Four Ways Your Wedding Website Can Help You Evangelize, with Love.

I was twelve at the time, but I can still remember my first encounter with a wedding website for my youngest uncle and now-aunt's wedding.  My aunt wore those black Steve Madden platform slides that mysteriously have made a comeback this season (Maybe that's why I can't get on board with the slide/overalls/mom jean trends?  They hit too close to childhood!), and within a few months all of my aunts, me, my sister, and a few of my girl cousins all had a pair, too.  In other words, she was the coolest, and during those days of a younger internet, so was having a wedding website.

Obviously, it's way more common to make a website these days, but I still love reading about a couple's big day and love story when I get invited to a wedding…or, you know, even if I'm not invited but someone I know is engaged and I still want to read about their big day and love story.  Please don't think I'm too crazy.

Aside from the normal deets like the who and the where and the RSVPs, directing guests to your wedding site also gives you a unique opportunity to share your faith with your family and friends.  Stating why you believe what you do, in your own words and in a way that's truthful, casual, and aimed at the heart, can go a long way in making your Catholic wedding an invitation to deeper understanding and a witness to the beauty of marriage in the Church.  I suggest...

Telling the story of a saint who's had a hand in your relationship.  True stories of virtue and holiness speak for themselves, and they also offer you an opportunity to break down why and how Catholics call upon the saints' intercession.

Short explanations of parts of the Mass, like communion and the Rite of Marriage, for guests who might be unfamiliar.  On the page with your Mass details, briefly and charitably talking about modest dress in the chapel, who can receive communion and why, and why the Rite of Marriage matters for the sacrament can all go a long way in making your guests (particularly non-Catholics or those who've been away from the faith) feel at ease and not experience any surprises that could be misperceived as exclusive or judgmental, like a non-Catholic not being permitted to receive the Eucharist.  If you're looking for a starting point, this post speaks to some common questions unique to Catholic marriage, like vows, music, and cohabitation.

Host an open-invitation holy hour after your wedding rehearsal.  One of the most beautiful moments of my life was praying with my best friends Teresa and Beth after Beth's rehearsal, before heading to dinner, in the chapel on our college campus where we'd all, at some point, smiled and cried thinking about our future husbands, babies, and marriages.  The tears poured down as we knelt shoulder to shoulder and as I marveled at how the Father had answered each of our hopes and prayers so specifically and so abundantly in the men he gave to us.  At another wedding I went to, the bride and groom had their priest and a few friends lead anyone who wanted to come in an hour of Adoration, confession, and Praise and Worship the night before the wedding, and heaven really did touch earth during that hour.  Following suit, by planning a holy hour and sharing it with your guests via your website, is amazing for both you as the couple getting married and for everyone who will share in your wedding with you.

Invite your guests to leave their intentions on your wedding site, and pray for them.  I love writing a message in a couple's online guest book and requesting songs in the, well, request box on their site, but two of my friends also included an Intention Box on their wedding website.  Guests' prayer requests weren't public, so only the bride and groom saw them, and I found their promise to pray for everyone attending in such personal ways so incredibly generous and beautiful.

I hope these ways of evangelizing to your guests really do call your family and friends into communion with you and express what you stand for in a loving way, especially if there are sensitivities among them where faith is concerned.  Above all, though, I truly think the best, most important witness of all is one that doesn't even need to be typed and posted--quite simply, the joy of entering into marriage with a pure heart, radiant, evident joy, and desire for complete self-gift is impossible to ignore.  Don't worry about it being your personal responsibility to change anyone's mind about the Church; just be yourselves, the selves who so clearly wear their love for all to see, knowing that love flows from Love himself, and what you value and what sets your marriage apart will be crystal clear.  I promise!

Did I miss anything on this list?  Tell me how you've shared the Gospel with your guests through your wedding site or otherwise!

