Church weddings are back on track after 20 long months

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald, Bridal

Trying to schedule a Catholic wedding over the last two years has been a little like attempting to win the Powerball.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic, which penetrated global consciousness in January 2020, forced the rescheduling of most weddings in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, beginning in mid-March and lasting through most of the summer.

Then, when local authorities started relaxing occupancy restrictions as the first wave of the virus waned in the late summer of 2020, the Delta variant made an unwelcome entrance and dictated the postponement of even more nuptials in the fall and winter.

Making matters worse – are you keeping score, because prospective brides are – Hurricane Ida slammed the south Louisiana coast west of New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2021, prompting even more postponements.

But now, with the pandemic relatively under control in the U.S., church weddings are back, and in a big way.

“My goodness, we’re so busy we don’t know whether we’re coming or going,” said Kevin Charpentier, a wedding coordinator at St. Louis Cathedral. “We’ve made up for all of the pandemic weddings that were postponed, so we’re really back to normal.”

“We’re very blessed,” said Immaculate Conception (New Orleans) wedding coordinator Julie Vanderbrook. “At this point, we’re booked for maybe 85 weddings (in 2022). We’re on our normal, regular schedule. We’re not anticipating another variant. We’re going to put this in the Blessed Mother’s hands.”

At Holy Name of Jesus Church on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans, that same return to a normal schedule has arrived (although the church has advised prospective brides it will book no weddings beginning March 2023 so that ceiling repairs can be initiated, a project expected to take six to eight months).

“It is definitely back to normal,” said Liz Broekman, wedding coordinator at Holy Name. “January and February (of 2021) were still slow, and even March was kind of slow. But then it just picked up from there. In October, we had 14 because a few of those were rescheduled from previous dates. That’s probably the biggest number we’ve had in October in a long time. And then we had seven in November and 10 in December, and January (2022) is booking up crazy.”

Here’s how the wedding roller coaster took brides and grooms on a wild ride over the last two years at three iconic churches:

St. Louis Cathedral

Charpentier looks back on the time frame of March-August 2020 and sees a lot of erasures in his wedding planning calendar. He also coordinates weddings at St. Mary’s Church four blocks downriver on Chartres Street.

“We were out of work for awhile,” Charpentier said. “All of the weddings in March and April had to be moved, and then we didn’t really start up again until after the summer. Most couples moved their weddings a year out. We never really had any bad mishaps. Most of the couples rescheduled.”

One story that stands out for Charpentier was the prospective bride and her mother from the Philippines who came to visit the cathedral on Jan. 25, 2020, to schedule her wedding. As it turns out, Charpentier said, the bride-to-be worked in Wuhan, where the virus is suspected of originating. The groom-to-be, who did not make the trip, also worked in Wuhan.

“That’s where I think I caught my COVID from,” Charpentier said, who had symptoms for several months but was never hospitalized. “That’s the only thing I can think of about how I caught COVID.”

One of the strange twists is that the wedding is still on the books, nearly two years later.

“It’s been rescheduled for next fall in 2022,” Charpentier said.

The first wedding celebrated in the cathedral after the beginning of the pandemic was Aug. 8, 2020, with only 10 people allowed in church. That wedding initially had been planned for May 23.

“Everyone was wearing masks – even the priest was wearing a mask,” Charpentier said. “It was a very small wedding.”

The cathedral currently has scheduled weddings through 2023.

“Our whole 2022 is booked,” Charpentier said. “You can’t even get a reception in 2022. That’s because the dates are all booked.”

How would Charpentier describe his experience over the last two years of dealing with nervous brides and mothers?

“You know, I feel like this is my ministry,” Charpentier said. “I enjoy talking with the girls and the mothers. I’ve become more of a consultant than a coordinator of a church wedding because I’m involved with them with everything. It’s just been a wonderful experience, going through COVID, and how easy everybody was to change their dates and move it to another day. I mean, that was a lot. Everybody was fine. I had no problems with anyone.”

