Vendor Week 2021 | Evangelizing Through Your Wedding Mass
/JOY FOSTER & MARY DORHAUER
This February 20-27 is our annual Vendor Week: days dedicated to showcasing the best of the Catholic wedding industry through Spoken Bride’s blog content, podcast interviews, and social media. Everyday this week, we will share wisdom and expertise of some of our talented Vendors to help you in your wedding planning.
If you are recently engaged, we invite you to browse the Spoken Bride Vendor Guide, specifically designed to connect brides and grooms with planners, photographers, florists, artisans, and more who share the same faith and bring a distinctively Catholic outlook to their client experience.
PHOTOGRAPHY: BEAUTY OF THE SOUL STUDIO
Your wedding liturgy offers a wonderful opportunity to witness not just the love you and your fiancé share, but also the beauty of the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and sacrificial love. There are subtle but profound ways you can evangelize to your wedding guests, all within the guidelines the Church has for liturgy.
Your guest list likely includes not just practicing Catholics, but also fallen-away Catholics, confused Catholics, Protestant and Orthodox Christians, and those of other beliefs, or even no beliefs at all.
In fact, your wedding may be the first time someone has set foot in a Catholic Church or their first return in decades, and yet, they are there out of love for you and your fiancé!
With this consideration, make your ceremony a beautiful and welcoming exposure to the Catholic Faith.
Even for a small wedding, having greeters in the vestibule to hand out programs (or direct to a table or stand where the programs or worship aids are) is a nice touch and offers a place in the wedding party for a young teen or a friend that offers to help. Ushers are also a helpful escort, even for a smaller wedding, because some guests may not know where they should appropriately sit in a Catholic Church (many of our weddings utilize the groomsmen to help seat the arriving guests).
For those getting married in the Ordinary Form of the Mass (or having a liturgy of the Word ceremony), you are able to select readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, and the Gospel.
Those selections can vary from country to country, the liturgical season may alter a few options, and if you are getting married on a solemnity, the readings for that day will be your ceremony or Mass readings.
When it comes to selecting your readings, take time with your fiancé to carefully read over the options. Be intentional with it!
Check with your priest or deacon to see how he typically prefers to address the homily. Some priests will write one based on your readings and customize it to you and your fiancé. Others tend to have a “set homily” for weddings, and while they will of course, customize it to be fitting for you and your beloved, it may not specifically address your selected readings.
This is important to know if you have chosen a reading such as Ephesians 5:22 or 1 Peter 3, as both are often misunderstood or misinterpreted, even among Catholics, and can sound uncomfortable to non-Catholic ears. If you choose either of these beautiful readings, we highly recommend asking your priest to explain and expand on them from a Catholic viewpoint during his homily.
If one or both of you are recent converts to Catholicism and your conversion caused some serious contention with a beloved immediate family, know that it is perfectly okay to go with some of the more well known and easily interpreted readings like Genesis or Song of Songs, instead of Tobit or Sirach (which are more difficult for a layperson to understand). You know your family the best and a ceremony where the readings are common to both Catholics and Protestants may be the best option for harmony.
For those marrying in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass or on a Solemnity, we still encourage you to practice Lectio Divina over the Sacred Scripture options for the Ordinary Form Nuptial Mass and include a favorite verse or two on your wedding program or worship aid, just as you would with a message to your guests or a “thank you for being part of our special day.”
Asking your priest to give a brief explanation as you prepare may help guests understand the significance of the moment which usually takes place right after the vows or after everyone is seated after Holy Communion. If your priest prefers not to give an explanation on this custom, have it in your program so non-Catholic guests understand that we aren’t “worshiping Mary,” but asking for her heavenly, intercessory prayers.
Pope Saint John Paul II tells us that “All men and women are entrusted with the task of creating their own life; in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece!” Similarly, your wedding may be seen as a work of art to others.
The church building, with its art and architecture, the beauty of the hymns, and the solemn tradition of Catholic worship, are all a witness to your guests about the dignity and glory found in the Catholic Church.
Strive to make your wedding Mass as touching, beautiful, and welcoming to your guests as possible. We aren’t always privileged to know what parts of our lives God has used to affect a change in someone else, and it’s a wonderful thought that your wedding ceremony might not just bring you and your fiance together, but might also bring another person back into the fold of the Church!
