So when 11 months before our wedding he was transferred to another parish, we were sad. I was sad that the man who baptized me and gave me my first communion would not be witnessing our marriage. I tried to give our new priest a chance, I really did, but from the beginning it just wasn't working for me. And it got worse when it came time to actually talk about our wedding. He was incredibly hard to get a hold of. He was never in the office when we called and he never answered his cell phone even though he gave me that number in a voice mail he left for me one day. I got frustrated with the whole thing and eventually put M in charge of dealing with the man.
Finally, we were able to meet with the priest, fill out the paperwork and do the Foccus test. That was our first meeting. We were also informed at this meeting that we would have to attend a Engaged Encounter session given by our diocese. Because we were informed so late of this, we had to drive over an hour away one Saturday morning to attend because the local session would be too late.
Our second meeting was to go over the results of the Foccus test. The results were not surprising since many of the topics were things M and I had already discussed. We also had to fill out more paperwork. The organist came in and talked to us as well. We discussed some music choices and set up a cantor. We had to ask the organist (who isn't even Catholic) about getting alter servers because our priest was so not into the actual wedding planning stuff.
Having never been to a full Catholic Nuptial Mass, I asked if we were going to discuss it, but was informed by the priest that we could discuss it at the rehearsal. Oh you mean that thing we're doing 2 days before the wedding!? I was annoyed to say the least. I ended up Googling the heck out of Catholic weddings and trying to get as much information as possible from various wedding websites. It made making our programs so much fun...not. A Catholic wedding is a sacrament, but our priest acted like it was no big deal and to a stressed out bride, that was the wrong attitude to take.
And why was our rehearsal 2 days before our wedding? Because the day before our wedding was the Feast of the Sacred Heart and there was going to be a service in the church that night. Fine, Thursday night works just as well and I got to name my time so nobody had to get off work early. (Friday rehearsals are typically at 4 pm at our church.) Everything was fine until a couple weeks before the wedding, our priest announces at Mass that he will be on a retreat that week and will be coming back in time for the Sacred Heart service.
Say what? Did he forget that we have a rehearsal on Thursday? I nearly lost it right there. If he wasn't going to do our rehearsal, then he wasn't going to do my wedding. I made M call the church office Monday morning and find out what was going on. At this point, I was almost hopeful that he wouldn't be able to do our rehearsal and we could get the other priest in our parish to do it. In the end, it was all straightened out. Our priest would be back for the rehearsal and he would do the wedding.
After all the miscommunication and the lack communication, I didn't have high hopes for our rehearsal.
Did you have issues when planning your wedding?
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