Can I insist that a unity candle be used at my daughter's wedding?

[felgerfarm]

My daughter is getting married in five weeks. During the last meeting with our parish priest, she asked about the sequence of events such as lighting the unity candle and taking flowers to Mary. The priest replied that the unity candle was a family thing to be lit at the reception because it was not part of the Catholic tradition. I made the unity candle and was hoping to have it blessed before the wedding and lit as a symbol of Christ’s light in their lives. We have candles for other sacraments (baptism, confirmation, Communion). Is it possible to light the unity candle in church, and if so, how should we approach the subject with our priest?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

The unity candle is a social custom that has been incorporated into the wedding ceremony. While the Church is generally very lenient in allowing such customs to be incorporated into a wedding ceremony, the unity candle is not part of the nuptial liturgy and is not strongly symbolic of Catholic piety or theology in the same way that other social customs, such as the flowers to the Blessed Virgin, may be. That being the case, the opinion of your daughter’s priest that the unity candle does not belong at the ceremony should be respected. If your priest has been invited to the reception, which is a customary gesture, he can bless the candle at the reception. If he has not been invited to the reception, or if he has declined an invitation to attend the reception, you can ask him to bless the candle at the rehearsal the evening before the wedding. The blessed candle can then be lit at the reception.

As a side note, your priest may have a particular distaste for the unity candle because it is one of many “unity emblems” marketed by the wedding industry to a largely non-Catholic society that usually scorns the idea that spiritual realities can be conveyed through physical objects. For Catholics, the primary symbol of unity at a nuptial Mass is the Eucharist.

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