Our priest just told us that the church charges $250 to use the sanctuary, $250 for the organist, $250 for the cantor, and tips for the wedding coordinator, torch bearers, priest, organist, and cantor on top of that. He said the whole thing will be about $1,000. I expected to pay something, but not this much! Just wondering what other churches charge? Is $1,000 the going rate?
Re: Church charges?
Musicians deserve to be paid, just because they are with the church doesn't mean it should be less, in fact, they have to have special knowledge and ability for the liturgy.
People that are giving up the middle of a Saturday (coordinator, priest, servers) also deserve to be recognized.
Thanks for the input. We aren't renting a hall or having a reception - our ceremony will have no Mass as fi is Hindu. There will be 10 guests and no decorations, so we didn't think there would be much to cover in terms of clean up. I'm fine with paying for musicians and the priest, but a $1,000 was more than we expected.
Seeing that your ceremony is so small, I think you should talk to your priest about all the fees. You do not need many altar servers, and you might be able to cut down on some of the music. My sister didn't use a cantor (she didn't have mass) and was able to bring in her own musicians without having to pay the organist.
Keep in mind that the Church is not allowed to charge you for the Sacrament. That's an ancient heresy - charging for sacraments. If you really can't afford the money, talk to the Priest. "really can't afford" it would be like you're just having cake and punch for the 10 people afterwards, and no honeymoon, no special clothes, etc. I'd think it awful if the church charges were 10x the rest of the wedding budget.
I agree that you might be able to work something out since your ceremony is going to be so small, but for larger weddings, that's really a drop in the hat compared to the cost of renting a reception hall and feeding all your guests.
We were not required to use any church musicians and I found a lady who teaches piano for the college I work for. She did the music for the ceremony for $100 and came to the rehearsal.
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That said, we were clearly told that scholarships were available for the Marriage Prep stuff and the parish would have worked with us because we are long-time, active members of the parish. However, we felt that because we spent plenty more on the reception, flowers, photographer, etc.
I think that there are lots of variables that affect these costs: cost of upkeep, size and location of the parish, desireability of the chapel (for non-members, for example), etc.
OP, given what you are telling us about your wedding, I think it is reasonable to talk to the priest about the situation and your desires. They can probably work something out.
This time, I am Catholic now and my FI & I are getting married in our parish which we've attended for 2yrs now. We are at the very beginning of planning and don't know the cost yet. But I forgot about all the extras like the organist, etc. We are not having communion (hardly any other Catholics, haha) so I assume we don't need altar servers? We will probably have about 50 ppl.