The Magical Priest

I talked to my mom today and the conversation was surprisingly calm. She wanted to know if we had started making any plans or decisions for our wedding yet. I took a deep breath and told her that we were probably planning on having a small wedding ceremony outside, either in Ann Arbor somewhere or at Ben’s parents house, and then a small party at Ben’s parents house the next day. The only comment she had was that she still would really like it if I got married in a Catholic church. I explained to her that it probably wouldn’t be possible because 1) we wanted to have an outdoor wedding and priests don’t perform outdoor weddings, 2) we are planning on having the wedding in June and the classes a church requires you to take are at least 6-9 months long and 3) I’m not a member of a parish in Ann Arbor, I’m not a practicing Catholic, and Ben’s not Catholic nor baptized under any other religion. She still continued to push the issue saying that it didn’t matter that Ben wasn’t part of the Catholic church. I told her that I understood that, however, we had talked to friends that have been married in the church and we even contacted a church and they all told us that it would take at least 6-9 months to be able to be married by a priest. Waiting 6-9 months doesn’t work within the time frame we are looking at. She then ended the conversation by saying that she was going to do some investigating on her own by contacting different Catholic churches in the area. It’s fine by me if she wants to find out information for us, but unless she finds some magical priest who is willing to marry us as is, we will most likely not end up getting married by a priest. However, if she is able to find a priest, Ben and I have no objection talking to him and seeing if it is a possibility.