Why I'm Grateful for Traditional Wedding Vows

DOMINIKA RAMOS

This probably isn't a surprise to most, but when you get married in the Catholic Church, you don't get to write your own vows. For some, this might be difficult to accept as the wedding industry attempts to ingrain in brides that their wedding day is preeminently theirs and every detail and moment of the day should reflect them alone.

Moreover, movies, TV shows, and real-life weddings often show in beautiful, humorous, and tear-jerking ways that vows can be a way to express the unique love shared between the bride and groom--a love not shared by any other couple. Being told you must use vows shared with countless other couples can be a bit of a letdown.

However, the problem the Church has with couples writing their own vows is that, by doing so, they pledge themselves to their own idea of what marriage is rather than what the Church teaches marriage is. What, then, does the Church teach that marriage is?

There's a part in C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces that I think movingly encapsulates the Christian truth about marriage. In the passage that follows, the character of Psyche is about to be sacrificed to a monster. Despite her fate, she is surprisingly full of equanimity and tells her sister:

 "And how would it be better if I had lived? I suppose I should have been given to some king in the end...And there you can see again how little difference there is between dying and being married. To leave your home — to lose you...to lose one's maidenhead — to bear a child — they are all deaths."

 Amidst wedding day daydreams of dresses and flowers and perfect color palettes, the idea of marriage as a death might seem emphatically unromantic. But as with death, there is a veil that covers marriage preventing us from fully seeing what is beyond. No matter the amount of preparation you put into marriage, you still can't fully understand what you're getting into until you're actually in thick of it.

In fact, marriage is more than just a death, in the sense that you can't see beyond the threshold of the wedding day.

Like any vocation, marriage is a crucifixion. When you answer 'Yes' to God's call in your life, you choose to nail your will to Christ's on the Cross.

And herein lies the paradoxical truth of weddings and marriage that stands at odds with the culture's understanding: we're told your wedding day is only about you and your spouse, a celebration of you, a grand display of your wills to marry now, but then to do what you will later.

The Church tells you your wedding and your marriage are not about you. Or rather, they are about you insofar as they are about Christ. Marriage is designed for the salvation of your soul and of the the souls your marriage touches for the glory of Christ. Your wedding day is the willing renunciation of your will. 

How can we then presume to be able to put together more fitting words for entering into a mystery we cannot fully understand? Who better than the Church can give us the right words to renounce our wills and unite them to the Cross?

Like a mother teaching her small child to speak, she teaches you to speak the right words. In her wisdom, she gives you words carefully crafted and passed down through the centuries. They are words that clearly spell out the gravity of what you are doing: making a solemn vow in front of God and man--a vow that cannot be put asunder by will or undone in times of difficulty or distress.

Yes, they are words shared by a multitude of other couples, but for that reason they bind you more closely to the whole Body of Christ. They are words you will be asked to repeat in your thoughts, words, and actions every day of your marriage. And they are words imbued with sacramental grace, to help you and your spouse become a living sign to the world of the love between Christ and His Church.

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About the Author: Dominika Ramos is a native of Houston, Texas though she dreams of spending her days frolicking in the English countryside. She and her husband met at the University of St. Thomas, where she studied English literature, and they were married at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham on the Feast of the Visitation in 2014. Her life is currently composed of running Pax Paper, a hand-lettering and illustration business, blogging about the transcendental aspects of motherhood (among other things) at A Quiet Quest, and chasing after her rambunctious and delightful toddler son.

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Joined by Grace: 2 Marriage Ministers on Prayer Together + Getting the Most Out of Your Marriage Prep

Despite being “ever ancient, ever new,” eternal and divine, some more human elements of the Church, particularly ministry, vary widely across dioceses and parishes. And so vary the lives of their attendees. If you’re preparing for a sacrament, particularly marriage, you’ve been somewhere different than anyone else and any other couple in the room: we are loved and willed into existence; we are planned; we walk the road of providence, whether we realize it or not.

