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Do we need our confirmation done to have a wedding in Mexico? Because from what I understand, we only need to have whatever our Catholic Church out here requests of us, and they didn't require us to have our confirmation... Neither of us do. So now I'm concerned. Deb Quote: Originally Posted by dallas_texas09 Hi girls, I just had a Catholic wedding in Playa del Carmen and from my understanding, the Church is VERY strict about the ceremony program. There are some Canon laws that the Church has and every marriage ceremony done at the Church must follow these rules (for instance, you cannot write your own vows, pick some random reading, etc.) The first thing when planning a Catholic wedding is to meet with the priest who is ordaining your wedding. Since your wedding will be in Mexico, obviously this is not possible. However, this does not mean you are exempted from going through all the pre-wedding process that the Catholic church requires. So, what you do is contact your local parish. Tell them your situation, that you are having a Catholic wedding in Mexico. They should work with you in preparing your pre-wedding documents. This includes: 1) Meeting with the Priest/Pastoral Associate: they meet with you to discuss the committment of marriage, to make sure you are both going into it for the right reasons, etc. This meeting is pretty much for them to give approval for you to get married at a Catholic church. They will also give you other documents that needs to be coompleted (a questionnaire you and your FI have to take, forms to be signed, etc). 2) You must have a CURRENT and original copy of your Baptism certificate. By current, I mean, it can not be the copy that your mom has from the day you were baptized. The document must have a current "date of issue" date. Also, on the back of your Baptism certificate there should be a notary of all your other Catholic sacraments (Holy Communion, Confirmation, etc.). You can contact the Church where you were baptized to request a current original copy of your Baptism certificate. This process should be easy....I did not have a problem getting mine and I was baptized in the Philippines! 3) Take the pre-Cana classes required by the Church. Depending on what your local parish has to offer, this could be a once a week/6 weeks class or it can be a weekend retreat. We did the weekend retreat. At the end of the pre-Cana classes, you get a certificate stating you have completed the class. Once your local Priest/Pastoral Associate has all of the required documents (pre-Cana certificate, Baptism certificate, all the forms you need to have signed, etc...), they will then write a letter to the parish in Mexico stating that you have completed all of the pre-wedding preparations and have approved your marriage. They will also send all of the original documents to the parish in Mexico. Our local parish in Dallas prepared all of the stuff for us then put it in a sealed envelope. We then mailed it to the parish in Mexico via Fed-Ex. I HIGHLY recommend mailing it Fed-Ex! It is a bit expensive (I think we paid $60for ours) but it is worth it when you're sending important and original information (trust me, you do not want to go through the whole process all over again!). Our local parish also gave us a photocopy of everything they put in the sealed envelope, just for our records. As for the reading selection, after completing all of your pre-wedding preparations, your local church should give you a book (I can't remember the title of it) that has all of the readings approved by the Catholic church. It's divided into different sections: First Reading, Second Reading, Responsorial Psalm, etc. You get to pick one reading from each section. Before printing all of our programs, I had our wedding coordinator (Maartje Oremus from Ajua Weddings) go through the draft with the priest in Playa del Carmen. After we received his approval that everything looked A-okay, we went ahead and printed the rest of the programs. Anywho, your wedding coordinator should have told you all of this. If they are experienced in planning Catholic weddings then they should be educated enough to tell you all of the process and required documents, etc. If you are looking for a wedding coordinator experienced in planning Catholic weddings, I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend using Ajua Weddings. When I first started planning our wedding, I had NO idea what the first step was in planning a Catholic ceremony in Mexico. Maartje at Ajua Weddings walked me through everything and told me exactly what I needed to do. She told me who I needed to meet here in Dallas, what documents I needed to have available, who to send it to in Mexico, how to send it to Mexico, etc., etc. They are VERY knowledgeable in the whole process and because of this, planning our Catholic ceremony went without a hitch. It was definitely smooth sailing the ENTIRE way -- we had no problems with our local parish here in Dallas nor with the one in Playa del Carmen. We had no glitches, no problems, nothing. She even arranged for us to meet the priest ordaining our wedding (Father Quinn) before the wedding day. PM me if you have any questions. -Catherine-

