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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