Maybe you’re reading this as you’re revisiting the Church for your wedding and are looking for answers on the reasons behind seemingly arbitrary teachings and traditions. Maybe you’re already familiar and on board with the theology of marriage, and are looking for something more beyond the basics. Here’s a gesture, on our part, to help you experience and appreciate your marriage prep program with fresh eyes.

Teri and John Bosio are the creators of Ave Maria Press’s Joined by Grace marriage prep program, a sacramental approach to making good on your vows for a lifetime. The Bosios recently released a prayer book to accompany the program, and you, by inviting the Father into your dialogue as a couple. The book is a simple, beautifully designed resource with both the basics of Catholic spirituality and prayers alongside lesser-known devotions.

No matter what preparation program you’re enrolled in and no matter where you are in your spiritual life, it’s our hope that this recent conversation with Teri and John illuminates ways to make your preparations more personal, less one size fits all, and ways to take part in the life of the Church.

For couples who haven't shared a prayer life before, what steps do you recommend for finding a starting point and creating a routine?  

Engagement is such an important moment in your life as a couple. This is the time when new directions are charted, new habits formed, and decisions made that will influence your life for years to come. For couples wondering where to begin with prayer, our recommendation is to start with what you have in common--your love for each other, and the gratitude for how you feel.

One of you might say to the other, “Do you mind if we say a prayer of thanks to God for bringing us together?” Then, say the simplest prayer that comes to mind, such as the Our Father, or any others. This might be the start, or the continuation, of a conversation about how to make prayer part of your faith life, even if you are from different religious tradition. Engagement is a time to start your prayer traditions, including prayers before meals, evening prayers, and others. 

For those who already pray together and are looking to delve deeper during this time of preparation for marriage, what prayers or habits can they turn to?

We’d recommend praying in community. None of us can live in isolation. Researchers are finding that marriages connected to the life of their church community receive from it great spiritual and social support. The parish is where we are born spiritually in Baptism, and we return to the parish regularly for our nourishment through the sacraments. Although your parish after the wedding may be different and far away, it’s still valuable and important to participate in the life of the parish where you live at the time.

Make it a habit to attend Mass regularly, make use of the sacrament of Penance, adopt spiritual practices like the rosary or Eucharistic Adoration, and participate in acts of service with your parish community. You’ll find your parish becomes your extended family wherever you live, for the rest of your life. It can be a great source of strength and support, especially when you encounter challenges.

The marriage prep program the two of you designed, Joined by Grace, prioritizes the sacraments as a framework for married life. What are some ways couples can practically live out a sacramental mentality during engagement and, later, in marriage?

Joined by Grace invites couples to love each other as Christ loves the Church. One notable place Catholics personally experience this love is in the seven sacraments. You’re encouraged to answer the question, “What does the Bridegroom--Christ--do for his Bride--the Church--in each sacrament that I need to do for my spouse?”

For example, in Baptism we experience Christ’s forgiveness and acceptance. He shares his life with us and welcomes us into his Father’s family. Engaged couples learn from Christ the importance of mutual acceptance, without which no marriage can survive. Such acceptance is expressed in listening to each other attentively and respectfully, adjusting to one another’s habits, bearing with the other’s annoying quirks, being patient, and appreciating each other’s uniqueness and differences.

In Confirmation we experience God’s love through his commitment to be present to us with the Holy Spirit.  The bishop seals us to Christ with sacred oil, and we receive the gifts of the Spirit. One of the most important qualities of spousal love is the commitment to always be present to each other: to trust, to pay attention, to stand by each other, to give support, and to stay focused on the needs of the other.

Similarly, from the sacrament of the Eucharist couples can see the importance of self-giving and sacrifice; from the Sacrament of Penance they learn forgiveness; from the Anointing of the Sick, compassion, and helping each other heal. And from Holy Orders and Matrimony, you learn to serve one another and together, serve God.

