Sit-Stand-Kneel Conundrum

Even before we had settled on a church for the ceremony, my friends were asking the question we were already pondering. "You aren't going to make us sit through a full mass, right?"

We were leaning towards not having a full mass anyway.  While plenty of people in New Orleans are Catholic (which makes this a thing), obviously there are many who are not - and that's plenty of our friends and family.   And attending mass on the regular doesn't even help to make that hour go by any shorter. We realize it makes for a long ceremony.

And all you have to do is watch an episode of Four Weddings to find out that the stand-sit-kneel conundrum gets confusing to those who don't know what comes next.

Plus less time at church = more time for fun! We'd still get all of the readings, and some songs and the important stuff in there (oh, like getting married).  So for the sake of the timing of the day, and the comfort of our guests, the Pyramids were all like "YEA! Half-mass it is!"

One wedding decision down! High five! And you've seen this picture before - forgive me. 

Momma P was the first one to veto that decision.  Okay, maybe not veto.  For most wedding related things where we were differing in opinion, she would just question it or say that she hadn't seen something done that way before.  But when we were discussing the ceremony and I casually said "Oh yea, well we already figured out that we just want to do a half mass, we don't want a full mass," she straight up said that that was not a good idea.

And I was all "No, it's okay, it's a thing!" but the doubt was in my mind. Sphinx did get confirmed two years ago so that we could marry into the church with no problems.  As Momma P mentioned, if we only did a half mass, then that would have not been necessary.  True. Darn.

In the end we mulled on it some and we did decide to go with full mass.  Sorry, knees of my friends.

There are no timing issues, so it's not like we are going to be rushing or have a gap at all.

Our priest is awesome and we will just express to him very kindly that we prefer a sweet and short to the point homily (from the regular masses we have seen from him, that's right in his repertoire!).  I am planning on putting together a nice, detailed program so that anyone unfamiliar can follow along.  And I promise, our church is SO pretty, that our guests can gaze around looking at details for most of the mass and hopefully not get bored.  And I promise I won't kick anyone out if they don't stand at the right time.  As long as they hang tight for an hour, they get booze on us.

But in all seriousness, I'm glad that we went this route (mother does know best - double darn!).  And I am glad that we will be able to celebrate the entire mass while we take our vows as it's such a rich tradition in the church and I am happy we get to be a part of that.

What's your thoughts on the full/half mass idea?  Are you worried about differing religions in your guest list?  And is mother really always right?