The Rosary for Engagement and Marriage: a Free eBook and a Thank You

If you'll oblige me with some clickin' today, I have a gift for you!  Pauline Books puts together a lead page for each of its new releases, and usually offers a preview of the upcoming book or some other little extra as a thank you to readers who visit the page or are generally interested.  As we were putting together mine, I was asked what sort of extra I wanted to offer.  I suggested a customizable download of the sample wedding program included in INVITED since my wedding program was such a source of stress, but, oops, they couldn't give away too much of the best book content.  I debated writing a little something about how I chose my wedding dress or my first dance, or specific ways we saved money.  But that all sounded so...me.  I don't want this project to be about me; I want it to be about you, your relationship, and your wedding.  Your path to holiness.

So instead, I eventually came up with the idea of writing a short prayer book for couples to use during their engagement and later in their marriage. I told Andrew about it, and he suggested writing prayers to accompany the Rosary.  The Rosary has been one of our favorite ways to pray together since the first months we were dating, and over time we've become fairly consistent in the intentions we pray for each of the different mysteries.  This book is our sharing some of those intentions, a little piece of our spirituality, with you, and we hope they take root and bear much fruit in your relationship.  You can get yours from INVITED's lead page here, and directions for loading it onto your Kindle here.

As a thank you for downloading the eBook and supporting INVITED,  you'll also get a 20% discount coupon to use when the book is released on Friday!  And by the way, I also just want to thank you for supporting my book in general.  I mean it.  Check back next week for two sweet release day giveaways, and meantime, in the spirit of Full of Grace, here's a roundup of past posts on praying together:

A collection of prayers for engagement and marriage, for the two of you or as a spiritual gift to friends getting married

7 women share how they pray with their husbands, including a cool new-to-me devotion called the Dailies

Why praying as a couple is usually a learned skill and habit, not something that always comes naturally, and why it's worth pushing through the initial awkwardness

Join me in praying for all of the brides who'll find these books in their hands, and as the release gets closer, I'd love to offer it for you.  Email me with your intentions or leave them in the comments, and let know how I can specifically pray for you! 

Clinging to the Cross: JPII's Final Good Friday

On this holiest, most solemn day, I'll get myself out of the way.  I just want to share with you an incredibly beautiful, new-to-me story and image and let them speak for themselves.

A few weeks ago, I finished reading Jason Evert's Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves and learned the details of JPII's final days for the first time.  He died during Easter Week, and the book describes the Pope's last week on earth.  At the time, he had just undergone a tracheotomy, concerned he might never speak again, and his body was weary.  John Paul embraced his weakness for the burden that it was, calling it his own Way of the Cross.  As Holy Week of 2005 drew to a close, he was too weak to leave the Vatican for the Good Friday service and Stations of the Cross, so a TV was brought to his private chapel and he watched the service and prayed the Stations there.  He clung to a crucifix nearly the entire time.

Of course, as soon as I read that account I went straight to Google, and the image of this great saint embracing Christ made me sob.  It wasn't just the postpartum hormones.  Here are photos from this sacred moment in time, if you've never seen them before.

Even as the sky darkens and the earth shakes, even as Christ temporarily departs from us, there's joy on the other side and our hope is in the Resurrection.  Have a fruitful Good Friday, friends.

A Collection of Novenas and Prayers for Engagement and Marriage

Like, I expect, pretty much every other Catholic our age, Andrew and I have spent a good amount of time on the wedding circuit.  There are few things I love more than witnessing our friends entering into their vocation.  Although, obviously, every couple and every wedding is different (unique and unrepeatable, yo), it can feel…not repetitive or tedious, but exceedingly similar from wedding to wedding if I'm not careful.  Seeing the same friends, going through the same process each time of packing up an outfit and choosing a gift, even dancing to a lot of the same reception songs; it's too easy to feel on wedding autopilot sometimes.

But I don't want auto.  Bearing witness to a sacrament between two people I cherish, Love incarnate and grace come down to earth, should be anything but.  And truly, I have cried at every faithfully Catholic wedding I've been to, amazed at the love and anticipation between the couple and renewed in my determination to live out my own wedding vows with intention and joy like I promised I would.  It's the pre-wedding time, with its flurry of to-dos as a guest (particularly when I've been an out-of-town guest), that distracts from the sacrament.

