Why Catholic?

To start- I am not sure where all the brides on blogs are getting married. It seems there is a magical place in the US with beautiful sunny days every Saturday and warm enough to have a lovely outdoor ceremony. I will be getting married in very large not air-conditioned catholic church in the middle of July.

When it came time to choose where to get married there were only two places that I could see it happening- my church at home or on my college campus. Choosing to get married in the Catholic church was never a debate. Although restrictions have loosened significantly since my grandparents and parents times it helped that Mr. FMB was also raised Roman Catholic.

I do not consider myself a very religious person but faith has played a part in my life. I was raised catholic and attended Sunday school and I choose a Catholic University when deciding on colleges. I do intend on raising any future children in the faith as well.

There was one problem to getting married in the church- pre-cana. There was literally one weekend course in the northeastern US that took place on a weekend where Mr. FMB and I were in the the states together (there were no courses in the UK, I checked.) So this is why we ended up on a two day religious retreat just a week after our engagement. For a couple of chronic procrastinators this may be the only thing we ever accomplish early in our entire marriage.

I now have three friends who are engaged and two are planning non-religious ceremonies. At first I found this awkward as I was blinded by my own decision (they also come from my same background) but as things progress I really think they made the right choices for what they want for their day.

How did you decide on where to have your ceremony? Are you sometimes shocked by the decisions of others that you thought you knew?