Steven and I were recently married in an outdoor Catholic and Jewish celebration. The ceremony itself was the biggest black box for us when planning our wedding and we hope sharing how we brought our two faiths together into an interfaith ceremony helps anyone else trying to decode this process.

Steven was raised Jewish and I’m a born and raised and practicing Catholic. We wanted faith as part of our ceremony and we also wanted to make sure it represented us and was welcoming and inclusive for our families and friends in attendance.

With some work, the help of great people and some luck, we pulled it off.

The Ceremony

Steven’s parents are really involved in their Jewish community and through those connections found us a local rabbi, Lev Baesh that they thought we would like. It just so happens that Lev has a long history with InterfaithFamily and continues to work as a consultant with the organization. Steven and I both really value sustainability, so when we found out that Lev has solar panels on his house and chickens in his backyard, we felt like things would work out. The first time we met him for coffee (and to “interview” him) he said two things that stuck with us through the planning process:

1. Many of the major religious milestones (or sacraments in the Catholic world) recognize things that have already happened—baptism/ naming ceremonies (the baby is already born), funerals (the person is already dead) and in the case of marriage, two people have already made the decision to be together and the ceremony is to officially recognize it. Knowing this took some pressure off of us—we’d already been through the hard part of finding each other and figuring out that we wanted to be together forever. The ceremony was the cherry on top.

2. The ceremony is the first real opportunity to set the tone for how religion is going to look in your newly formed two-person family. That observation actually added a little more pressure, but also helped us find a framework as we came to decision points when planning the ceremony. For example, while I had written a word-by-word ceremony, our officiants both wanted the opportunity to speak in their own words, reflecting the sentiment we put forth in the draft. When we looked at our framework, we decided we wanted our faith journey to have room for flexibility and to be genuine and personal, so we agreed to let our officiants speak from the heart (that ended up being a GREAT decision—more on that later).

We found our priest through the recommendation of a friend who served on the Board of Directors for the Interfaith Action of Central Texas. I like the priest at my longtime Catholic parish, but I wasn’t sure he had the personality we needed for an interfaith ceremony. It can also be challenging to have the Bishop recognize an interfaith, outdoor marriage. Luckily, Father Larry Covington knew how the system worked and helped guide us through the process which included the required paperwork as well as Pre-Cana, multiple pre-marriage preparation meetings a Catholic couple goes through. He also made us feel at ease about an interfaith ceremony and marriage. Oh, and he speaks some Hebrew, which came in handy (see list below).

The Rituals

We decided on a mix of Catholic and Jewish traditions as well as things we just thought would be cool. Here’s what we ended up doing:

• Both of my parents walked me in; both of Steven’s parents walked in with him (Jewish tradition)
• Our dog was in the wedding party, holding the rings on her collar
• We got married under a chuppah (the canopy structure present in traditional Jewish weddings). My father made it for us and personalized it by using Longhorn and Duke bed sheets as the canopy covering, paying homage to our alma maters
• The priest and rabbi each gave a welcome and a blessing
• We invited seven friends to give a blessing of their choosing, a twist on the traditional
• The priest said the traditional vows, the rabbi did the exchange of rings
• Steven and I wrote and said our own additional vows to each other
• We did the Jewish stomping of the glass at the end of the ceremony
• The singing of a prayer in Hebrew: We lucked out—our priest did this part and wow’d everyone!

Tips

Here are a few additional resources and things we did that were helpful:

Lots of communication with our guests: We emailed all of those attending the wedding to give them the heads up that our wedding would have a rabbi, priest and a dog. It really helped people know what to expect.

Lots of communication with our parents: We especially wanted to make sure our parents felt good about the ceremony since we were the first interfaith couple in our immediate families. We gave the opportunity in the beginning of planning to share anything they really wanted in the ceremony. We also shared the ceremony document with our parents in advance and they appreciated it.

Ceremony: It wasn’t easy to find more than an outline of a ceremony, but we did find one from 18Doors that we really liked. Here it is.

Vows: In addition to the traditional vow exchange, we also wanted to say our own words to each other. We worked off of this list and made the vows our own.