A wedding isn’t just a fun party when you’re Catholic – it’s a sacrament that “signifies the union of Christ and the Church” and “the consent by which the spouses mutually give and receive one another is sealed by God himself” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. While you absolutely deserve to celebrate this union by marking the day as a special occasion however you see fit – whether that’s by inviting everyone you know or just your closest friends and family, or hosting a reception lavish or simple – the wedding ceremony is the center of the wedding day, not something to quickly get through in order to get to the reception.

As wedding photography has improved and sites like Pinterest and wedding-specific blogs/publications have become more and more prevalent online, couples have had tons of inspiration for their own wedding day – but the vast majority of it has been purely aesthetic and secular. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to find a vendor blog or social media account that is completely void of any ceremony photos (especially if that ceremony was indoors). If the true meaning of marriage and purpose of a wedding is so monumental, it makes sense that we should do more than to relegate it to just a 30-60 minute chunk of the wedding day. But how do we do that? We’ve compiled a list of ways that you can incorporate your Catholic faith into the wedding day as a continual reminder of what’s most important!

Special feast day

One way our couples will incorporate their faith more fully into their wedding day is to choose to have their wedding on a feast day that is special to them or that can inform other decisions about their wedding day. Maybe you have a special devotion to the Holy Family, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Joseph, or the Annunciation – whatever the devotion, choosing to celebrate on the feast day can be a way to dedicate the start of your marriage to that day. It also helps make your wedding anniversary more memorable, both for you and your friends and family! I know that personally, my friends got married on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and I will never forget their anniversary because of it!

Pray together before and during your wedding day

With all the hustle and bustle of wedding planning, it can be easy for regular prayer to fall off your to-do list. One way to help manage the struggle of regular prayer before your wedding is to pray a novena together. This beautiful novena by the St. Josemaria Institute is a great resource, or you may find another one that better suits your style and personal relationship with God and the saints (or even create your own!).

Consider concluding the novena on the day of your wedding, rather than the day before, and then praying the last prayer of the novena together before your ceremony. Maybe that means doing a first look and then praying together face-to-face, or maybe it means doing a “first touch” by praying together around a corner without seeing each other to maintain that tradition. Either way, being able to pray together before your ceremony is a profound way to calm your nerves before the ceremony and remind each other going into the hustle and bustle of the wedding day exactly why you’re there in the first place.

Alternatively, you could pray the novena for the 9 days prior to your wedding as is traditional of novenas for feast days or special occasions, and then choose a prayer together that you could pray on your wedding day. Some inspiration – my husband and I chose to do a novena that ended on the wedding day for us to pray before our ceremony, but then during our ceremony after Communion we chose to present flowers to Mary and then together we prayed Tobiah and Sarah’s prayer from the book of Tobit because we had been moved by that prayer but opted for a different Old Testament reading for our ceremony. “Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.” What an incredible prayer for a couple to read together on their wedding day!

Custom stationary

Sacred art is beautiful and your stationary is the perfect way to showcase the beauty of the divine through your wedding day! You can work with a Catholic stationary company, like Pieta Paperie, to feature an illustration of your church or art of a special devotion that you’d like to highlight on the invitations, envelope lining, or wherever your vision takes you. You could also consider featuring a beloved Bible verse or saint quote related to love, marriage, or the family, especially if the financial investment in custom art is unrealistic for your budget.

Beautiful stationary helps set the tone for your wedding day for your guests; for many weddings, this means choosing formal script font vs. bold modern font, an elegant black and white color scheme vs romantic spring pastel colors, etc. By including art or writing that points to the Divine, you can set the tone for your guests that you intend your day to be centered on your faith.

Personalized prayer cards

Along similar lines to the custom stationary, you can also order personalized prayer cards as part of your stationary or, more commonly, a beautiful wedding favor. You can order from pre-designed ones at a variety of shops including Catholic Company, or create cards all your own either with your own design skills or by working with a Catholic designer. Choose a devotion or holy image that is important to the two of you – the Wedding at Cana or the Sacred Heart are two popular examples – along with a prayer for the back to be displayed with your names and wedding date. This is a beautiful way to witness to the faith by introducing a holy image and prayer to your non-Christian wedding guests, and also encourages your Christian/Catholic friends and family to hold onto the card and pray for your marriage after the wedding day is over.

Special rosary or decade

Items that you incorporate into your wedding day take on special meaning – the earrings or tie you wore, the basket that your flower girl carried, the perfume or cologne you chose for the day. Including a rosary, or just a decade (a bracelet-sized circle of beads intended to only pray one decade of the rosary around), can imbue extra sentimentality for your wedding day after you’ve settled into married life. It can also draw your mind back to prayer throughout the wedding day if you keep it in your pocket or wrapped around your bouquet; whenever you touch it, say a Hail Mary for your new spouse and new marriage.

If you already have a sentimental rosary, consider incorporating it into your wedding as a special item. Maybe you and your future spouse pick out a rosary or a matching pair of rosaries together and pray a daily rosary in the weeks or months leading up to the wedding day (which goes back to our prayer section above!); we love HandmaidRosariesCo for beautiful options supporting a local small business, but there are tons of options for every style and budget to fit your own wedding day. You could also choose to gift yourself or your spouse a rosary on the wedding day as part of the anticipation of the ceremony, keeping the design a beautiful surprise and then starting your new marriage with a new rosary full of sentimentality.

