To be sacramental means it is both valid, and between two that are baptized. To be valid for a Catholic requires the Church to approve it. You posted: “We have always been practicing Catholics” so that means you must have approval of the Catholic Church for validity.
That means no un-dispensed impediments and one impediment is lack of canonical form, which is required for a Catholic. If celebrated by a Catholic without the approval of the Catholic Church, then there is no matrimony at all.
Radical Sanation
Can. 1161
§1. The radical sanation of an invalid marriage is its convalidation without the renewal of consent, which is granted by competent authority and entails the dispensation from an impediment, if there is one, and from canonical form, if it was not observed, and the retroactivity of canonical effects.
§2. Convalidation occurs at the moment of the granting of the favor. Retroactivity, however, is understood to extend to the moment of the celebration of the marriage unless other provision is expressly made.
Can. 1055
§1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.
§2. For this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.
Can. 1108
§1. Only those marriages are valid which are contracted before the local ordinary, pastor, or a priest or deacon delegated by either of them, who assist, and before two witnesses according to the rules expressed in the following canons and without prejudice to the exceptions mentioned in cann. ⇒ 144, ⇒ 1112, §1, ⇒ 1116, and ⇒ 1127, §§1-2.
§2. The person who assists at a marriage is understood to be only that person who is present, asks for the manifestation of the consent of the contracting parties, and receives it in the name of the Church.
Can. 87
§1 Whenever he judges that it contributes to their spiritual welfare, the diocesan Bishop can dispense the faithful from disciplinary laws, both universal laws and those particular laws made by the supreme ecclesiastical authority for his territory or his subjects. He cannot dispense from procedural laws or from penal laws, nor from those whose dispensation is specially reserved to the Apostolic See or to some other authority.
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/intrptxt/documents/rc_pc_intrptxt_doc_20020604_interpretationes-authenticae_lt.html
Can. 87, § 1 (cf. AAS, LXXVII, 1985, 771)
Patres Pontificiae Commissionis Codici Iuris Canonici Authentice Interpretando, propositis in plenario coetu diei 14 maii 1985, quae sequuntur dubiis, respondendum esse censuerunt ut infra ad singula:
III *
De dispensatione a forma canonica matrimonii
D. Utrum extra casum urgentis mortis periculi Episcopus dioecesanus, ad normam can. 87, § 1, dispensare valeat a forma canonica in matrimonio duorum catholicorum.
R. Negative.
Summus Pontifex Ioannes Paulus II in Audientia die 5 iulii 1985 infrascripto impertita, de supradictis decisionibus certior factus, eas publicari iussit.
Rosalius Iosephus Card. Castillo Lara,
Praeses*
Iulianus Herranz,*
a Secretis*
----- My Translation ----
July 5, 1985 answer to
dubium on the diocesan Bishop power of dispensation from the form of marriage of two Catholics, promulgated in AAS:
D. Whether outside the urgent case of the peril of death the diocesan Bishop, according to the norm of can. 87, § 1, can validly dispense the canonical form of matrimony of two Catholics.
R. Negative.
