Customer Reviews

Celebrating Marriage Preparing the Wedding Liturgy: A Workbook for the Engaged Couple

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Having worked with the author I knew of this book, but didn't fully appreciate it until asked to coordinate my best friend's wedding. It was a fantastic resource and gave us lots of good reasons to avoid many of the hackneyed and outdated "traditions" that really have nothing whatsoever to do with the Catholic vision of marraige.

Since then I've use the book several other times with other couples and have given it as an engagement gift several times.

When my then fiance and I were trying to prepare for our Catholic wedding, our wedding coordinator at our parish suggested we use this book. It was the best suggestion we got for preparing our wedding! This book helped us prepare our ceremony down to the finest detail, without being "preachy". It just gave us exactly what we needed, examples and all, and told us what we could do, couldn't do, and why. I highly recommend this workbook to any and all Catholic brides and grooms!

This book is truely helpful and insightful for Catholics getting married - to other Catholics or to anyone of another faith. Very well written, much less steril than other "church sponsored" literature.

This book is an essential guide to any one wishing to have a wedding ceremony that is as rich as the Catholic faith itself (also applicable to all faiths). It describes the why's and how's of all components of a beautiful celebration of the sacrament of matrimony and enables a couple to be the fully active, informed, hospitible ministers of the sacrament that the Church calls them to be.

What's the difference between a liturigist and a terrorist? You can reason with a terrorist.

This book is for priests and 21st Century Pharisees, not for the bride and groom who have to read and use this book for their wedding.

My fiancee' and I we're originally force-fed Celebrating Marriage. Upon reading the section on the processional, we asked the priest to get us something different. The priest agreed with us and found provided Together for Life by Father Joseph Champlin. Together for Life is a far better, more flexible book than Celebrating Marriage.

Celebrating Marriage argues, "The Rite of Marriage does not mention the form of procession which the bride enters, accompanied by the bridesmaids and her father, and meets the groom at the front of the aisle." Essentially, this book does not give the bride and groom the option of choosing the traditional wedding procession for their wedding, where the father hands off his daughter to the groom. Rather, everyone must enter in the procession, including the groom, which unfortunately makes the wedding more complicated and takes away a very special moment in the ceremony.

Many of my non-Catholic and non-religious friends have claimed that the traditional procession is the most important and beautiful part of the wedding ceremony--the father handing off his daughter to the groom, which signifies the beginning of a new family. Celebrating Marriage does not allow for this, unfortunately, as this book believes that the Father is handing over his daughter as "property," not that this symbolizes the beginning of a new family. The author takes to heart what he believes is "liturgically correct" without considering that many couples who are given this book choose the traditional method and see it in a much different light than what the author describes.

This book is great for 21st Century Pharisees who want to impose their will on the rest of us. No wonder so many Catholics leave the Church--the author cares more about what he believes is "liturgically correct" as opposed to what the couple wants within reason.

I recommend Together for Life. For one, this books gives the couple options on the procession, including the above "liturgically correct" option recommended by Celebrating Marriage. Together For Life also gives couples the option to choose the traditional procession, which is the most common in Catholic Weddings. Together for Life is a win-win for couples. Celebrating Marriage is a lose-win: lose for the couples, win for the Pharisees.

Keep in mind, my fiancee and I attend Mass weekly and have a deep faith in the Catholic Church. It's unfortunate that the author chooses to adhere to the letter of the law instead of ministering to the people, as Jesus did. If Jesus were to read this book, he would exclaim, "Did I teach you nothing!?!" He would then toss Celebrating Marriage into the depths of Gahenna, where it belongs.

If a priest hands you this slug, you don't need to take it. Instead, opt for Together for Life. After all, the wedding is ministered by you, not the author (Paul Covino) or any other modern-day Pharisee with too much time on his hands.