing.  He insisted they didn't need to meet to practice, that they would just rehearse a couple hours before the ceremony.  Wedding was at 2, and at 1:00 he still wasn't there.  The church coordinator called him and he hadn't even gotten out of bed and was furious because he had "no idea" my bridesmaid was singing and needed to practice.  Sigh.

    I'm really curious why your church has waited so long to get to the FOCCUS... I feel like that's definitely supposed to be completed as part of your PREP...
    Anniversary

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  • Thank you for commenting, @professorscience!

    I think that my parish is just a little overwhelmed right now-our head priest left to another parish about 2 months ago, and I think the deacon is handling a lot of things that Fr. Jason used to do. But it still really sucks that our time has been monopolized like this.

    We did finish everything-my parents gave witness testimony. That was a huge relief.

    And I met with the musician after church last night (it's not the Mass I usually attend) and went over what we wanted. The best part? I asked what the fee would be, and he said: "Nothing. You're family." OK...I forgive you, then!

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