officiant questions...

[Deleted User]

Hello!

I am from Chicago and have no idea where to start looking for an officient. Where have you found yours and who/what were they affiliated with?

The wedding will be in a hotel downtown, and the ceremony/reception will be at the same place. We do not want to do a church being as neither of us are very religious.

The big problem is: my fiance's family wants a Catholic priest to marry us. Has anyone had luck finding someone that will marry outside of the church in Chicago? Worst case senario we find someone else to marry us. Any suggestions? Catholic suggestions or otherwise? We would be willing to accomodate their request, but I have never heard of a Catholic priest marrying outside of the church.

Thanks!
-TD

Sparkette19

When we met with my childhood parish priest he said that he doesn't perform wedding ceremonies outside of the church. He did offer the suggestion to have the marriage blessed by the Church after our wedding day as an alternative.

In the end we joined the parish closest to our house and we are getting married in the Church there.

That could be a possible compromise with the parents is to have the marriage blessed by a priest in a church. I'm not sure if you have to be members of a parish to do that though. You would have to check into the guidlelines with your archdiocese

jbll326

We had exactly the same situation! I did some research knowing that is virtually impossible and a lengthy process to have a priest marry you outside of the church....and then I found Married Catholic priests - they are former catholic priests that decided to marry, and thus no longer practice as a priest. However, they still have all the legal authority to marry.
 
We felt this was the best of both worlds - we could have the ceremony in the same venue as the reception and we could please family members by having a priest marry us with all the trimmings of a traditional Catholic ceremony. The ceremony is about 30 minutes and is almost exactly like a traditional catholic wedding in structure and substance. He said he could even give communion, but I haven't looked into this yet. We are working with Rev. Ron Crowley-Koch who lives in Mt Prospect and there is also another gentleman, but I don't know anything about him. We both really like Rev Ron and are thrilled that he's marrying us, and our families are thrilled that we are trying to honor their wishes as best we can. HTH!

http://www.marriedcatholicpriests.net/index.html