Immaculate Conception Church

Marriage

Congratulations on your engagement! The parish is excited for you and looks forward to helping you prepare for your wedding day and, most importantly, for a long and happy life together.

Preparing for your marriage is a six-month process, so please keep that in mind when you contact one of the friars to set a date and begin the preparation. Your first meeting with one of the friars begins the six-month preparation. Please keep in mind that we are unable to set a date for the wedding until after the couple has met with a friar.

Because marriage in the Catholic Church is a sacrament, it is a community as well as a personal celebration. Catholics should be married in their parish church or receive their pastor’s permission to be married elsewhere.

If you are not formally a member of any parish, we’ll look forward to helping you commit to sharing in the life of Immaculate Conception Parish during your marriage preparation. We invite you to register as a member here, and you can do this by visiting the parish office during office hours, or by registering at one of the welcoming weekends which we hold in the church. Please see Joining the Parish for more information.

Here is what you need to do to get started with the marriage preparation process:

Call the Immaculate Conception Parish office (919-682-3449) and ask for Marge Parr or Roz Hamp. Marge or Roz will refer you to one of the friars. At your first meeting with the friar, we will fill out the initial paperwork required by the Catholic Church for a marriage.
After this initial meeting, we will ask you to attend a diocesan-sponsored Marriage Preparation program. The diocese offers either a one-day marriage program (offered on most Saturdays throughout the year) or a weekend marriage prep program (offered 4 weekends throughout the year. See www.dioceseofraleigh.org for more information). You may choose either of these options. At whichever of these options you choose, you will take the FOCCUS (Facilitating Open Couple Communication, Understanding, & Study) marriage prep inventory. FOCCUS is a series of about 160 questions that have to do with issues related to married life. After you complete the FOCCUS, the results are compiled by the diocese and sent to the friar. The friar will contact you when the results have come back and set up a meeting to go over the results.
Our parish also offers the option of completing the Sponsor Couple program. The Sponsor Couple program (for more information www.marriagepreparation.com) is a series of five meetings that are held between a sponsor couple in the parish and the engaged couple. We highly recommend this program as it allows you to get to know an already married couple in the parish, and to enter into conversation with that couple about issues that married couples face day to day. Ask the friar for more information about this program.
Contact our music minister, Angela Flynn, and set a time to plan the music for your wedding liturgy. Angela can be reached at 682-3449x263, or at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .
No later than 1 month before your wedding date, set a time to meet with the friar to go over final details of the wedding. Make sure that you have copies of your baptismal certificate(s) sent to the friar no later than one month before your wedding. Also make sure to obtain your marriage license and bring it to the wedding rehearsal.

Please click here for our booklet detailing
Your Wedding at Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Conception also offers a Young in Marriage group for those who are recently married. This group meets monthly to share each other’s company and talk about “newly married” issues. This group is also open to the newly engaged. Please contact Kelli or Alex Cho (416-9729) for more information.