Catholic Beach Wedding

I think it depends...I am not religious at all so I haven't had this problem, but I know a few people who wanted to get married by a priest but they will only do church ceremonies so they had to compromise on either the location of their vows or the person performing the ceremony. I hope you don't have that problem though!

I am thinking that since neither of us are religious we wont have that problem..i hope I don't sound too bad saying this but it really doesn't matter to me who marries us.. LOL.

A Catholic father will not perform a ceremony outside of his church. He will also not marry you unless you are part of that church. I am Roman Catholic and we can't even get married by a father unless we are both Catholic. My FH and I are doing non denominational since he is baptist and doesn't want to go through getting confirmed and pre Cana.

Okay well as long as he doesnt have to be married by Catholic priest then I guess we are all good.. Thanks!

Now, i will post a forum about planning this. .Even this eloping beachside is a lot of planning when you don't live in Florida!!! lol

Your other option is to look into being married by an American Catholic priest. They have similar values as the Roman Catholic, but do allow outside ceremonies. This is how FH and I are proceeding. We were raised Catholic but have grown away from the church, this was a good compromise

Well, we are just going with the officiant that comes with the wedding package...The whole point of doing one of these simple, beach side weddings is so that we don't have to go thru all the details and planning--I was just wondering if anybody had heard of any ways to do this type of beach wedding catholic style or if they had known of any places that did it, and the answer was no :-) Thanks

...but I just gave you an answer on how to do it "Catholic style" but outside.

You can do the wedding "Catholic style," but it will never be recognized by the Catholic church if it is not performed in the church. (Occasional exceptions are made for things like a wedding in a hospital if someone is dying, or a wedding in your FI's church, but not for a beach wedding just because you want one.) If your FI's religion is important to him, having the ceremony on the beach will mean that he'll spend the rest of his life "living in sin" as far as his church is concerned.

On the other hand, if your FI isn't concerned about what the church thinks, and just wants a Catholic style wedding because that is the tradition he is familiar with, there are former Roman Catholic Priests who can perform a Catholic inspired wedding for you without all the rules or classes of an actual Catholic wedding. Here is just one site that has such officiants:

http://www.greatofficiants.com/typesofweddings/catholic-wedding-ceremonies

Lizzy, I think you are misunderstanding my question, or maybe I am being a little confusing. My question is if there is a place that does destination beach weddings a Catholic way.That may be a stupid question to some but I am not Catholic so I don't know the ins & outs, or the rules. From what I understand the answer is NO because they will not marry outside of the church. I understand what you are saying about the American-Catholic priest, but we are looking at packages to keep it simple and not have to plan everything "a-la-carte" which that would entail. I just wanna keep it simple, with our parents, and everything packaged into one price, and come back and have a badass traditional reception.

Oh gotcha! Yes, then you're correct, there's almost no way to have a traditional Catholic wedding outside so your best bet sounds like the package deal! Just curious, where is Destin?

Destin, Florida. I am in Baton Rouge, LA. 4 hour drive so that our family can make it!

There is no "catholic way" if you're not interested in having a catholic wedding in a church.

Thanks guys, now to figure everything out! If any of you know anybody who has eloped beach side please send them my way! I have a ton of q's!

OP on the contrary to what most say, you can so get married in the Catholic church with out converting. Your wedding can not be a mass which means you cannot receive Eucharist. You would also have to promise to raise your kids as Catholics. You can also get married by the beach as long as its in a chapel by the beach. For example, many of the Dominican resorts have chapels by the beach. I'm not sure if there are any beaches in the US capable of doing this. Also, a priest is allowed to travel to a different church. You would need permission from the other church and your priest would have to agree to do so.

Having a Catholic wedding means having it in a church. There's really no way around that.

You can do a Catholic style wedding, but as others have said, it's not going to be formally recognized by the church. You'll find officiants who say they are Catholic, but that's not the way it works.

Catholic priests WILL marry a couple if one is a Catholic in good standing, and the other is totally not, but there are many, many hoops to jump through.

I think you both need to give this more thought. You can have a lovely, spiritual, inspiring ceremony done by another type of officiant. We do this all the time, for people who describe themselves as 'former', 'recovering' or 'lapsed' Catholics, lol...

We wanted to do a beach wedding, but FH is Catholic and would not risk not being in good standing with the church. I'm Protestant, and we're getting married in the Catholic Church. We have to do pre-Cana, but I do not have to convert to Catholicism, it's called a mixed-Marriage.

I see you've pretty much decided to just do the beach wedding, but I would just make sure FH knows what that means as far as his standing with the Church. If it doesn't matter to him you're good to go, but it may mean for him that he's not supposed to participate in the Eucharist.

We are Catholic and doing an outside wedding as well. My solution is to have my very religious aunt read a Bible passage and have somebody else say a prayer during the ceremony. It won't be recognized by the Church of course, but it works for us to just have our own beliefs acknowledged.