The practical skills and loving attitudes we learn from the sacraments are critical, and are renewed and strengthened through the graces you receive at every Mass.

Joined by Grace also encourages mentorship from other married couples. Any advice for newlyweds and spouses-to-be for connecting with other couples and finding community, particularly if one or both of them will be joining a new parish or relocating after the wedding?

If you currently aren’t an active member of your parish, working with a mentor couple is a great way to get started.

Your mentors can introduce you to your parish’s prayer and social life and help you meet other young couples. In our 44 years of marriage, we’ve received many blessings from actively participating in the life of our parishes. For us, that looked like going to Mass regularly, attending social functions, teach religious education to children and adults, serving on the parish council, singing in the choir, and serving as ministers at Mass.  

During times of relocation, we always prioritized finding a parish where we wanted to belong. These churches became for us our extended family, where in each one we met many friends who were there through joy, illnesses, celebrations, job losses, and family deaths. We do not feel alone. In moments of needs our friends pray for us and help us. The parish stands by us and holds us up when we fall down. Don’t remain isolated! When you are new in a city and on your own, go to Mass to the nearest parish, read the bulletin, find things you want to do and become involved--it will be a blessing for your marriage.

The two of you have now experienced many seasons of your marriage, from newlywed life on into grandparenthood, and have worked with many couples through your marriage prep ministry. What aspects or realities of married life would surprise engaged couples the most?

So many aspects of married life caught us by surprise! First, little things can appear to be big things, but they’re not. We've learned to accommodate things like toothpaste left in the sink and to adjust to one another’s ways of doing things.

Second, we looked forward to children and were blessed with two wonderful daughters. It required an adjustment to our lifestyle, from being a couple to being a family. It took time to navigate our roles as parents and to balance meeting each other’s needs with the needs of our children.   

Third, we found it can be all too easy to find ourselves going in different directions. When one of us went back to school at a time the other was frequently traveling for work, we found we had little free time to spend alone. We had to deliberately make time. We started scheduling and budgeting for a babysitter so we could regularly date, like we had before marriage.

Finally, we found strength in knowing we are not alone.

We can draw strength from each other in difficult moments: job changes, sickness, moves, and beyond. Each of us have learned there is nothing more reassuring in those dark moments than remembering our spouse, and God, stands by us, watching out for our common good and helping us work out of predicaments together.

Any wedding planning and marriage advice you’d like to share with our readers?

Your wedding only marks the beginning of your married life. One is a day; the other is a lifetime. During your marriage you’ll each continue growing as individuals and will constantly change--there might be days you don’t recognize each other! Agree now on how you’ll handle those surprises and what life throws at you.

When you encounter challenges, think back to these days of planning for your life together. Think about how your love story started. When times get tough and the problems seem bigger than both of you, agree now that you will to seek help through prayer and openness to professional counseling.

Our best advice for your wedding planning comes from Pope Francis’ The Joy of Love. He writes:

“Here let me say a word to fiancés. Have the courage to be different. Don’t let yourselves get swallowed up by a society of consumption and empty appearances. What is important is the love you share, strengthened and sanctified by grace. You are capable of opting for a more modest and simple celebration in which love takes precedence over everything else (212)."

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John and Teri Bosio are active in parish and family ministry, serving parishes and dioceses around the country and leading couples retreats and family ministry workshops for deacons and priests. They are the writers of Joined by Grace, a marriage preparation program, and the accompanying Joined by Grace: A Catholic Prayer Book for Engaged and Newly Married Couples, from Ave Maria Press. They have produced three parish-based marriage enrichment programs, Six Dates for Catholic Couples, The Beatitudes: A Couple’s Path to Greater Joy, and Four Dates for Catholic Couples: The Virtues. The Bosios live in Nashville, Tennessee, and have two daughters and one grandchild.

