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Wedding blessing in France


Lisa W

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I am based in London and want to have a religious wedding blessing in France next year.  I have no idea how to organise this - can anyone help?  The church is in a town called Roquebrune near Monaco and I would need an English speaking Catholic priest to conduct the service - let me know if you have any advice!  I also need to know what paperwork is required.

 

Thanks

Lisa

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In France marriages are carried out by the civil authorities i.e. your local mayor. You then take the equivalent of your marriage certificate along to a priest and organise your religious marriage.

The situation you will be in I assume is that you will already have the UK marriage certificate and simply want the religious ceremony. I don't know about getting an English speaking priest but in theory you just need to see the French priest, present your certificate and  arrange a date, there should be no problem. The only thing I can see that you may have to do is have an official translation (by and approved professional French translator) of your UK marriage licence.

You can find out more about getting married etc in France HERE The British Consulate in Paris used to have a list of churches, I believe you have to email and ask them although they may be Protestant ones. I have discovered that there are around 2,000 English speaking Protestant churches in France but I can't find anything out about Catholic ones. That bit you will probably have to research yourself.

Congratulations and good luck.

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Lisa ..........

I'm sure that this will be perfectly possible. As said by Quillan, the probability (if not certainty) is that you will need a translated copy of your UK marriage certificate, since this would replace the document the you would otherwise get from the Mairie once the civil ceremony has been carried out. You will almost certainly need something from your UK diocese. This would start from your local church and be routed via the diocese, then to the French diocese and finally on to Roquebrune. Sounds tortuous, but I guess that it's the piece of paper that tells the officiating priest that you are fine upright people and that he's got the OK from the Bishop to marry you! Your diocese should be clued up on this and should be able to guide you.

I'm not sure whether the Mairie is going to be best avenue. After all, you need a reasonably fluent English-speaking priest to officiate and the Mairie probably won't know (nor care!) I guess that starting point is the Roquebrune priest, who could sort out one of his colleagues if he can't handle it.  It would be polite to start with him, but if you come up against a brick wall, then the local Diocese would be the place (Nice?)

As regards the service, our son's experience was that there were a few bits that had to be done in French, but the priest was more than happy to do almost all of it in English, including his sermon. He did need a translation however, so he gave me the template, marked the obligatory and optional bits (for them to choose) and once done, I did the side-by-side translation. I could provide that material if it would help.

All in all, the Church couldn't have been more helpful and I'm sure that it'll be the same for you. 

Best of luck. 

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Hi Quillan

Thank you so much for your advice - I am not married yet, we hoped to have a civil service in London just before the wedding and then fly out to France for a blessing.  Your information is very useful though and we are going to start off by contacting both the local priest in Roquebrune and our priest here in London.  Hopefully they will be able to guide us further :-) Thanks again...Lisa

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Thank you so much - this is really helpful - sounds like I will have a bit of a challenge ahead of me but I'm sure that once I get to speak to the church in Roquebrune and in London then we can sort something.

It's good to hear that you have organised a wedding over in France too so if you don't mind I may come back to you if I have any further problems...Thanks again Lisa

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