Immaculate Conception

The wedding calendar has returned to normal at the Baronne Street church, Vanderbrook said, and she credits Jesuit Father Anthony McGinn, the Immaculate Conception pastor, with his willingness to work with brides who had to reschedule their weddings not just once but several times.

“This good man let these girls schedule again and again and again because it was all about them not being able to have their reception, whereas we could accommodate them in church,” Vanderbrook said. “I started getting a little old school and fussy, saying, ‘Father, these girls are losing the idea of what this is all about. It’s about the sacrament, it’s not about the party, and you’re being too nice.’ And he’d look at me and said, ‘Anything else?’”

The pendulum has swung back to the point that in November and December, Immaculate Conception has scheduled a total of 28 weddings.

“So when you ask, ‘Are we back to normal?’ we’re beyond normal,” Vanderbrook said.

Looking back to March 2020, Vanderbrook said the pandemic-caused wedding cancellations were “heartbreaking.” She rescheduled 46 weddings.

Among her most poignant memories are of the small-scale weddings – limited to only 25 immediate family members – that COVID occupancy restrictions dictated.

“Those were the ones that were ‘just my family and my grandma, and we just want to get married in church,’” Vanderbrook recalled. “The difference between a 25- and 30-person wedding and a 400-person wedding is night and day. The beauty and the reverence of the smaller weddings – those are the ones who wanted the sacrament. That uplifted me in a very difficult and sad time. They said, ‘We’re going to do our party later, but we’re getting married.’”

One of the humorous incidents dealt with setting up the church environment – using every other pew – to keep wedding goers socially distant.

“Father said, ‘We have to rope off the pews. I have some caution tape,’” Vanderbrook said, laughing. “I said, ‘We’re not doing caution tape.’ So I went and bought some white ribbon, and every other pew had some semblance of the beauty of the church.”

By the end of 2021, Immaculate Conception will have hosted 125 weddings this year, above its normal of 90 in a calendar year.

Holy Name of Jesus

Broekman says the pandemic became “a great pivoting moment” for the church, whose beauty, long aisle and connections to Loyola alums have made it especially attractive for weddings.

“We were forced to make some decisions,” Broekman said, referring to the outbreak in March 2020. “For those brides who had scheduled weddings, we told them we would do small, intimate weddings with their parents and witnesses in the church, and then we would allow them to come back for a renewal of their vows with a bigger group later. We did several of those initially – more than I expected. Very few canceled and went to a different church or stayed in their hometown.”

The first wedding celebrated in the church with only 10 people was on March 14, 2020. No weddings were celebrated in April and just one was held in May. Then, brides who had postponed their weddings to June, thinking the worst would be over, had to reschedule again, Broekman said.

“They realized, ‘Oh, wait, this isn’t going away,’” Broekman said.

After two weddings each in July and August, Holy Name began getting back to normal in October, but still under occupancy restraints. Holy 

Name normally has about 75 weddings a year, but it was down to 35 in 2020.

Like Vanderbrook at Immaculate Conception, Broekman said she was impressed with those brides who went ahead with a smaller wedding Mass because of their desire to get married in the church.

“You got to see how much it meant to them,” Broekman said. “It wasn’t all about the hoopla and the party and all the other stuff that comes with it. It was about the sacrament. It was them saying, ‘We want to be married in the church, and we want our closest family with us.’”

One couple even decided to wed in Holy Name’s 24/7 adoration chapel.

“We blocked off the adoration chapel for two hours, and they loved that,” Broekman said. “It was beautiful because they didn’t care that they weren’t in the big church.”

And, one bride, 81 years old, postponed her wedding twice and ended up at Holy Name after four reschedules, due both to the pandemic and then to Hurricane Ida. She will be married next March.

“I do hope that the worst is over, but I feel like we know what to do now, and we know what we can do,” Broekman said. “If something like this happens again, we can move quickly.”

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