English
EspañolBe spouses and not wedding planners.
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“Short-term preparations for marriage tend to be concentrated on invitations, clothes, the party and any number of other details that tend to drain not only the budget but energy and joy as well. The spouses come to the wedding ceremony exhausted and harried, rather than focused and ready for the great step that they are about to take. The same kind of preoccupation with a big celebration also affects certain de facto unions; because of the expenses involved, the couple, instead of being concerned above all with their love and solemnizing it in the presence of others, never get married.” (The Joy of Love, n.212)
Commentary
When a couple decides to formalize their engagement, their first concern will likely be to book the perfect venue to celebrate the wedding party. Ordering the invitations and buying the perfect wedding dress – the groom, have no doubt, is almost always a figurehead in the play – will be the next and fundamental step. Stopping by the parish to talk to the priest will be on the list – and even that is uncertain, given the increase in civil celebrations worldwide – in last, very last place. Furthermore, they often seek out the church more for the photo op to go with that perfect dress than for the deeper meaning of the ceremony.
So, this couple becomes wedding planners rather than the bride and groom getting married. They celebrate a party, and nothing profound, solid, or lifelong is founded. They say yes to the wedding, party, and ceremony. However, that “yes” is not the matrimonial alliance that unites them in exclusive fidelity and for all their lives. Moreover, if such consent is lacking, the sacrament will not be present either.
This is a mistaken behavior, and it must be reversed. That the engaged couple understands the importance of the personal decision they are about to make is everybody’s responsibility -society, family, friends-; also the one who prepares them to receive the sacrament of matrimony. Above all, it is up to them, to the engaged couple themselves, those who are to found their marital union.
The preparation of the matrimonial dossier cannot be conducted in any particular way; the high number of civil unions should not be used as an excuse to justify that a diffuse, confused, or absent matrimonial intention is sufficient to fulfill the canonical requirements of marriage. The preparation courses, the opportunity for the engaged couple to express their authentic matrimonial intention expressly, can be of great help in defining the constitutive elements of the conjugal union and verifying whether or not they are present or absent.
What is essential to know and want? That to marry – the moment of consent – is to surrender and embrace each other, as the man of this woman and as the woman of this man, entirely, without reservation, in exclusive fidelity, and for life, with the joint will to be a single union.
If the bride and groom prepare to manifest one another the foundational consent of their union, the other aids in preparation for the wedding feast take on their meaning and their proportionate place. If the bride´s sister wants to take care of the floral arrangements, let her do it; if the cousin and her group of choir friends want to take care of the music, let them do it; if friends and family want to prepare the reading for the ceremony with the priest, they are welcomed to do so; and if everyone wants to continue partying until the next day, do not be a stingy bride and groom and share the happiness of that day with your loved ones.
The bridal party celebrates that the couple has been united in marriage. That is its essence – the core of what makes it a great party: the joy of the intimate communion of life and love that the newlyweds have founded. That union is their new way of being. They are no longer one or the other, but they are their union together.
