We moved to the area in July, so since we wanted to get married as soon as possible, we registered at the church within a couple of weeks of moving there so we could get the ball rolling on the Catholic ceremony. First of all, registering with the church was not difficult at all; I filled out a form to become a member and a request for the wedding in the same sitting. The only requirement was that my request be submitted at least six months before the marriage date. We were paired with Fr. Rippy, and we are so happy that we were! Fr. Rippy can seem kind of dry and uninteresting at first, but once you get to know him, you can see how funny and animated he is. He did give us a couple mini-lectures about us being only in our early twenties, us living together, and Mark being non-Catholic, but he was not judgy or overbearing at all; we got the sense that the mini-lectures were a sort of a formality since he didn’t seem to have a problem with any of these aspects of our relationship. Meeting with him regularly was easy since he was usually available at 8:00 pm, and the conversations were easy and provoking. We really like Fr. Rippy, and we would recommend him to anyone.
The church itself is beautiful. It’s enormous, but it didn’t swallow up our 50 person guest list. There isn’t a required fee to use it, but there is a suggested donation of $300 which Fr. Rippy kept saying that we didn’t need to give (we did anyways), the cantor is $100 (we chose Jo Ann Hovey, a beautiful mezzo), the organist is $275, and Fr. Rippy likes to have an altar arrangement, so the whole cost of my ceremony was about $800. Pictures are allowed for about a half of an hour after the ceremony.