That's why Andrew and I decided to start praying novenas for our friends in the nine days leading up to their union, ending on the wedding day.  We like to ask the couple about some of the saints they have a devotion to and try to choose a novena to one of those particular saints, but if we can't find one or forget to ask, we pray this one to St. Joseph for his example as a wholly loving spouse, his chastity, and his guardianship of the Holy Family.

To my surprise, praying these novenas together has borne fruit not just in the relationships of the couples we prayed for--at least, that was our intention--but in our own marriage. We have our own personal litany to saints we've come to love individually and as a couple, whose intercession we ask at the end of the Rosary, but to tell you the truth, I had mostly ever prayed novenas in times of desperation before (e.g. St. Raphael-where-is-my-future-husband, St. Gianna-please-let-Aaron-learn-to-breastfeed, St. Peter Damian-when-will-my-baby-sleep-through-the-night).  Since we started saying the wedding novenas a few years ago, though, I've come to love adding the prayer time into our spirituality as a couple, as well as the length of time a novena affords to ponder different aspects of a saint's life each day and to be mindful about our intentions for the entire duration.  Full disclosure: even though I've changed tack on the desperation thing, we do have a steady St. Joseph of Cupertino-please-let-Andrew-pass-his-comps thing going on right now.

If you'd like to join my husband and me in giving this pre-wedding gift, or, even better, if you'd like to begin praying for your own engagement and coming marriage, I hunted these down as a starting point for you:

Novena for a happy and faithful marriage: Amazingly, I'd never found this prayer before writing this post.  Inspired by St. Josemaria Escriva's homilies and spirituality, it's by Opus Dei and is truly beautiful.  There's one set of reflections for engagement, and another for marriage.  Andrew and I are planning to start this after we let Joseph of Cupertino off the hook!

A Theology of the Body-inspired novena that invokes the intercession of the Holy Family, the archangels, and JPII for the bride and groom.  In other words, boss.  This will be our personal go-to wedding novena from here on out. 

Novena to St. Anne, mother of Our Lady: Held up in the Church as a model of a holy wife and mother (I mean, how difficult a child could Mary have been to raise, but still.  Not just anyone could've been the grandmother of God!), asking St. Anne's prayers for imitating her example is an act of humility, generosity to your future husband, and an affirmation of your feminine worth. 

Prayer to St. Jude for the healing of a relationship: Self-explanatory.  In the past, I saw healing as something only necessary for major wounds or transgressions, but the longer we have been married, the more I have seen the value in total honesty and a will to forgive and repair even the smallest sources of division. 

A sweet, simple marriage blessing that would be a wonderful addition to your nightly prayers.

I should contemplate this more often, I think, but in a way, wedding guests have a responsibility for spiritual preparation just as the bride and groom do.  Prayers for the couple's marriage and, God willing, future family, is powerful and invites us as guests to experience the wedding in a way that draws us out of passivity; not because it's about us, but because together with the couple, our eyes are fixed on something greater.

I'll end this with two devotions I've recently added to my daily prayer.  First, here's a prayer for your husband that, to me, speaks the language of the self-emptying, other-focused love I strive to give Andrew.  It's beautiful for both engagement and after marriage.  Second, I found this nightly examen for married couples a few months ago and have been motivated but, frankly, embarrassingly humbled by its promptings to hold my tongue, to spend my time intentionally, and to cultivate a servant's heart for myself and more for my husband and my family.  So good.  I'd love to know what prayers you say for your relationship!  Spill.

Brides Who've Been There: 8 Women Share the Saints Who've Shaped Their Relationships

I'm taking a blogging break to soak up our sweet Lily Grace (and, let's be honest, to keep my head above water through this beautiful newborn chaos), so I asked some of my married friends to contribute in my absence.  Over the next few weeks, they'll be taking over to chat about wedding planning, bridal beauty and style, and sharing stories about their newlywed days.  

