Saturday, January 5, 2013

Full Review of St. Lorenzo Catholic Church


Unfortunately, I completely regret having my wedding ceremony at St. Lorenzo Catholic Church.  The whole experience was negative and has left me feeling traumatized about St. Lorenzo.  I want to preface review by saying that I had challenges with the team of individuals I dealt with.  None of my negative feelings are directed at Father Tony. 

It’s very unfortunate because I grew up in this church was drawn to the idea of having my ceremony at the church I grew up in especially since they just built a new church that was contemporary and beautiful.  Now, after the negative experience, I have yet to come back there for Mass and I am really reluctant to return because it brings back the negative experiences about my wedding ceremony and the planning process.  Perhaps the negativity can be attributed to the Catholic ceremony style in general or maybe it was just the wedding coordinator (Nuca) that does the weddings at St. Lorenzo.  I regret having a Catholic wedding ceremony and should’ve just done a generic ceremony at my reception venue. 

The entire planning process was drenched with a lack of cooperation, lack of any flexibility, lack of accommodation, and lack of courtesy.  It was such a bitter process to plan the wedding with this approach.  What is supposed to be a fun process was challenging and stressful.  Nuca and the music coordinator, Jane, made me feel like screaming at times but I had to remain professional.  I consider myself to be creative and I felt entirely stifled with the parameters they threw on me…and it’s my OWN wedding.  It sure didn’t feel that way AT ALL.  I felt completely stifled with what I was able to do with very limited opportunity or wiggle room to do what I wanted.  This is why I regret having a wedding ceremony at a Catholic church and I unfortunately only realized this after-the-fact.  From the music selection to where the photographer and videographer can shoot during the ceremony was completely limited.  It was a battle with Nuca to figure out the attendance of sponsors for the rehearsal.  We had a lot of primary sponsors and our desire was not to require all of them to attend the wedding rehearsal especially since many of them are aware of what they would need to do.  Nuca insisted her requirement that each primary sponsor had to attend the wedding rehearsal.  This is just another example where cooperation and flexibility was lacking during the planning process. 

Then there was another challenge with the office manager/receptionist/secretary who caused confusion with our wedding date.  We had pre-reserved the date of our wedding well over a year in advance.  As months passed by and we were getting ready to plan the event and set up meetings to meet with Father Tony, the church dropped a bomb on me that Father Tony was not going to be officiating the wedding because he was going to be out of town.  They assigned another priest to do the ceremony instead.  I have nothing against the other priest.  My negative sentiment was because they confirmed before Father Tony was available and then they changed the plans on me like it was no big deal.  No courtesy with this whatsoever. 

One of the biggest mishaps of all was regarding being able to take portraits and photos at the church after our ceremony was over.  We found out only during the rehearsal the day before the wedding that we were only given 10 minutes to take pictures at the church after the ceremony.  We had a large wedding party and it was completely impossible to take all the pictures we needed to in 10 minutes without feeling rushed and stressed.  Nuca said that we only had 10 minutes because there was a funeral right after.  Well we checked with the office and were informed that the funeral was not even taking place until later on that day like in the late afternoon or evening.  After futile inquiries, we were denied being able to get more time.  When we were done with the ceremony, we literally walked down the aisle and made a U-turn back to the front of the church to start the picture process.  This left this part of the ceremony completely impersonal without getting any chance to greet our ceremony attendees after the ceremony was over.  Indeed, it was very rushed and stressful and just so much pressure to get this done.  This is NOT how a bride is supposed to feel on her wedding day.  When I confronted Nuca after the wedding, I told her how I felt and that I found out the funeral wasn’t until later in that day.  I let her know that it was completely unacceptable for her to not have forewarned me about this detail earlier on in the planning process.  I let her know I was completely upset about this.  Her only rebuttal was unbelievable to me.  She said that “she mentioned it during the rehearsal”.  As I mentioned, the rehearsal was only one day before.  I asked her if she thought that a one-day advanced notice was sufficient to make me aware of something that was so big and something that was completely unacceptable to me (to have 10 minutes to take wedding portraits?!).  Even if the rule was true, this did not leave me with any advanced notice to pre-plan and work out a game plan with my wedding photographer.  She couldn’t respond further after I gave this response. 

All in all, I feel like St. Lorenzo Catholic Church (maybe all Catholic churches?  This is certainly my perception now) are just regimented Nazis that want to control every aspect of the wedding ceremony.  I hate to break it to you but weddings belong to the couple and are supposed to be a special experience.  I wish that St. Lorenzo would’ve respected more of my wishes and would have been more flexible with my vision.  Instead, I was left with bitterness and an ugly experience.  It wasn’t worth getting married in my childhood church at a beautiful location to have dealt with this drama and unpleasant people.  

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