Hi Susan, well after reading your response, I can see that maybe the Father got confused with your program.... but guess what? I just got news today that Father Quinn will be officiating my wedding instead because Father Jorge is transfering to Tulum. So now I'm going to research on Father Quinn. Our wedding will be at the bigger church in town and we plan on having a full mass. Our wedding coordinator is Ajua Weddings, and so far they have been great with handling our requests and responding to e-mails right away. It's just so weird though to put your trust into people you've never met, but so far I am satisfied. Our reception will be at a restuarant/beach club called Zenzi. I wanted to be able to see and hear the ocean for our reception, So far we have 24 of us going for sure and I still am waiting for other RSVP's, probably in the end there will be about 40, well see. But I'm excited of course. I really like this forum, because I feel like all of you know what I'm going through. Thanks for your info, Deb Quote: Originally Posted by superez Congratulations to you Deb on your engagement and upcoming wedding, how exciting! It was such a wonderful time for me so I'm happy to hear you are now experiencing it, it will be great! So you are also getting married by Fr. J . Yeah, I was perplexed by some of the things that ocurred....we were only about 5-10 mins late due to the van breaking down (and my wedding coordinator was there at the church telling him why we were late, but I guess the reason didn't matter much), so I'm not sure why he seemed a bit bothered. We had a fairly short ceremony too (we omitted the homily and intercessions, and the bringing up of the gifts-they were already there at the altar) so it's not like we spilled over an hour. But honestly I think that is just his personality. He's kinda dry and monotone, but I had expected that from the other brides I talked to before we got married. Even though we gave him a detailed program of what we wanted in English/Spanish and the order of the songs, he still messed up about 2-3 times. But honestly this didn't take away from the beauty of the ceremony for us. The violinist we worked with really knew his catholic ceremony so helped to "cover up" some of the mistakes the priest made. I think, because I knew the program inside out, only knew of the flub ups. My family said they didn't even realize because they were enjoying the ceremony and the view so much. One thing though that we all cracked up about was the asst running up to the altar for us to sign the papers when we thought we were getting ready to kiss. We laugh about it still now and how we kissed on our own, but again we were on such a high that day that it wasn't such an issue for us. The chapel is amazing (are you getting married there, or in the main larger church in town?) with the view of the sea, we couldn't have gotten married in a better place! I think you'll be just fine Deb, honestly. When I was in your position I had read reviews of the priests and was als worried, but after chatting with a few brides I felt better and knew what to expect, and in the end we were really happy! Who is helping you coordinate your wedding and where are you having your celebration afterward? Do you have a lot of guests coming? Good luck with everything and feel free to PM me anytime if you need more info or have more questions!!! Susan

Awwww.. I totally understand how you feel. When I was picking my dress, the "one" that I really liked was plain on top with just a strip of beading around the waist and at the trim on top and the bottom was with pickups. If fitted perfect on me too, but then when I took my mom in to show it to her, she didn't like it and wanted me in a dress with a lot of beading on it. She ended up convincing me to change the dress and we bought it. But then that night at home I was crying and felt terrible that I didn't get the dress that "I" wanted! I even went back to the store and tried to change it but they would let me (all sales final ) . It took me a couple of weeks to get over it, but fortunately I now LOVE my dress to be! The trying to please everyone else thing is kinda my problem too... I've been doing it because I don't want to put any stress or burden onto anybody in the wedding but that's driving me crazy too. This is just creating a BURDEN on ME ... so I'm working on changing my thought processing and trying to remember this is OUR wedding and what matters is what WE want, not them. I know everyone and their mamma wants to give you advice, just smile and listen, but then go with what YOU want. GOOD LUCK in finding your dress.

Hi! First off I just want to congratulate you on your wedding! I loved the pic with the fruit and the b/w with the blue ocean, I hope what ever photographer I pick can create some pics like that for me. I also loved your flowers. I am also getting married in Playa del Carmen, by Father Jorge too! So now you have me a bit concerned. You say he seem bothered at first because you were late, how late were you to the ceremony? Did you have a full Catholic Mass or shortened version? I'm just wondering how did he get confused or off track. And about him just disappearing wow, that's weird. He didn't even announce you two as Mr. & Mrs Overall, I'm glad everything turned out well for you two. Deb

Awesome idea!! They look great. So how much did this end up costing?? Debra

where did you get the post cards done I like how they have your names and wedding date on them. Debra

Ok, ok. I guess this is a mandatory blog. My name is Debra. I will be getting married on January 31, 2009!!! I'm planning on booking Ajuaweddings to help me plan my wedding in Playa del Carmen. Catholic Church Ceremony followed by beach reception. Any advice? I got butterflies thinking about booking a wedding coordinator that I lives in another country. But their website is great and they already sent me a quote back in January, which they responded to right away. Now I've been sitting on this quote and searching and searching trying to do it all by myself and have accomplished nothing. Times a ticking and I need to get on the ball. BTW: thanks to everyone posting info and advice on this website. It has helped a lot!

Thanks for all your sharing Morgan! you are awesome and very creative. Your wedding date is just around the corner! Wishing you the best. Debra

wow, once again I am impressed. you got my mind ticking now and lots of ideas are flowing through my brain. Debra

wow... I've thought about doing loot bags too... You've really put a lot of work into this. IMPRESSIVE! It looks good. So what's going the bag? or have you already blogged that? I'm new... so just started reading entries. Debra

I think waiting until September is the best choice since you want to give your guests lots of time to plan. Also because you still don't have a set date of when the resort is going to open. You don't want to stay there right after it opens becuase I'm sure they will still have a lot of kinks to work out. Hope this helps.