For today, I asked these ladies if there's a saint who's taken on a particular significance in their marriage and family lives, and about the stories behind them.

A favorite saint of mine is St. Helen of the Cross.  Family legend says that I am a direct descendant of her.  I don't know how accurate that is, but I figure that she better be a special saint just in case --I figure St. Helen will claim me as family if I claim her, and who better to have as a patron saint than someone you are (at least in theory) related to!  - Jenn 

Within the past year, Our Lady Undoer of Knots has become a special patron in our marriage.  My husband and I struggled for a time with infertility.  This weighed heavily on both of our hearts, especially with each passing month and each negative pregnancy test.  I knew of the devotion Pope Francis has to Our Lady Undoer of Knots, but I did not know much about the story behind the image or anything like that.  I did, however, know I had always been drawn to the image for the silly reason that I love to crochet, and I just imaged the ribbon in her hands as yarn.  My mother one day recommended that Chris and I pray to Our Lady Undoer of Knots for our infertility.  We learned more about the devotion to her, as well as the history of her image, and then began a novena to her, praying that she would undo any physical knots in our bodies preventing us from getting pregnant.  We went to our doctor and were prepared to begin blood work and other tests.  The cycle after we finished the novena we found out we were pregnant.  I attribute this pregnancy to her intercessory prayers and continue to pray to her for a healthy baby and delivery. - Tiffany 

Saint Dominic is our family patron; we chose him before we were married. I spent a year in a Dominican convent and had a special relationship with him, and we are both planning to become Dominican tertiaries in the near future. We have a big picture of Dominican saints in our living room, the first thing you see when you walk in. - Rachel

St. Thérèse! It is hard to pick a moment or a reason, she's always been a huge intercessor for both my husband and I, long before we met and throughout our entire relationship. We knew from the day we got engaged that if we ever had a daughter, Thérèse would be somewhere in her name to honor this holy woman! - Amanda 

My husband and I are both converts, and my relationship with the saints has grown quite a bit over the past nine years since my conversion. My birthday is on St. Joseph's feast day, so he's definitely a saint we ask for intercession from. Another favorite is St. Margaret of Scotland, whom I actually found out about before my conversion because I wrote a history paper on her husband. He's a slightly obscure Scottish king whom nobody has written books about, so I had to research him by reading about his wife (ironic for the Middle Ages!) and his English contemporaries. Anyway, he and Margaret were known for praying together. Other saints we like include St. Gerard, St. Briget of Sweden, and St. Josemaria Escriva. - Bonnie

We don't really have a particular patron saint, but we are honoring a few of our favorites by naming our kids after them: Seraphia (another name for St. Veronica), Cecilia, and Sebastian. - Sheena

We were married on the vigil of the Feast of the Holy Family, in a church named for St. Joseph.  On our first anniversary, we attended Mass at another church named for St. Joseph, thousands of miles away from where we were married.  We had every intention of making it happen again on our second anniversary, but the weather was terrible that day and we weren't super comfortable driving 30 minutes away to attend Mass in the storm.  Hopefully we can get back on track for our third anniversary this year!  I guess I got side tracked there.  The Feast of the Holy Family speaks to me because of the aforementioned details, but also because I feel called for us to imitate the holy family in our home, the domestic church.  I long for raising a family with Alex, and recognize the family is the root of Christianity in our society.  It all starts at home. - Lauren

St. Patrick, patron saint of Evangelization. Our friend Danielle sent us saints that she had picked for us to be our special saint for the year, and, well, Patrick stuck! We also always ask for St. Francis and St. Joseph to intercede for us because the are the patrons of the school our kids have attended. - Andi

What about you?  I'd love to hear about the saints you and your love have a special devotion to!  And, if you missed 'em the first time around, a few past posts on my own favorite saints, and a sweet way to incorporate your devotions into your wedding:

Why, thanks to St. Therese, I said no the first time Andrew asked me out, and why I'm happy about it

A printable for using saint medals as wedding favors

How St. Raphael is probably responsible for my relationship 

Inspiration from St. Gianna on creating a prayerful home

The reason I became obsessed with JPII, and a picture of him with a koala

Brides Who've Been There: 7 Ways to Pray With Your Husband

I'm taking a blogging break to soak up our sweet Lily Grace (and, let's be honest, to keep my head above water through this beautiful newborn chaos), so I asked some of my married friends to contribute in my absence.  Over the next few weeks, they'll be taking over to chat about wedding planning, bridal beauty and style, and sharing stories about their newlywed days.  

