Planning Your Wedding

Saint Polycarp Parish congratulates you on your decision to getting married in the Catholic Church, namely for choosing Saint Polycarp to celebrate your sacrament of marriage. Please read the following items below as you discern your decision to marry.

1. Marriage is a covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized (canon 1055, and Gaudium et Spes 48).

• To prepare and to schedule for your sacramental wedding celebration:
• Please contact the parish priest at least six (6) months in advance.
• If you live outside of our parish boundary, please get permission from your home-parish to have your wedding be celebrated at St. Polycarp Church.

• Required Documents
• Be able to produce a recent copy/certificate of the sacraments of (a) Baptism, (b) First Communion, and (c) Confirmation.
• Reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation (cf canon 1063, § 1).

*Note: If you have not received the Sacrament of Confirmation, please contact the Coordinator of the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults) program for the Adult Confirmation Program. Make sure that the wedding date is scheduled after the date of the reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation, which after is Pentecost.

• Free Status or Freedom to Enter Marriage
• No prior marital bond – if you have a prior marriage, and/or are divorced, please tell the assisting priest/deacon so that proper ecclesial or canonical procedures can be done to assist you before a wedding date is scheduled. Failure to disclose such impediments and/or information may result in the cancellation of your wedding Mass.

*Note: Assisting priest/deacon please do not schedule a wedding date if there is a prior marital bond or the free status is not clear.

• Freedom to marry: Please provide two witnesses from each party (Bride/Groom) to

verify and to sign the Letter of Freedom Form to verify that you (Bride/Groom) have no ecclesial or canonical impediments, such as prior marital bond and under no    

      force/fear to enter a sacramental marriage in the Catholic Church.        

• Marriage to a non-Catholic ~ (A Catholic marries a non-Catholic)
• Disparity of Worship or Mixed Religion Form

• Permission to marrying outside the Diocese of Orange

Assisting Priest/Deacon must complete and obtain the Nihil Obstat from the Diocese of Orange. Also, pay attention to the requirements of the place or diocese where the wedding will take place.

“The sacrament of Matrimony establishes a perpetual and exclusive bond between the spouses. God himself seals the consent of the spouses. Therefore, a marriage which is ratified and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved. Furthermore, this sacrament bestows upon the spouses the grace necessary to attain holiness in their married life and to accept responsibly the gift of children and provide for their education.”

Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 346