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Putting Aside the Details: My Engaged Encounter Experience

EMILY DIBIASE

The day after my fiancé and I got engaged, we sat down and wrote a prayer to say together every night of our engagement in preparation for marriage. It’s a practice we began over two years ago when we started the long distance portion of our relationship, adjusting the prayer to whatever circumstances we were in at that time to bring us together spiritually even when we were physically apart.

In our engagement prayer, we were intentional in including the invocation to help us “not let the details get the way.” I was happy to include it, but thought it was a little unnecessary – I of all people certainly was not going to be a bridezilla. My fiancé and I are both devout Catholics, so I recognized that the wedding Mass was far more important than the rest of the day. Dozens of brides had warned me not to let the wedding take over my life, and after working for a church for seven years, I’d seen plenty of brides who didn’t have the joy I hoped to feel on my wedding day, since their minds were too preoccupied by details to be truly present in the day. Thus, I vowed to never let the wedding take precedence over my marriage.

Through the first five months of our engagement, I naively thought I'd kept my promise. I picked my wedding dress in less than an hour (it was the first one I tried on), I hired the first and only DJ I ever talked to, I spent hours perusing the internet to find the best deals on everything because I was determined not to go over our budget, and I hardly delegated tasks to anyone, even my fiancé. I was an easy bride…or so I thought.

John Nicoletti Photography

The last few weeks have been jammed. As we quickly approach our June wedding, I’ve been trying to cram everything going on in my life into whatever spare hours I have, including the brilliant idea of spending the two hours we had between work and our pre-Cana program printing our DIY invitations. After an hour of trying unsuccessfully (they printed out, but were navy, not teal, and would clash with our motif), I finally barked to forget it, and we went off on our weekend. It wasn’t until I was having a complete meltdown on the way to marriage prep that I realized my priorities were way off-track. 

Oddly enough, one of the parts I was dreading most in the wedding preparations was pre-Cana. As part of our engagement present, my future in-laws had sponsored my fiancé and me to attend an Engaged Encounter weekend, a retreat-based marriage preparation program that fulfills pre-Cana requirements. I was extremely grateful for this gift, but the thought of spending an entire weekend away from our hectic lives of work, grad school, volunteering, and wedding planning was daunting.

The closer we got to the weekend, the more apprehensive I became. I knew the basic format of the weekend – someone would discuss a trigger topic of marriage (ie. money, intimacy, NFP, communication, etc.) and then we would have time to write about our responses and share them with each other. We’d also been told that it would be a working weekend and to come well rested (ha!). I imagined my sleep-deprived fiancé and myself attempting to have meaningful conversations and ending up just arguing the entire weekend. After a long week at work, the last thing I felt like doing was losing out on more sleep and fighting battles we had already settled long before.

So here we were, two devout Catholics sitting in a conference room on a Friday night dreading our pre-Cana weekend and cockily thinking that we had nothing to gain from it. I’ve planned dozens of retreats before and knew that attitude was everything, but here I was falling into the same trap as so many others before me. I was totally not present, sullenly calculating how many hours it was until we would be released, and wrapped up in worrying about how to get the invitations done on time.

At the beginning of the weekend, the moderators stressed that we were going to get out of the weekend whatever we put into it. I was cynical, but as I listened to the two moderating couples – one married for twelve years, the other for sixty – I began to realize that we have a lot to learn. These two couples opened up to us about what they’d been through in marriage: the highs, the lows, and everything in between. They were so brutally honest and open that it caused us to want to be brutally honest and open with each other as well. Their love was infectious, and I found myself slowly letting go of all of the stresses and taking the time to really look at the man I was marrying, who I realized I’d been looking past in all of my planning. Despite my valiant attempts, I’d made him just another piece in the puzzle of my dream day, instead of letting him make my day a dream.