Today, they're shedding some light on their married prayer lives:

We are not experts in this area, but the things we do consistently are praying with our children before they go to bed, praying for our own intentions before we go to bed, and on the weekends we do the Scripture readings for the day and have prayer time in the morning after breakfast. Before we had kids we shared a holy hour at our parish Adoration chapel. It was at 2:00 a.m, and it was a very cool and unifying experience to get up in the middle of the night and go pray together. We're not able to do that now that we have little kids, but sometimes we go to the Adoration chapel together as a family...for about 2 minutes! - Anna

Anna, her husband Alex, and their two sweet babies, Johnny and Trixie

We started St. Bridget's 12-Year (yes, you read that right) Novena not long before we got engaged. We still pray it together nightly, as well as sharing any special intentions we have. We also try to incorporate various Scripture readings and discussion into our prayer time. - Amanda

This has been a struggle for me, as I find it hard to pray out loud or with someone else. Before we start praying, we often discuss things we need to pray about, like what's going on at my husband's job, things that are coming up in our lives, or friends and relatives who need prayer support. Sometimes, we've used short devotionals together, like Gary Chapman's Life Promises for Couples (I wrote about it here) or Emerson Eggerich's The Love & Respect Experience (and about that one here). We've often also prayed set prayers together, like the Rosary, novenas, or other prayers written by saints. - Bonnie

We pray together before meals and at bedtime.  For the sake of entertainment, I'll tell you about our routine...We rotate who leads prayers throughout the day.  So, if I lead at breakfast, my husband will lead at lunch.  At bedtime, we each prefer to sleep facing one side or the other, so we rotate that too. Whoever prays at night gets to face their preferred direction for that particular night!  It rotates every day, and we poke fun at each other when one person gets gypped out of "their night" due to travel schedules and such.  Yeah, we're weird.  It's okay. - Lauren

 I wish we actually did more of this. We pray with our children and do our personal devotions separately. This is why I love date nights, because we can actually pray together--just the two of us. - Sarah

Sarah, Derek, and their kids!

We go to Mass together. We sing hymns together. We read and discuss scripture and theology and papal homilies--often one of us reads aloud while the other does dishes. We pray evening prayer sometimes on big feast days. We pray with our babies when we tuck them in at night. We made our wedding vows holding a crucifix in our hands, and we have that crucifix on our bedside table and kiss it before going to sleep. - Rachel


Learning to pray together as a married couple is something that takes time to develop a strong routine. My husband and I have many different ways we like to pray together: read spiritual books, go to Eucharistic Adoration, or pray the Rosary. But one particular way we pray together has been most beneficial and life-giving to us as a couple is our nighttime ritual of "the dailies." I have wrote about here, but I'll give you a quick run-down right now: every night we give each other two affirmations, we share 2-3 feelings we felt over the past day, and then we pray over each other. We always start and end our "dailies" in prayer; so if I start my husband Jim will usually close, and vice-versa.  It's been a unique and life-giving way or us to incorporate the spiritual and emotional parts of ourselves into drawing closer together and to God. Try out the dailies!  It's been life changing for our spiritual relationship together! - Patty

Your turn!  Nearly five years into married life, consistently praying together, rather than on our own and never speaking of it, is still something Andrew and I are always trying to be better at.  Share your devotions and the ways you pray together in the comments!

Brides Who've Been There: 11 Tips For a Peaceful Wedding Day

I'm taking a blogging break to soak up our sweet Lily Grace (and, let's be honest, to keep my head above water through this beautiful newborn chaos), so I asked some of my married friends to contribute in my absence.  Over the next few weeks, they'll be taking over to chat about wedding planning, bridal beauty and style, and sharing stories about their newlywed days.  

