I am having a slight dilemma with the music for my Catholic wedding ceremony. First of all, I was raised Catholic- baptised, confirmed, etc. So it is very important to me to be married in the Catholic church so I can recieve the sacrament of marriage. It's also very important to my parents and they are thrilled that my fiance is supportive of this. My fiance and his family are Baptist, so in order to make everyone comfortable, we are just having the ceremony (no mass). In our interviews with the priest and in our premarital counseling, we are starting to discuss music for the ceremony. This is one part of my wedding I have always looked forward to the most, since I am a musician. My vision for the music for the ceremony was to have some of my good music major friends come and play bluegrass music that would appropriate for the ceremony. They are offering to come play our wedding for free, as our wedding present to us. My fiance and I are BIG country music lovers and have a few songs that we would like them to play in addition to the church pianist playing traditional non-secular (religious) and classical music. I have always wanted to have our parents and grandparents walk in to "I Hope You Dance" and then have our wedding party walk in to "Bless The Broken Road". In the lighting of the unity candles, my fiance would like to have one of "our" songs playing, "The Day Before You" (Rascal Flatts). None of these songs have offensive lyrics- and besides, we would not have anyone sing the lyrics. It would be instrumental. Well, we brought this up to the priest in our last counseling session and he basically told us we could not use any of the songs we wanted to and could not bring in outside musicians. He gave us a church songbook and told us to pick out songs from there. We asked why we couldn't incorporate some of the music we wanted played into our ceremony, and he said that the diocese does not allow it. But, I have been to more than a few weddings in that church since I was 6 years old and they were allowed to play any kind of music. My cousin was married there this past summer and she had Disney music being played on the guitar by a friend. I was also a big part in the music program there until I left for college five years ago, and they had people come in and play weddings all the time. He finally told me to e-mail him the lyrics to the songs we want and I did. He replied saying he would only approve "Bless The Broken Road" because of the line, "God blessed the broken road that lead me straight to you". I find this to be kind of ridiculous since it's our wedding and not his, but I do not want to seem like I am disrespecting the priest. He is a very nice man. I have an appointment to talk to the minister of music this coming week but I am unsure of how to approach this situation. If there are any Catholic brides out there who can give me some advice, I would be very appreciative! Thank you!