Marriage

Please call Our Lady of Guadalupe Church BEFORE you book a date with your reception venue or hotel as our date availability for weddings fills up quickly and we might not have the date you are looking for.  Marriage preparation begins with an initial consult with a parish priest. Dates are set after that initial interview. Please allow at least 6 months for marriage preparation.  Please contact the Parish Office, 785-232-5088 to schedule an appointment when planning a marriage.

Congratulations on your engagement and thank you for pursuing the sacrament of marriage here at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.  We are excited for you and want you to pray and celebrate the best liturgy possible, after you have prepared your mind, heart and body for the sacrament God has chosen for you!  Thanks for your openness and obedience to this personal call from Christ to participate in, and to imitate His love, in the most fruitful exchange that is the sacrament of marriage.

The two shall become one!  You are preparing to call down the Holy Spirit upon each other and to create a new reality.  The guidelines provided here set the stage for this most meaningful exchange of your life.  It is also the Church's sacrament, which she has a responsibility to safeguard and to celebrate with the highest dignity.  Our guidelines are strong because the sacrament is so rich and your words so powerful!  Nothing but the best will do!  

A copy of the guidelines are available at the Parish Office.

Once you review these guidelines, you will meet with a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to agree to the marriage preparation process, to do initial paperwork, to set planning dates and to make the necessary deposits.  You will then be able to confirm the date and time of your wedding.  We look forward to meeting with you. Again, congratulations!

The sacrament of marriage is a visible sign of God’s love for the Church. When a man and a woman are married in the Church, they receive the grace needed for a lifelong bond of unity.

Marriage is a Covenant

The Sacrament of Marriage is a covenantal union in the image of the covenants between God and his people with Abraham and later with Moses at Mt. Sinai. This divine covenant can never be broken. In this way, marriage is a union that bonds spouses together during their entire lifetime.

The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life. (CCC 1661)

The love in a married relationship is exemplified in the total gift of one’s self to another. It’s this self-giving and self-sacrificing love that we see in our other model of marriage, the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love. (CCC 1662)
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Marriage Reflects the Holy Trinity

We believe that God exists in eternal communion. Together, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united in one being with no beginning and no end. Human beings, likewise, were created by God in God’s image for the purpose of communion with another human being.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2205). The Sacrament of Marriage is indissoluble and calls us to be completely open to fertility.” Christian marriage at its finest is a reflection of God’s self-giving love expressed between the love of two people.