We recognize that each couple's situation and relationship is unique, so please start the process of preparing for marriage as early as you can.
Here is what the typical marriage preparation process looks like:
1. Contact Sarah Monette, our Church Secretary, to make an appointment with our pastor, Father Jacek. Please contact us at least six months before your wedding.
2. At the first meeting with Father Jacek, you will have an opportunity to share your relationship story and your understanding of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Father Jacek will guide you through the necessary paperwork and give you an in-depth look at the next steps.
3. You will meet at least once (depending on your specific needs) with Father Cody to learn about the theology of marriage and to discuss some ethical challenges of married life.
4. You will meet with FOCCUS facilitators to discuss married life. They are married parishioners trained to help you identify your relationship's strengths and weaknesses.
5. You will learn about Natural Family Planning through a class sponsored by the Diocese of Salt Lake City.
6. If your wedding will take place at St. Catherine's, you will meet with one of our priests to plan the celebration of the sacrament. While we do not have a resident music director, we would be happy to put you in touch with some musicians in our community who could provide music at the wedding, depending on their availability.
"The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."
...
In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb:
'How can I ever express the happiness of a marriage joined by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels, and ratified by the Father ? . . . How wonderful the bond between two believers, now one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the same service! They are both children of one Father and servants of the same Master, undivided in spirit and flesh, truly two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, one also is the spirit.'"
(CCC 1601, 1642)