Catholic jewelry

Brides tend to wear so many beautiful things for their wedding day – the dress, the shoes, the nails, the jewelry. One way to incorporate your faith into the wedding day is to choose jewelry that reflects your faith. Maybe there’s a beautiful cross necklace that you already own or could borrow from a close relative as your “something borrowed;” a vintage Miraculous Medal you could put on a bracelet as your “something old;” a delicate locket necklace where you could display an image of a beloved saint. If you are budgeting for new jewelry for the wedding day, some of our favorite sources of Catholic-inspired jewelry are Stella & Tide, The Little Catholic, and House of Joppa. And as mentioned in the section on rosaries, this is another way to imbue sentimentality to an item you can use day-to-day – continue wearing your beautiful jewelry from your wedding day in your everyday life as a newlywed!

Programs and ceremony decor

It’s all too common for the wedding ceremony to be overlooked in secular weddings, but also surprisingly for religious ones as well! Much of it has to do with the setting; for a secular wedding taking place on an otherwise undecorated section of a field, couples have to find ways to jazz up the space with flowers and a ceremony arch. Catholic weddings, on the other hand, tend to skip over decor for the ceremony space because it’s already taking place inside a church that may regularly have flowers at the altar or stained glass behind the altar. There also may be restrictions by the church itself on what sort of decorations you’re allowed to bring in. That said, if we want to make it clear to our guests and to ourselves that the wedding ceremony is the pinnacle of the wedding day and not just something we have to do before getting to the party, we should be making that known by highlighting it as much as possible.

One way to do this is to include ceremony programs. These serve multiple purposes – they traditionally include the list of wedding party members and prominent family members, so guests have a clearer idea of who is involved in your wedding day especially if they’re distant relatives or college friends who may not know every person involved in your lives together. More importantly, however, it serves as a guide for guests to follow along with the ceremony rather than zoning out a few minutes in. Catholic and non-Catholic guests alike may be prone to losing their attention span when listening to music they can’t sing along to or readings that aren’t printed in front of them, and non-Catholic guests especially may feel very lost in the ritual of a Catholic mass. Show your guests that you care about their participation in the liturgy by providing them with the means to do so. If you have the budget or design skills to provide beautiful programs that reflect the style of your wedding day, even better – this is a great way to witness to the value you place in this part of the day!

Another way to highlight the ceremony is to put extra thought into the decoration of the ceremony space. Most churches allow you to place decorations on the end of the pews as well as flower arrangements at the altar and/or the lectern; you may also be permitted to decorate further depending on the design of your church and what rules they have in place (for example, maybe you would be allowed to place flowers on each side of the Tabernacle, or greenery along a ledge that runs around the front of the space). You may also be able to place a welcome sign or decorated welcome table in the narthex outside the main church space. Budgeting for large flower arrangements, pew bows, etc. can help make your ceremony feel like a special occasion.

Prayer before meal

A common way to incorporate your faith into your wedding day is also simple and free – saying a prayer before the meal at your reception. It could be a prayer said by the priest who just presided over your wedding mass, a family member who might feel honored by this special way of participating in your wedding, or by the two of you as part of a welcome toast for your guests. The prayer could be the traditional Bless us, oh Lord said by many Catholics before a meal, or it could be a spontaneous prayer asking for God to bless the couple and the food – whatever fits your style and the style of the person invited to pray with you. Don’t be afraid to invite a non-Catholic family member to lead this prayer as well if it fits your wedding; this would be a beautiful way to witness to the Christian faith that you share with your non-Catholic family member or friend who may be excited to pray with you despite the differences that exist between your faiths.

Hire Catholic vendors

Last but certainly not least, one way to witness to the faith on your wedding day is to hire Catholic vendors. A Catholic vendor will have the right priorities in mind for your wedding day. A Catholic wedding planner might be helpful with other ideas on how to incorporate your favorite devotion into your wedding day, and make sure your ceremony is the priority on the wedding day when the timeline gets thrown off in the morning. A Catholic photographer will respect romantic boundaries during your portraits and will provide photos of every moment and detail of your ceremony without needing to be explicitly told what to expect. A Catholic videographer will know to be respectful of the sanctuary space and minimize how much movement they do during the most sacred parts of the mass. A Catholic florist will understand the significance of a beautiful arrangement for the ceremony. A Catholic DJ will choose music that reflects your values and will perform their duties as emcee for the reception with respect. And of course, regardless of what vendor you’re hiring, supporting your fellow Catholics in their small businesses is a way to witness to the faith in itself, supporting people with like-minded values and who are more likely to pray for your future marriage leading up to and on your wedding day.

One way to seek out Catholic wedding vendors is through Spoken Bride, an amazing resource for engaged couples. Unfortunately, Spoken Bride is no longer being update with new vendors, but the site will remain for those who were featured on their vendor guide prior to their decision to cease updates. We are so proud to be one of their featured vendors! Some Catholic vendors in Northern Virginia we can recommend are Cana Wedding Co and Greta David Events for planning/coordination, An Endless Pursuit and The Herreras for videography, and Block Party Weddings for DJ/emcee services. And of course, choose us as your Catholic wedding photographer!