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Destination Weddings Discussions
Catholic Ceremony & beach ceremony
Hi everyone,
My fiance and I have decided to get married in Punta Cana next fall. While we are planning to get legally married there, we have just learned that you cannot have a Catholic ceremony on the beach, only in a church or gazebo.
While neither my fiance or I are religious at all, our parents feel very strongly about us getting married by a priest. My dream is to have a beach wedding which is the whole reason we chose destination. However, our parents have been extremely supportive of the destination idea and are helping us financially with the wedding so I'd like to compromise.
My question is - what are your opinions on having 2 ceremonies? Has anyone ever done this before? We would have a large beach ceremony where I would wear my dress and have our bridal party and around 100 guests with reception to follow, and then a catholic ceremony in the church with our parents and grandparents. These would be on separate days. Does etiquette state we invite all guests to both ceremonies? Which ceremony should come first?
Thank you for any advice!
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Re: Catholic Ceremony & beach ceremony
If you really feel strongly about getting married in the church, then marry in a church/gazebo in the DR and have your reception on the beach. If this request for a church wedding is only important to your parents and you don't care, then don't get married in the church. Have the beach wedding with everyone present.
Whatever the case, you only get one ceremony. Also, you cannot legally marry on the beach and then have a ceremony in the church. Most churches will not allow this. For the sake of all of your guests who are probably spending $1500+/person to attend, have one ceremony, have it be legal, and have your guests witness this ceremony and attend the reception following the ceremony.
2. As you know, priests cannot perform the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony anywhere except in a Catholic Church (sacred ground).
If you want a Catholic marriage, you must give up you idea of a beach wedding. If you have a re-do ceremony on the beach, it is an insult to your Catholic guests and to the Catholic Church.
If you decide your beach wedding is more important than a Catholic ceremony, you can choose a civil ceremony on the beach. This will be your only wedding. You will then no longer be in a state of grace, and you cannot take part in the Eucharist. You cannot have a second Catholic ceremony just because you wanted a beach wedding. These are the rules of the Catholic Church - not mine.
If you married in the Catholic Church first, then your beach ceremony wouldn't be a wedding. It would be a PPD which is extremely rude to all the guests who will be shelling out big bucks to come to your destination for what they think is a wedding but isn't really.
If you marry in the Catholic church, part of your vows include making promises to the church. Your marriage in the church is a sacrament, and that should not be taken lightly or irreverently. Remind your parents that it would be incredibly disrespectful to enter into a faith based marriage with false statements.
As others have said, it is not possible to have a civil, legal ceremony followed by a "quickie" Catholic ceremony. The Church would not allow it. If you are legally wed first in a Catholic ceremony, then anything else is a farce.
Another resident Catholic here (one who prepares people for sacraments as my paying job, actually).
You just found out that you cannot get the Catholic sacrament of marriage on the beach without a fantastic reason that gets you a dispensation from the bishop. (You don't have one of these reasons.) You are now also finding out that they won't allow your plan B, either.
The priest/Church will expect you to make certain promises about accepting children lovingly from God and raising your children Catholic; they will also expect it to be your legal ceremony, unless you are having a convalidation, which is not a wedding ceremony and which requires a better reason than "we wanted a beach wedding and our parents want this." You also can't make the Catholic wedding the legal one and the beach wedding just a "symbolic ceremony," because that involves lying and being horribly rude to everyone who took the time and money to see you actually become married.
If you do not really believe in Catholicism and the Catholic view of marriage and won't take the promises seriously, the Catholic Church would rather you not make the promises. Tell your parents this. (If you decided later in life that you really believed in these things and wanted a sacramental marriage, they would do their best to work with you on getting a convalidation.)
Yep, the point here is not just to have a structure over your heads, but to have the sacrament happen in a consecrated space that represents the gathering place of the whole Church. There may be a few situations where a gazebo falls into this criteria and ends up being allowed, but I can't really think of one.
Heck, at the school I went to, they had "chapels" in each of the dorms. However, since they were only consecrated to be "oratories" and not full chapels/churches, they couldn't have all the sacraments happen there (marriage being one).
From my understanding, this has nothing to do with US vs DR.
Catholics believe that Christ is found at the alter of the church. The alter represents the center of the church, where all of its members gather. And you need this for a sacrament to officially take place.
None of this would be found in a gazebo.
However, @sunniepetunia, you're going to want to make sure you can meet all the paperwork requirements. There are a number of documents you're going to have to provide that would come from your home parish and you'll need to satisfy the marriage preparation requirement here in the states. If you aren't practicing I'm going to assume you don't have a parish home. So, another reason to think about if this is something you want to do just to satisfy your parents desire to see you married by a priest.
@sunniepetunia, you state very clearly that neither you or your FI are religious. While you may be able to have a Catholic ceremony, I find it personally offensive and disrespectful as a Catholic that you would marry under false/deceitful circumstances. Why would you want to begin your married life with lies?
To the bolded, but in your vows you promise to baptize all children. So you are lying right in your vows since at this point you don't know if you will baptize your children. You also say that you don't know if religion will be apart of your lives. So why put on the charade now? If in the future you decide to go back to the Catholic Church, you can then obtain a Convalidation. That puts you right back into Communion with the Church again. And in the way you explain your life at this moment, if you went back to the Church, you would be the perfect candidates for the Convalidation because that is what it is for. It is for people who have drifted away from the Church, but come back to it later in life.
Weddings can be stressful to plan, wading through each family's traditions - parent's wants/needs and the couple's wants/needs. But the ceremony is 100% about the couple. The parents should have no say in it whatsoever. The ceremony only joins the couple, which is why the ceremony should be what the couple wants. And based on your posts, your only reason for wanting to have a Catholic ceremony is to appease your parents.
I personally don't get the cultural Catholics who want all the sacraments but don't want/intend to live the faith otherwise. If you can't sincerely take those vows and live them out, it's better not to make them.
My children were raised in the exact same way, but they are very much two different adults. My daughter married with a full Catholic nuptial mass. Religion, specifically Catholicism, is very important in her life. Although hard to put into words, it comforted me greatly to watch her enter into married life in this way. My son and his bride were married by a childhood friend of his, who received his credentials through officiant.com. I have memories of this (now)officiant donning a spiderman costume one Halloween. Trust me when I say this was not the ceremony I envisioned. BUT, the ceremony is NOT about me. It is, and should be, a reflection of the couple marrying. I was still able to find comfort. I found it in the love they showed each other, and in the way they treat each other. I found it in the words they said to each other that were significant and meaningful to THEM. To be honest, it would have upset me had they tried to marry in a way that was meant to appease me. It is not who they are, and it would have shown.
I encourage you to listen to your OWN heart and marry in the way that is sincere and meaningful to you and your FI.
ETA......Upon re-reading your original post, I feel it is important to add that my husband and I gifted almost the entire cost of both weddings. I deliberately use the term "gifted" rather than "paid for", because I do not believe in attaching strings to gifts.