Contact your local church and arrange to book the church.
This should be done before the hotel is booked to avoid
disapppointment. In Ireland, it can be difficult to get a Hotel on a Friday
or Saturday unless there is one or two years advance booking.
The Family Law Act 1995 requires couples to give a minimum of
three months notice to the State of their intention to marry. Once
you have booked the Church, it is no harm to send this notification
even one or two years in advance of the wedding.
Without the notification to the State, the marriage will
be not valid in civil law. A form can be got from your local
Registrar and should be sent to him or her. Experience has
shown that even if you are one day late, the Registrar will not
accept the notice and you will be required to go to the High Court
to get an exemption (The latter is an informal procedure where both
parties can make the application and do not involve the services of a solicitor). So don't leave it to the last minute. For the Dublin area the address is:
Registrar of Marriages ,
Room 1, Joyce House,
8-11 Lombard Street East,
Dublin 2.
It is worth noting that the Church has for sometime
required a minimum of three months notice also.
The next step is to book yourselves on a pre-marriage course,
for example through Accord.
Again do not leave this to the last minute .
Courses are run throughout the year but are generally
limited to ten couples so early booking is advisable.
"Accord" run courses in a number of centres throughout Ireland.
In the Dublin area, phone 4780866 to book a course in the nearest
centre to you. There are also other pre- marriage courses
like "Naomi" (16 North Great Georges Street :Phone 8786156).
The courses can be a weekend (Friday night and all day Saturday) or
spread out over a few weeks (One night a week).
They are run by married couples and are very practical
and out of which you will be enriched. Another excellent pre marriage course is the
one run by Fr Pat Rogers in Mount Argus. (Excellent resourse website)
Within six months of the wedding, it is time to gather the required Church documents. Again do not leave this to the last minute as it can take time to get these documents, if one was baptised outside of Ireland. These papers are sent to the Church where the wedding is to take place. These include:
1. A current baptism cert (not a state birth cert and not an old baptism cert). It is evidence of your baptism and also that you were not previously married. This is why it must be dated within six months of the wedding. You can get this from the Church where you were baptised.
2. A confirmation cert available from the Church where you were confirmed.
3. A Letter of Freedom: from every place that you lived for more than six months over the age of sixteen. If you were in a lot of places, it may be necessary to get a sworn affividavit or a letter from your parents who can vouch for the fact that you were never previously married. The letter of freedom can be got from the priest in the area in question.
When you have all these documents, arrange to meet your local priest who will fill out a Pre-Nuptial Enquiry Form. This is a form which basically asks a number of questions to make sure that you understand the step that you are about to take. All of these documents are then sent to the Church where the wedding is to take place.
All of the above requirements will be explained to you by your local priest. The above applies to the situation of two Catholics who intend to marry. For other circumstances, there are more requirements. If the couple live outside of Ireland but are getting married in Ireland, they still must notify the State. Their Church papers are sent by their local priest to the Bishop of the diocese where the wedding is to take place and these in turn are sent by the Bishop to the Church where the wedding is to take place.
It may look like a lot of requirements but the decision to marry for life is a serious one and preparation is necessary and normally when done over the period of a year, there are no difficulties.
As regards planning the liturgy for the wedding, I recommend that you buy a book called "A Wedding of your Own" by Padraig Mc Carthy which is published by Veritas. This book contains all the readings, wedding rites and prayers. There is even a checklist at the back to make sure that you have remembered everything from the readers to the flowers. Flor Mc Carthy's Book "Wedding Liturgies" (Dominican Press) contains just the readings and prayer of the Faithful but it does so under various themes. Another excellent preparation booklet is "Your Wedding" published by the Dublin Repemptorist Publications in January 1998. It is advisable to read and plan the day. Choose the readings that mean a lot to you and your partner and try to involve both families in the allocation of readings and prayers.
If you would like to have a "Papal Blessing", you can order them through
Veritas. It takes a few months to get it and
before ordering you will need to have a letter from your
priest stating that you are to be married on a particular date and that
you are practicing Catholics.
For information on getting married in Rome see
the website for the Irish College in Rome.
Finally I do hope that you find this information useful and may I wish you and your partner every happiness for the future
You will find more detailed information on getting married at the Jesuit website "Getting Married".
A Wedding is for a day
Marriage is for life
Donabate Parish | 