Are there certain days of the year when weddings are not allowed such as the day before Palm Sunday?

Answer 1

There are a few days when marriage (especially during a Mass) is forbidden in the Catholic Church by law, and there are days and seasons when marriage is not forbidden, but clearly relegated to a secondary celebration on a holy day or during a liturgical season. Finally, local policy of the pastor of a parish may legitimately establish days when marriage is not allowed.

First of all, marriage can be solemnized at any time when one or both of the parties are in serious danger of death. Hopefully this does not apply to your situation.

A Nuptial Mass is forbidden in Church law on days when Mass is forbidden: Good Friday (the Friday before Easter) and Holy Saturday (the Saturday before Easter). A Nuptial Mass cannot be held on Holy Thursday (Thursday before Easter), either, because no other Masses are permitted on that day. I suppose that marriage can be solemnized outside of Mass on any of these days, but it would need to be a simple ceremony or private, as in a ceremony to convalidate an invalid marraige for a catechumen coming into the Church at the Easter Vigil.

On Solemities and Sundays and All Souls Day, marriage is permitted by law, but it is a secondary celebration in that the liturgy and readings are established for the celebration. So on All Souls Day, the priest may wear black and guess what? The readings will be about the mystery of death. How romantic-- I'd love the Dies Irae sung at my wedding, too.

The rubrics from the missal also urge the priest to advise couples of the necessary decorum which is needed during the penitential season of Lent and during Advent. During these seasons, the wedding celebration is to take on the tone of the season: during Lent, for instance music is to be in moderation-- there is to be no music played outside of the minimal necessary to accompany singing. No flowers are allowed in the Church during Lent, either. The wedding rehearsal, if on Friday, would be bound by the rules of abstinence (no meat). [Some might argue that a priest could dispense this, but in actuality, pastors only have the power to dispense individuals who are in his parish 'territory' or who are his parishioners and he may not make blanket dispensations to large, mixed groups.] Most couples would chafe under all these expectations, so pastors wisely discourage or forbid (as a local rule, which he can legitimately make) to have marriages during Lent (which would include the Saturday before Palm Sunday).

Pastors may also choose not to have weddings on other days due to local conditions. Most priests are stupid-busy on Sundays, for instance. A Sunday wedding Mass cannot and will not happen in most parishes because the priest is already binating or trinating (celebrating Mass two or three times) just to meet the needs of the faithful. Perhaps you may choose to have your wedding at a regular Sunday Mass-- this seems to be a preference of the Church, anyway-- but again, this precludes many of the elements of the typical 'fairy tale" wedding in the United States. Pastors may choose not to have weddings on other days as well, such as ordination day in a diocese or graduation weekend or the weekend of street fairs in the neighborhood of the church... these days simply are too busy for priests already or they may impinge on the dignity or the logistics of a wedding. [For instance, if the annual street fair is taking place in the neighborhood, there may not be parking in the church lot and the ushers may have to hustle away noisy, drunk revelers who want to destroy the restrooms, but I digress...] Believe it or not, besides the liturgical requirements, the weekend of Palm Sunday is one of the densest days for a priest in that the liturgy that weekend is somewhat busy and long and the crush of Holy Week activities is about to set in. Most priests are wise and saving their own sanity by not opening that weekend to weddings.

Ultimately it is usually not an arbitrary exercise of power by a celibate who isn't sensitive to the desires of young love. Most priests 'close' those days to weddings because most people dreaming of a 'fairy-tale wedding' just don't listen or 'get it '. Church's liturgy often makes specific requirements of all involved, and ultimately the celebration of marriage doesn't belong to the couple getting married, but it belongs to the Church. If you are being challenged by a priest's decision, look a little deeper to try to understand where he is coming from. Perhaps you could ask him in a respectful (non-aggressive) way. Most likely there is a very good reason for why he is making his decision.