Throughout the weekend, we slowly let our guards down and fell in love again on a deeper level through our intimate conversations. We went from being business partners, tasked with accomplishing the task of merging our lives with at times unemotional precision, to being carefree lovebirds again, totally in awe of each other and the great gift of love that we've been given by God.

What Engaged Encounter gave us was the opportunity to take intentional time to turn off every distraction and just focus on us. We talked about subjects we’d evaded in the past, or hadn't had time to fully discuss in a relaxed and loving setting. Conversations I’d never imagined bringing up that weekend came up naturally, free of tension and full of honest, thoughtful dialogue. Even more importantly, the retreat encouraged us to reground our relationship with each other in our relationship with God, and to recognize that the closer we become to Him, the closer we will be to each other.

The turning point came for me on Saturday night when we all gathered in the chapel for a special blessing. Part of the blessing involved us taking each other’s hands in the manner that we will on our wedding day. As we stood looking in each other’s eyes, I felt an overwhelming desire to marry my fiance right then and there. And suddenly, I realized it didn’t matter if the bridesmaids’ flowers were ivory or blush or if the wedding programs were printed on the same paper as the invitations; my dream wedding is going to be a dream because I’m marrying the love of my life, my best friend, the man who draws me closer to God on a daily basis, who makes me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world, and who practices selfless, sacrificial love every day.

Before our Engaged Encounter weekend, I was excited for my marriage, but I was focused on the wedding, letting the details and the pressures of hosting a Pinterest-perfect party get in the way of continuing to feed and develop my relationship with my beloved. After Engaged Encounter, I am still excited for my “fairytale” wedding, but have become focused on my upcoming marriage and the excitement and humility I have in joining my life with the person I love most, second only to Jesus.

Did our engagement become perfect after our weekend? Not at all. On Monday morning, I still had to handle the invitation fiasco and hunt down the florist for a price on the flowers, and even now I still have to remind myself to not get so wrapped up in the details. But from the moment we left the retreat, I noticed that we were much more intentional in making sure that the other felt loved and appreciated and did our best to retain the joy in each other’s presence that was so prevalent that weekend.

On June 16th, I will once again stand opposite the man of my dreams, holding his hands and taking the biggest leap of faith I’ve ever taken. I can’t say that I’m confident the invitations will perfectly match the bridesmaid dresses or that my floating candles will last the entire night, but thanks to Engaged Encounter, I now feel more confident than ever in the most important part of the day – that I am marrying the most amazing man in the world, and that I am the most blessed girl in the world to be able to do so.

If you’d like to learn more about Engaged Encounter, please visit their website.

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John nicoletti photography

About the Author: Emily DiBiase is marrying the love of her life on June 16, 2017. She now works in the Marketing Department at the same college where she and her fiancé Aaron met as high school students at an accepted students day. She is currently studying for her master’s in theology through the Augustine Institute, and when she’s not wedding planning, you can probably find her teaching religious education, running the parish youth group, spending time with family, or starting her Catholic marketing company, Gloriam Marketing. She loves biblical studies, especially typology, and has strong feelings about God, Jane Austen, and the Oxford comma. She blogs about Catholic young adult life at www.catholickidproblems.wordpress.com. 

Let God Plan Your Marriage Prep: Concrete Ways to Prepare for Marriage Even Before Setting a Date

THERESA AKRE LANCHONEY

When my fiancé Andrew and I got engaged we decided not to set a date right away, concerned that as soon as we started planning the wedding day, our thoughts would become consumed with details and to-dos. We wanted to ensure we had time to focus on us as couple and prepare for our whole marriage, not just our wedding day. For us, we knew briefly holding off on choosing a date would safeguard this time in our relationship.

During this time of waiting to set our wedding date, we made a decision to spend those months pursue marriage preparation over wedding planning. But we needed to figure out what exactly that would look like: How would we prepare for marriage? How would we focus on our relationship?

