The Ceremony - Church or No Church?

Verdict:  You CAN do your own thing!

We really wanted to have a ceremony in the church.  Scratch that. I really wanted a church ceremony.  (Call me crazy but I love the tradition!!!)  I love all the statues, candles and the smell of the wood pews.  AND (God forbid) if my daughter decides to elope like I did, I will have a memory of her walking down an aisle.  (Selfish, I KNOW!!)

We called our local parish and were informed "We don't do Quinceañeras".      

o_O -  Okayyyyy!  No biggie.  We will go some where else.

So I started calling around to all the churches in the area.  In a matter of weeks we knew we couldn't have the ceremony in the church. (Boo!!!)

Here was the problem:  We either (A) had to be member of their parish or (B) Olivia had to be in confirmation classes or at least registered for one.

It was suggested that I become a member of a church that I didn't attend simply for the quince.  Somehow this didn't sit right for me for multiple reasons which I won't go into here.

The other issue is that my parish doesn't allow you to register for confirmation classes until your child is a JUNIOR in high school.

We decided we didn't want to have to jump through hoops to have a simple ceremony and therefore decided to leave the Catholic church out of it.  Sorry, but they were making it just too darn difficult.  Olivia will have her ceremony at the hall with family and friends around.  We have decided to employ a clergy to do the blessing.  Right now I am searching through the yellow pages and interviewing people. . .stay tuned.

Update:  We hired a minister.  The cost was about $125 dollars. Part of the fee included meeting with us before the event and planning out the parts of the ceremony.  It was beautiful!