Okay, so Bob wants a Catholic wedding, not just formal. Several of Scott's Catholic aunts and uncles (East Boston Italian Catholics and Charlestown Irish Catholics) tolf us we had the nicest ceremony they'd ever been to, which is why I asked.

Most of my friends and about half my family is Catholic. We're in a very Catholic area. Most of them did not hate the Pre-Cana course. Maybe Bob could find a local Eastern rite parish and ask them help him find an appropriate church in Phoenix, and work out some sort of deal where you could do the engaged encounter weekend, like Maria suggested. Since it is important to Bob and isn't important to you, it sounds like it is worth doing. That's how we ended up with a protestant wedding. It was important to me and wasn't important to Scott.

It's funny. Sometimes I think wedding planning itself is one of the best preparations for being married.

Huh. I'm torn between thinking my car was gaslighting me and thinking I must be a complete moron. Which, given how stupid I've been feeling of late...yeah. Weird. At least it is only $100 weird and not $600. That's a fucking weird kind of relief.

I hate that kind of relief, and I totally understanding feeling that way, but but I still want to make a "nope wrong" buzzer sound at you being a moron, because you just aren't, at all.

I have a sinus headache and I already am trying hard not to puke, so I think I need to just ignore all the Bush stuff.

It's funny. Sometimes I think wedding planning itself is one of the best preparations for being married.

I'm beginning to think that there's no such thing as organized religion - it's all a wedding planner conspiracy.

I don't think they still require you to raise children in the Catholic church anymore, but they used to.

The thing with getting married within the Catholic Church is that they have their rules, but each parish/priest is going to follow those rules a little differently. My divorced cousin got married for a second time in the Catholic Church without an anullment of her first marriage (a pretty major Cahtolic no-no) pretty much on the merits of her father being a super-devout, super active parishoner who the priest thought a lot of.

On the upside, bon bon, nobody does ceremony like the Catholic church. I'm prot to the bone, but when I attend weddings, funerals and baptisms, I always walk away thinking they've got it all over the protestants.

Thanks for your advice, Cindy. We definitely have some stuff to think over. I think I will probably go through with the whole thing-- engaged encounter sounds like something that I can deal with, and if he wants to try to raise kids catholic that's fine too. His mother was Jewish and raised him Catholic, I can probably let him try.

On the upside, bon bon, nobody does ceremony like the Catholic church. I'm prot to the bone, but when I attend weddings, funerals and baptisms, I always walk away thinking they've got it all over the protestants.

Plus they got that neato smokey thing they swing around....

ION - this is I guess not surprising, except in a "Where's the outrage?" sort of way. OK, maybe the lack of outrage isn't surprising either....

Iraq war amputee denied photo-op with Bush.

“‘Are you telling me that I can’t go to the ceremony ’cause I’m an amputee?‘” asked David Thomas, an Iraq war veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart. Thomas was told he could not wear shorts to attend a ceremony with President Bush because the media would be there, and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row. David responded, “I’m not ashamed of what I did, and y’all shouldn’t be neither.” When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Now I wonder about my parents -- I don't know for sure that they got married by a priest, but my mother's Catholic family put the wedding together, but my father's obviously a Prot. Maybe it's all related to why I got baptised Catholic as a baby.

Plus they got that neato smokey thing they swing around....

Some Episcopalians have that too!

FYI, I've gone back and edited the original post w/r/t raising kids Catholic to have the proper info. I hadn't realised that it changed, and I should have double-checked before posting. I'm sorry if I caused you any grief, bon bon.

The nuptial ceremony without the Mass is not bad. It's what we did, and from start to finish it was probably 45 minutes. It's a reading from the Old Testament, a responsorial Psalm, a reading from the New Testament, the gospel and homily, the sacrament of marriage, the general intercessions, and the final blessing. You do get to pick the readings, and some of them are not as overtly religious as others. My DH didn't find it too burdensome.

Some Episcopalians have that too!

Episcopalians also are the ones that have primates. Maybe I should join....