Why is Lohengrin’s wedding march banned?

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Peppers123

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I’m just curious since I’ve heard a variety of different answers.
 
Perhaps the banned item was Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
 
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It’s only banned by certain dioceses and/or certain parishes.

I had it at my wedding, so, not banned there. I heard it at a lot of other Catholic weddings too.
And I had the Mendelssohn as the recessional, as is customary. Which I also heard at a lot of other Catholic weddings.

Some Catholic dioceses and churches ban these songs because they’re secular songs and the plots of the operas from whence they came are full of non-Catholic and suggestive or sinful themes. Also, some music directors just hate them because they’re corny or cliched. I’ve read that a lot of brides nowadays don’t want them because they’re considered old fashioned.
 
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The Wagner and the Mendelssohn are both “banned”. Because they are not liturgical music, not even sacred music. They are both from opera, a secular entertainment.
It’s a general principal (if your music director is knowledgeable) that music during before during and after liturgy should be worthy, liturgical music.
 
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I thank God daily I was young when I was and not nowadays. I have the “old person’s disease” of thinking most of the music is terrible and most of the young men are terribly unattractive.
 
Peppers123 said:
Why is Lohengrin’s wedding march banned?
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I’d never heard of it before now, but while listening to it I was reminded of a critic who said that Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony was “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die”.

I don’t know why (or even if) the Lohengrin was banned, but I’m glad for it.
 
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We didn’t have any of the traditional music at our wedding. I walked down the aisle to the wedding theme from Braveheart. Everyone was in tears, including my sweet daddy.
 
It’s secular not sacred music. That is sufficient reason, as only sacred music should be used.

Additionally, specific to this piece:

In Lohengrin, the Bridal Chorus is the procession to the bedchamber, not the altar.

Wagner himself is problematic as a composer vis-a-vis faith, and Lohengrin has pagan elements.
 
That’s interesting. In my case, I did not ask for it to be played and I did not want it to be played. Imagine my horror as it was time for me to walk down the aisle and that started up! There was nothing I could do. The music director took it upon themself to use it, that wasn’t what we discussed.
 
For procession we had Canon in D and recession was Trumpet Voluntary.

I had a string quartet plus our organ.

The quartet played prelude music, all classical.

During mass, we had a couple of songs from the hymnal.
 
We chose the Canon and everything as you did, @1ke, and as the flower girl and bridesmaids etc went down the aisle, all was well. All of a sudden as I started down the aisle the music changed! Horrifying.
 
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Irishmom2 said:
We chose the Canon and everything as you did, @1ke, and as the flower girl and bridesmaids etc went down the aisle, all was well. All of a sudden as I started down the aisle the music changed! Horrifying.
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Honestly, knowing me, I’d have stopped, ripped the organist a new one, and started over.

That would be so 1ke on her wedding day.
 
Irishmom2 said:
I had to laugh just now picturing that in my head! 😂
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Well, since I’d already ripped the Dave & Buster’s manager into shreds at the rehearsal dinner (private banquet room on second floor) over the failure to properly size the buffet (running OUT of food and having half my guests have to wait forever for more)-- resulting in $200 in free play cards for all the kids in the family-- no one would have blinked an eye.

I was just SLIGHTLY stressed out during my wedding week.

(It was actually a pretty big wedding, and lots of out of town guests and family traveling so the rehearsal dinner was 90 people and the reception was like 300).
 
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