Planning a wedding is always a grand undertaking, even when there is just one couple involved.
Recently, a church in Morden came together for an event that multiplied this undertaking by a significant number — five. In the span of one month, the church came together to plan a special event celebrating the love stories of all these couples at once.
At the centre of the planning was John and Rose Vie. A married couple themselves, they are responsible for organizing the mass wedding at Saint John Evangelist Church in Morden.
“It was a wonderful moment for each couple. Although it was a mass wedding, we wanted to preserve the solemnity and then the moment for them,” says Rose. “We just told them that we wanted [them] to enjoy this moment and just focus on the Lord and your spouse because at the end of all this, it's between them as a couple and the Lord.”
A job for everyone
Even a wedding with one couple is a logistical challenge, so what goes into a 5-couple wedding? The short answer is that community help is required. Rose says that she and John created separate committees for each part of the process.
One committee dealt with the photography and videography sessions for each couple. This group was responsible for posing the couples, keeping track of their photo props, and the timeline of the photography schedule.
Rose says that this was one point of the process that the couples enjoyed a great deal.
“It was a lovely moment for each of them to be reminiscing [about their] love,” she says. “We . . . directed them where to go, [and] how to look at each other [in] photos and video. There [was] a script as well, [including] how they met.”
Behind the scenes, while the couples were enjoying their moment in the spotlight, the logistics committee prepared the spaces for the momentous wedding.
“They prepared all the needs of the venue from the church itself to the reception hall,” says Rose. “[They were responsible for] all the decorations, flower arrangements, the seating arrangements, the table, [and] the layout of both the reception and the church.”
There was also a choir group that organized the music and held music rehearsals, a coordinator to handle the flow of the ceremony, and a technical team to handle the sound equipment. Rose says that she and John were the head of the event, so they oversaw all the moving parts. From the general organization to the painstaking details like ensuring the couple had access to Tylenol, they took care of it all.
A very organized affair
As for the ceremony itself, it began with each couple entering the church with their entourage of meaningful wedding attendees.
“The entourage is composed of the flower girl, the ring bearer, the coin bearer, the Bible bearer, and then there are the secondary sponsors who [are] in charge of the veil, the candle and the cord ceremony,” says Rose. “Then we have the primary sponsors, . . . the godparents, [and then] the couple.”
Rose says that each couple walked down the aisle to the sound of their favourite love song. While there was only one ceremony for the couples, at certain moments, the priest addressed each couple separately, such as during the vow portion of the wedding.
John says the wedding was “amazing” to see — it was a room packed to the brim with love.
“This event is a momentous event in our parish because it’s . . . the first [wedding] with five couples,” he says. “Normally we . . . see [only] one couple get married.”
A seasoned pair
For John and Rose, the family unit is a passion. When they lived in Qatar, the couple created programs for married couples and the family overall. When they arrived in Morden last year, the church was looking for someone to arrange a mass wedding, so the timing and fit were perfect.
Last year’s wedding on September 30th had three couples. It was the first multiple-couple wedding in the area. Due to the success of the mass wedding, John and Rose decided to return to organize this year’s even bigger project.
John says that as Catholics, it’s important to have a wedding in the church. The key term is convalidation — the process through which a Catholic couple validates their marriage in the eyes of the church.
While Catholics consider non-Catholic unions in other churches to be valid, for members of their own church, a union is only valid if the marriage is entered by free mutual consent and witnessed in a church by an authorized priest, bishop, or deacon, and at least two other witnesses.
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“[Because] their marriage represents the Union of Christ with his church, it becomes permanently dissoluble,” says John. “It also becomes a channel of grace that helps husband and wife know holiness in their marriage.”
Community bonding
The impact of this year’s mass wedding spread much further than the five couples. It brought the community together as a whole.
“We were kind of amazed at the volunteerism in this area,” says Rose. “It's just amazing [that when] we open an opportunity to serve, people will start coming to the church.”
John adds that volunteers and guests materialized from all over — people came out from Altona, Morris, Winkler, Steinbach, and Morden. The couples themselves were from Winkler and Morden.
John and Rose are looking forward to further events of the same nature in the future.
“We have started this trend now and we will continue because we are not just able to serve the purpose of . . . bringing couples in union with God, but also because it unites the community,” says Rose. “It offers an opportunity for service in the church and yeah, and it's overall super tiring and time-consuming, but it's all worth it.”
See the gallery below for photos of the 5-couple wedding by D_Light_Catcher.
~With files from Robyn Wiebe~
