Catholic Weddings

Provide hotel for officiant?

We've asked a friend of ours who was recently ordained as a Deacon to be our officiant for our ceremony.  He won't be a full priest yet which is fine because we're not having a Mass (FH is Mennonite so I'd estimate that 75% of attendees won't be Catholic and we don't want people to feel excluded because they won't be able to receive Communion--including the groom!).

Our wedding is two hours away from our home parish so our Deacon will have to spend at least one night, possibly two if he doesn't want to drive back after the reception.  Do you think that we need to pay for his hotel costs?  I think that priests sometimes stay at the local rectory of wherever they're going, but I also don't want to assume that.  Does anyone have any experience with this?
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Re: Provide hotel for officiant?

  • i would offer to cover his costs, at least for one night.
  • We paid for a hotel night for the one OOT priest. 
    If you don't want to do that, then if you "know" the priest at the local rectory (wherever your wedding is it? Or any rectory,) it might be nice to offer to introduce your priest to the priests at the rectory or offer to call the rectory and see if your priest could spend the night. Then again, that might be weird. I think that would only work if you really do "know" the priest at the rectory.
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  • I would offer to pay for his accomodations. If he has other plans, he can decline. If he doesn't, I can't imagine that he won't appreciate your thoughtfulness.
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  • My FSIL is friends with one of the priests at the church where we're getting married, so we do have a little bit of an "in" there, I guess, but I think that we'll just offer to cover his hotel costs and see what he thinks.

    Thanks for the help!
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  • We asked our priest what he preferred, he has opted to drive about 90 minutes each night. We were planning on paying for his room.
  • Our hotel is letting our priest stay for free, both nights! I would ask the hotel and see if they would do that for you!

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