Can a Chaplin marry us in a Roman Catholic Church?

carolyncleek

My FI & I live in DC and are having our wedding in San Diego next year. The church where we would like our ceremony to take place requires us to have our own priest perform the ceremony ( whoever prepare us for marriage) since we don't belong to the parish... but we'd end up having a chaplain prepare us here and the have another chaplain marry us over there. Has anyone done this before or is doing it now? It seems really complicated and I don't know if the Roman Catholic church would allow me to use a chaplain anyway.

Thanks!

divinemsbee

I have honestly never heard of a Catholic church making you provide a priest. I've heard of them allowing you to choose a priest based on your relationship with them, but not this. Hmmmm. My FI and I are going through marriage prep where we live and the priest who is pastor of the church where we're getting married is performing the ceremony. 

I'd assume that a Catholic chaplain is also a priest, so if you have to provide your own, that would fill the spot. However, it obviously wouldn't be the chaplain who did your counseling, so I wonder what the church in SD would think of that. I'd also try to go ahead and talk to the chaplain who would actually be performing the ceremony and see if there's anything he needs from you. 

carolyncleek

There's 2 different churches that we are looking at having our ceremony, and they both sent us their packet with the requirements we need to fulfill before setting a date. Both of these churches won't allow us to use their priests for the ceremony unless we belong to their parish, reason being because they prefer you get married in the church you regularly attend... however my FI is military we have been moved to DC and want to have our wedding close to family.

Both of these churches are ok with us using our own priest (the same one that would prepare us for marriage) but I highly doubt the Chaplin in dc would fly to san diego to marry us..

All of this is so complicated

Irishcurls

All parishes are different, so I would suggest calling to speak to someone at the office, or the Pastor himself to get the full story. In my experience, we got married in a church where my dad lives and did our Pre Cana where we lived in DC. The Catholic Church has no problem sending dispensations, certificates, the whole kit and kaboodle to the diocese in which you will be married. It's just mail. I would explain that you would most likely be using two different priests for Pre Cana and the ceremony, and in fact I would ask specifically if you can hire one of the parish priests to marry you, instead of a second chaplin. Worth asking anyway.

Regardless, make sure you use a Catholic chaplain, not a Protestant one because that would be a problem. And the worst case, you have to fly out the DC chaplain and put him up for a night--there might be no way around if if those are the rules of all the churches.