Catholic wedding ceremonies on the Amalfi Coast
Italy is a Catholic nation, therefore you can choose among a wide range of churches on the Amalfi Coast for your Catholic destination wedding in Italy: from magnificent famous cathedrals to enchanting little churches and chapels, many of them with stunning vistas. It is possible for foreign citizens to get married in Italy according to the Catholic rite, with few exceptions, and of course the ceremony has to take place in a Catholic church. The permission provided by the district curia establishes if you will be able to get married at a specific church. This is the first step. The next is that to ensure that the parish priest in the country in which you reside will agree to prepare the necessary paperwork for your church wedding in Italy. The Italian Curia requires a formal letter, called nulla osta, showing that you received the permission from your parish.
It is essential that the couple in a Catholic marriage is free to marry, and to marry each other! They must be an unmarried man and woman, with no impediments as written in the Canon Law. We suggest to ask your priest and check whether or not there are some impediments to your Italian Catholic wedding. In fact, another important document for the Italian Curia is the Bishop's permission to the wedding, from your Bishop's office, attesting that you have no impediments. These are only some of the many procedures and documents aked by the curia. And which are the others? The prenuptial Inquiry form, the PreCana procedures, the certificates of baptism, first communion, and confirmation, the mixed marriage application if one of the spouses is not Catholic.
An outdoor Catholic wedding is not allowed, as it needs to take place in consecrated areas, but it is not necessary to celebrate a separate civil ceremony, because the officiant will register the marriage to the Civil State office, and send copies of the marriage certificate to the City Hall. If you do not have the civil and religious ceremony together, you also need to hand the legal civil wedding certificate in original copy. Remind that the civil ceremony must be celebrated before the Catholic religious marriage, and the certificate states that you are legally married.
You can also choose the type of marriage rite between two types of services: a wedding ceremony part of the mass which lasts one hour or a ceremony without a mass of about 20 minutes. To be sure that everything proceeds well, you could consider to address yourself to a local wedding planner and coordinator for the right planning of your perfect day, who will supervise every step of your Italian wedding and the religious ceremony, and who may arrange for you a meeting with the Italian priest to discuss all particulars of the celebration.