I DO!
Marriage at a Crossroad:
A Fresh Look at the Wedding Culture

by Rev. Paul Mayer

It is no easy matter these days for a couple to find its way through the maze of gourmet menus, florists, videographers and high-priced fashion consultants - and still maintain a clear focus on the priority of the sacred ceremony itself as the centerpiece and raison d'etre of the entire wedding experience. Certainly the ceremony of matrimony was always intended to be one of the few most significant and potentially transformative rites of passage in the lives of a young man and woman. But is this ancient ritual still discernable underneath all of these encrusted layers? Or is it destined to become what so many see it as: merely a formalistic, hurried preface to the party that will follow?

These were the questions that confronted me about four years ago when I embarked on a new vocational path of a wedding ministry as a non-institutional Catholic priest. My most immediate experience was the enormous growing need of couples who did not fit into the traditional wedding mold and could not easily find a clergy person to serve these needs. Also, I was struck by the number of couples that neither fit the pattern of traditional wedding resources and services, nor indeed wanted any of that at all.

They were, first of all, couples who desired a Catholic ceremony but had decided to marry outside of the church building proper in a banquet hall or hotel or even a mountaintop or park or some other site sacred or meaningful to them. Then there were couples who could no longer identify with the religious institution of their birth and upbringing, whatever it might be, but still sought a spiritual experience for their public commitment to each other through a more non-traditional ritual. Further, there were many divorced Catholic couples excluded from the official sacramental wedding solace of their church who yet longed to express their love for each other in a sacred way blessed by God. Finally, there were the growing numbers of Jewish-Catholic couples who experienced difficulty in finding enthusiastic clergy on either side to bless their union in a ritual that genuinely expressed and honored both traditions.