Catholic Church Wedding

I am going to try to offer some accurate information. Even when your wedding occurs during a nuptial Mass, every Catholic Mass is centered on Jesus who is really present in the Eucharist. It's the sacramental re-presentation of His once-for-all saving sacrifice to the Father on our behalf and is the highest act of worship. You need God in order to live your vocation to Matrimony, and as a married couple you are an image of the unitive, fruitful love relationship between Jesus and the Church, and even an image of the Holy Trinity. Liturgical music is subject to Church laws and directions from the local bishop. Secular lyrics should never be used! Secular musical styles really are not great choices either. The purpose of music at Mass is to assist in our worship of God. Talk to the priest and music staff at the church BEFORE picking music. It's utterly likely to result in more suitable choices if you pick from options offered by the church rather than come up with music from other sources. Fighting with the priest or the music staff about it is sad and almost certainly wrong, I am absolutely cringing reading this and seeing how badly people misunderstand the musical disagreements they have with parish staff as just a "control" issue. Music performance rights can be one issue as someone mentioned, but far from the only one. It is just a fact that most people just do not know enough about liturgical music to avoid pitfalls picking music all by themself. They are unlikely to know the directives of the bishop, whose prerogative it is to approve what music can be used in liturgy. It would be great to see planning the wedding and getting the details right from a faith perspective and with a modicum of appropriate humility as a golden opportunity to learn to understand and live the Mass and the Catholic faith better. After all besides needing to know your Faith to live your married vocation as a true Christian vocation that can help to yourself and your spouse to get to heaven, you will be your children's first teachers of the Faith. You can't hand on what you don't have a grasp of yourself.

There are some puzzling situations mentioned here. With really few exceptions, Catholic weddings whether during a Mass or not are always in a Catholic church or chapel. Sometimes you encounter "rent a priests" who will do whatever you want, these are not actually valid Catholic weddings at all and priests who did that would not be priests in good standing in the Church--if they are priests at all. Catholics who want to marry validly must contact their local parish. There are no Catholic outdoor weddings, again with really, really limited exceptions. The priest is not at liberty to make an exception. If you are tempted to place this type of aesthetic and sentimental concern at the forefront rather than having your relationship with God in His Church at the center, it would be so healthy to recognize the need for personal and spiritual growth. The danger is that some Catholics for frivolous reasons (and sometimes not fully realizing the seriousness of the matter) opt for a non Catholic ceremony that is invalid. A Catholic who married invalidly outside the Church (perhaps because of not knowing they're truly obliged to follow Church law about marriage) needs to abstain from having relations and get in touch with their priest about getting their marriage convalidated, that is, the couple exchanging consent validly in the presence of a priest and thereby marrying. Yes, it is possible with a needed dispensation to marry someone who is not a Catholic, or even who is not a Christian, the essential thing is for there to be no danger of the Catholic falling away from the practice of their faith, and the Catholic must agree to do everything in their power to have their children baptized in the Catholic faith and brought up Catholic. Also as in any marriage there must be openness to having children, and an understanding that marriage vows fidelity for life and is indissoluble--like Jesus is faithful forever to His Church. Marriage is from God and not just a private concern of people's desires.

We're having organist problems but of a different magnitude. Our organist is the music director for FH's church and he plays his trumpet for them all the time and at events but has always refused the payment they offered so the music director said he would waive the fee for us due to FH's service to the church. Well the organist got a new job and now the priest is not sure if he will allow the organist to come back and play for our wedding since he left the church for a new job. So who knows at this point what's going to happen with our music but I do know we can only play instrumental versions of non Christian music that must be approved.

How do they get final say if you're paying them NOT to play? That makes no sense.

For ours we were given a list of songs that were acceptable. I would see if they could provide you with a list instead. That could make it easier.