Hi All. This is a really long post. The short story is: I'm new!
I've been a lurker here ever since I got engaged back in April. Basically, my fiancé and I were both raised Catholic (he actually attended private Catholic school his whole life until we met in law school) but we have fallen out of practice, attending mostly just with our families and on holidays. When we got engaged, we weren't sure whether we should try to reconnect with the faith and have a Catholic wedding, or perhaps a Lutheran ceremony (my dad is Lutheran and while I was raised Catholic, we'd attend Lutheran services when visiting his extended family), or just go to the entire other side of the spectrum and have a justice of the peace wedding (we will be attorneys by that point, after all).
I know that everyone here has said (and I wholeheartedly agree) that people shouldn't get married in a Catholic church just because it's pretty, or the parents want it, or whatever, so we had a lot of talks about why we had stopped attending church and what we wanted to do going forward religion-wise in our life together. Both our parents were entirely accepting of our decision NOT to get married in the Catholic church, but ultimately as I was planning a non-Catholic wedding I just felt like I was making the wrong choice; it just felt not "us."
So, I had gotten in touch with the wedding coordinator at my mother's [Catholic] parish, actually they had been kind enough to slate a date for us (not until next November) and explain what we need to do next in the process to ensure we can be married (we're moving and will be living in another state so have to deal with the multiple preparer issues). It felt really right, and I was feeling a lot closer to God (which I haven't felt in years). We hadn't told our parents yet because I didn't want to get their hopes up just in case we found as we prepared that it in fact wasn't for us...
So I guess what I mean to say is that we had already been going in that direction when this happened: we were in FI's hometown for a wedding, when his mother had a heart attack and passed away unexpectedly. Losing her has been very hard, to say the least, as he was *exceptionally* close to his mother.
But honestly as soon as it happened I knew that there was no question, we need to get back to the church and eventually have our wedding there. She was very active in the church and had worked VERY hard to save for all three of the kids to go to private Catholic schools. She had confided in my mother that when FI told her we weren't going to have a Catholic wedding, she hung up and did cry, but then realized that we needed to do what was right for us. I really wish that FI had told his mom that we had already been leaning back towards Catholicism, because I know it would have meant the world to her, but like I said, we really didn't want to get anyone too prematurely excited. These past few days we've been interacting a lot with different priests who honestly are so much more approachable than any of the priests I grew up with (basically we attended two weddings and his mother's funeral in the past two weeks) and it has totally restored my faith in . . . the faith.
Anyway, wedding plans are currently mostly on hold as we mourn (and study for the bar, prepare to move, and of course, get reconnected with our faith in general), but I have been reading here for a couple of weeks and wanted to introduce myself. (To be honest, I had a nightmare about NFP and charting last night, so I think reading all these posts and not saying anything has really been getting to me!) I am so excited to be planning a Catholic wedding. And I guess that's all for now!
