Catholic Ceremony - EDR

[Marcy M]

We are doing a Catholic Ceremony at EDR in the chapel and it has been tough getting information from our planner. Would anyone be able to help me out with some of my questions?

 

1. Is this a full ceremony with Readings and Songs?

2. Do we get to choose our Readings and/or Songs?

 

I have not received a straight answer - I know that here we are able to choose the readings and songs of our choice.

 

 

Thank you!!

[superez]

Hi Marcy!

 

I am just getting started with my own catholic wedding in Playa but from what little I know it is a full mass/liturgy complete with readings and music. I am hiring a classical guitarist for just music and no singing (another fellow bdw gal did exactly this and I am copying . She also told me that she and her hubby picked the readings with her priest in the US and then shared that with the priest in Playa.

 

I will keep you posted as I go through this process! Next, we are meeting with our priest here to have him complete the permission paperwork, schedule our pre wedding class, etc. Good luck!!!

Susan

[anthonyandgarin]

Marcy, I am also having a Catholic wedding at EDR and I am looking for the same answers! Have you sent everything to the priest there? Our wedding is May 3rd

[Marcy M]

Ok girls, this is what I have found to be my experience so far.. We sent all of our documents (scanned and emailed original documents) to Valeria a while back and had the priest reserved and everything seemed ok. Well it comes to find out that my fiancé does not have his confirmation and now the Priest that was planning to marry us will not do it and we had to find another Priest in the last week and now we have to change our ceremony time by 2 hours!! Then instead of having to bring original documents with us when we came we had to mail out ‘right away’ or the Priest was going to cancel - I sent the original documents to Valeria so the priest could have to confirm and somehow they all got lost in the mail - these were the originals!!

We started working on this a year ago and in the past couple of weeks when I was confirming the ceremony and Priest this all the sudden came up and it has been a mess since. Lesson to learn is to make sure to have ALL documents (listed below) sent and confirmed as soon as possible so you won’t be in this mess!

 

Oh – you cannot talk with the Priest at all either until you are in Mexico before the wedding – no matter what!

 

Whatever the cost - I have asked now to pick our music and readings, Valeria said we cannot do that. I told her it was very important and we will not budge on this and she is asking the Priest now if this would be ok. I will let you know when I hear back.

 

To get married in Mexico with a full Legal Catholic Wedding you BOTH must show the following original documents

•Baptism

•Communion

•Confirmation

•Certificates from your Pre Cana classes

[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-

[dallas_texas09]

Oh, and you should be able to pick your songs too! We chose Canon in D Major, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, and Ave Maria. Father Quinn approved it with no problems whatsoever.

 

The whole process took less than 6 months. We first met with our local parish in March and they had all of our documents sent to the parish in Playa del Carmen by September. Our wedding was not until November but it was good knowing that everything was already set for our Catholic ceremony!

[Vaughan Long]

Marcy,

 

Preparing everything for a Catholic ceremony can feel a bit daunting at times, but Ajua Weddings has done many and we would be happy to help. Please feel free to contact us if we can be of service.

 

Also, in regard to the choice of songs, we work with a a great classically trained singer/guitarist who sings Ave Maria (as well as many other songs). His rendetion of Ave Maria was so good that we recently recorded him and hope to have it posted soon on our website.

 

Take care.

[Marcy M]

Thank you both SO much. I wish I would of asked this question before we started this whole madness. You have been a huge help and if we were not so close to the wedding date and already booked with the other planner I would switch over.

All other Brides out there planning a catholic wedding - pick Ajua as your planner!!!

 

Thanks for the advice on songs and the book - we did not get the book. I am going to talk with or Priest about this weekend!

[dallas_texas09]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcy M Thank you both SO much. I wish I would of asked this question before we started this whole madness. You have been a huge help and if we were not so close to the wedding date and already booked with the other planner I would switch over. All other Brides out there planning a catholic wedding - pick Ajua as your planner!!! Thanks for the advice on songs and the book - we did not get the book. I am going to talk with or Priest about this weekend!

Hi Marcy,

You shouldn't have a hard time getting a copy of the book (the church gives it to couples for free), but in case you do, let me know and I will mail you mine. I'm pretty positive I still have it sitting at home.

Catherine

[Marcy M]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dallas_texas09 Hi Marcy, You shouldn't have a hard time getting a copy of the book (the church gives it to couples for free), but in case you do, let me know and I will mail you mine. I'm pretty positive I still have it sitting at home. Catherine

Thanks Catherine - I will ask at mass tonight. I am sure we can find one somewhere in this city!