Today, I asked them to share what they wish they'd known about planning for a smooth, peaceful wedding day.

If at all possible, I highly recommend doing as many of the following on your wedding day, before the ceremony: confession, Adoration, and praying with your spouse.  We didn't plan it, but we prayed with a door between us, and the voice of my sweet husband-to-be drowned out every distraction or frustration. - Amanda

Amanda and Anthony praying before their nuptial Mass!

I read this somewhere about halfway through our engagement and wedding planning: the day is, and isn't, all about you.  It is, of course, the day you pledge your life to your best friend, but it's also a celebration in which you've invited many of your closest friends and family to take part.  Remember those people, your guests.  Most of your planning is for them.  Putting my guests first in mind gave a whole new perspective to our planning and made things much more selfless and peaceful.  - Sheena

Eat!  In the hustle and bustle, it's easy to forget.  Try and take some private time with your (new!) spouse to eat a little something before the reception. - Sylvia

As a wedding coordinator who meticulously planned every detail of her own wedding, I KNOW it can be hard to let go, but you've got to do it.  Either hire someone, or have a trusted friend or family member be your liaison for the day.  I can't even tell you how freeing it was that day to just eat, drink, and dance without a worry in the world.  I'm sure something went wrong behind the scenes,  but no one has confessed!  Second, assign someone to be in charge of bustling your gown, and have her come to your final fitting to learn to do it quickly.  One time I tied my friend's bustle on the limo ride to the reception!  Third, see if you and your groom can spend time in Adoration before your wedding; I wasn't able to, but my husband was.  At one point the church coordinators were frantically looking for him and I calmly told them to check the Adoration chapel.  I know my man!  - Andi

Plan in advance a few photos that are really important for you to have, and get those.  But don't waste the whole day on pictures.  Delegate everything--you won't be able to remember anything you're supposed to do before the ceremony or at the reception!  Plan for someone else to take all the stuff you used for getting ready earlier in the day to where it needs to go, so you don't have to worry about it after the reception.  - Rachel

The best part of our wedding day is that we received three sacraments--we both went to confession moments before our Mass began, so we were able to receive absolution, Holy Communion, and Holy Matrimony all within the same fantastic hour.  After confession, I made my penance before the Blessed Sacrament and knelt before the tabernacle in a big puff of a white dress just giddy.  I was so, so excited to get married! - Katie

Katie and Andrew

One thing I wish I'd done better was to let the disappointments go. A few days before our wedding, I'd had a stressful situation with two close family members, which carried over into feelings of gloom and resentment on the wedding day.  I wish I'd been more purposeful about setting that situation aside.  I know I would have enjoyed our big day more if I hadn't been so distracted by the negatives. - Julie

If something doesn't go according to plan, it's okay!  A sacrament will still take place, even if the ring bearer goes down the aisle with his eyes closed, even if your brand new husband spills coffee on your dress, or even if the speakers for the dancing don't work (all things that happened at our wedding).  Down the road, these little hiccups will be the things you look back on and laugh about. - Anna

The only regret we've ever expressed is that in trying to save money, we failed to provide our guests with hors d'oeurvres while they were waiting for us to finish the picture-taking, and people were hungry! - Leslie

My husband and I think back to our wedding day and laugh because we only got to have one dance together, only briefly sat down to eat our dinner together, and other than our actual ceremony, we were being pulled this way and that.  We weren't angry over it or anything, but I had no idea guests would monopolize so much of our time.  I guess I had a fairytale dream in my head that we would spend the day gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.  If I could say one thing, be sure to have more than one dance, and realize that your together time will come with the honeymoon.  - Amy

Enjoy the moment!  It goes by so fast.  Remember how you felt when you walked down that aisle towards your husband.  It truly is the best feeling in the world.  - Emily

Your turn!  If you're recently (or not-so-recently!) married, how did you plan for and surround yourself with peace on your big day?