Our diocese requires a pre-Cana program, yet we felt our engagement would additionally benefit from something richer. By the grace of God we were already working with a wonderful priest who will be officiating our wedding, so together we started researching books and programs. My fiance and I considered couples we admired and might like to sit down with, and we asked other couples what they did for their marriage prep. It wasn’t long before we were completely overwhelmed!

The Church is becoming increasingly aware of how crucial good marriage preparation is, which means there’s an increasing number of excellent books, programs, and other resources devoted to it. We really didn’t know how to choose, or whose advice to take, when we realized it: Who better to decide than God, our loving Father? So we started praying something like this:

"God you know us and what we need. We are overwhelmed by the amount of options to aid us in our marriage preparation. Please be the one in charge of this. Please plan out and show us what we should do. We trust you.”

Soon after beginning this particular prayer, things started falling into our laps. First, a friend told us about the book Spousal Prayer by Deacon James Keating, which encouraged and strengthened Andrew’s and my prayer life together. Then, the Theology of the Body Institute opened its first-ever marriage retreat to engaged couples, and a friend paid for us to go as an early wedding present. After that, Andrew was finally able to attend the Theology of the Body I Course at the Institute, which we had been trying to make happen for over a year. Both gave us a deeper understanding of what marriage and love truly are and require.

Then, friends called and said they were taking a Dave Ramsey class just down the block from where I lived; would we want to do it with them? We initially didn’t realize this was a way the Lord was preparing us for marriage, thinking it was a great excuse to see close friends on a more regular basis, and who couldn’t use a little help managing money? But, boy did God have more in store for us than that! This class didn’t just give us a little help. It taught us how to communicate about money and set us on a path to financial health and responsibility, giving us tools to stay on that path for the rest of our lives.

After all this, we discerned that the time was now right to start considering a wedding date and signing up for diocesan requirements. We registered for NFP and pre-Cana, which for our diocese involves attending Living a Joy-Filled Marriage and God’s Plan for Joy, two programs designed by Ascension Press. These programs provided so many necessary tools we will need for our marriage and helped us begin implementing things like charting my cycle and making important decisions together. It was around this time that we also set our wedding date! We are now living in the joyful tension of preparing for our wedding day and our marriage.

The only thing that still felt missing was a mentor couple. We had identified couples we thought might be a good fit for us and had approached a few of them, but nothing really panned out. Asking for mentorship, we learned, was a somewhat awkward conversation because we didn’t entirely know what were looking for, just that we wanted guidance and wisdom from a couple further along in the journey of their vocation than we were.

Then, while I was working on this very article, one of the couples we'd had in mind, whom we hadn’t spoken with, called me out of the blue and said something along the lines of, “Hey, my wife and I have been talking about how we would love to mentor an engaged couple and share some of the things we have learned. You and Andrew came to our hearts and we were wondering if you would like us to be a mentor couple.” I could hardly believe that after all the Lord had given us, he was making this so easy!

All this is certainly not to say that you cannot prepare for your marriage and plan your wedding at the same time, as we did at the beginning of our engagement. It is to say that I recommend taking the time to figure out what is best for you and your relationship and inviting the Lord into that process.

We want God, who is Love, to be a part of our marriage. This season of preparing for it has become a constant invitation to God into our relationship.

I hope that my sharing what the Lord provided for my fiancé and I introduces you to some resources that are new to you  and encourages you to rely on the Lord in preparing for your marriage. He truly can be trusted with every little detail in our lives. He desires so deeply to guide and provide for us, if only we come before him and ask.

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Theresa is the oldest of seven children. She graduated from Purdue University in 2010 with a degree in Youth, Adult and Family Services. Following graduation, she moved from Indiana to Pennsylvania to work for the Theology of the Body Institute and has been there since. She loves hiking, drinking coffee on the porch, sunrises, the ocean, Frank Sinatra, laughing and a good cocktail. She is engaged to marry Andrew on November 5, 2016 and asks your prayers over their engagement and marriage. INSTAGRAM