Whats the difference between a catholic wedding and a non religious wedding?

In a Catholic wedding, you receive the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and you enter into a three-way covenant between you, your spouse and God. You also become legally married.

In a non-religious wedding, all you get is the legal marriage part. As a Catholic, this would be a sinful situation for you, because you wouldn't be receiving the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. From a Catholic perspective, it would be no different than living with the guy without being married at all.

Since your boyfriend is agnostic and has questions about Catholicism, I recommend that he read some books about Catholicism and maybe take the adult catechism class (RCIA). He wouldn't have to join the Church in RCIA, but it would be a great place for him to ask questions about things he's wondering about. One great book that I highly recommend is "What Catholics Really Believe" by Karl Keating. You can pick that up online - it's not expensive.

Religious Catholic weddings can be very long if the couple includes a full mass (1 hour) with it or they can be short. The real difference is the obvious a Catholic wedding has religious words and belief while a non-religious one does not. If you get married by a Catholic priest he will insist that the two of you agree to raise any children you have as Catholic.

I suggest before the two of you start deciding on how you are going to get married you have a long talk about what each of you expects, wants and desires in your relationship. Do you plan on having children? Will they be raised with religion? Will it bother you when your husband tells your children honestly how he feels about god and religion? Will it bother him if you teach your children religion?

Figure out if the two of you can agree on how you want to live in a marriage/family before the wedding!

Both of you should be very clear to each other what you are willing and not willing to compromise on!

edited to add: Yes a Catholic priest will marry a non-catholic to a catholic. My sister married a Jewish man in a Church wedding. It was a beautiful wedding they also had a Rabi and did the breaking of the glass and all. But like I stated above my sister and her husband had to promise that they were going to raise any children they might have as Catholics.

Marriage in the church is a sacrament. It's a holy union blessed by God. The wedding is a Mass, therefore taking about an hour. The church also requires that you, as a couple, go through Engaged Encounter and seek approval of the priests to be married. The engagement period is a process of preparing for marriage, and they'll give you both the FOCUSS test, group studies, classes on sex and children, etc.

A wedding outside of the church is not blessed by God, takes about 5 minutes, and requires no preparation to make sure that you're ready to be married.

Update: Welltraveled is not correct. I'm a Catholic who married a Protestant. We went through Engaged Encounter and had a full Catholic Mass wedding, but our priest shared the duty with my husband's Evangelical pastor. The church was perfectly okay with that. We did, however, spend a lot of time discussing our faith with both the priest and pastor in the months ahead of time, and they both approved our inter-faith marriage.

Well, a religious wedding obviously bases itself around your belief. (Catholic, Christian etc...) so you'll have Bible readings, the binding of the priest's robes on your hands (all depending on what religion you are) and probably a lot of other things. You'll be wed together in the name of God. Then you might sing some praise songs.

In a non religious wedding, you'll go through the vows, and the marriage signing (they're usually fairly short)

Um, if your boyfriend isn't catholic, you're not going to have a catholic wedding.

You do realize that no catholic priest will conduct a catholic wedding for a non-catholic, don't you?

The differences? In one, it's run by a catholic priest and there's a full mass. In the other, it's run by anybody you want who's legally qualified, and there's no full mass. Legally, there's no difference. And in the second one, you can do anything you want to.

Peace.

well a non religious wedding can be performed any where, like a park, hall, and is done by a civil celebrant and there are no prayers, or religious songs, but secular songs can be played and secular sayings or vows would be done.

Been to a few secular weddings and they are all very nice.

Well, a non-religious wedding is much shorter. So much shorter. You should really spare your friends and family the suffering of a Catholic wedding, all that standing and kneeling and tiresome speech making.

The weddings in the Bible stories were more fun!

King David already had many “God given” wives.

One of them was MICHAL, Jonathan’s sister! David earned her hand by messing with the penis of 200 dead Palestinians while removing their foreskin. The “Law of God” renders “unclean” anybody touching dead people’s penis, but David was very much in love with Michal, and he didn’t mind.

1 Samuel 18:27

David and his men went out and killed two hundred Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented the FULL NUMBER to the king*

(*the foreskins were counted several times to make sure they had 200)

so that he might become the king's son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage*

(*with God’s full approval, of course)

==

Can you imagine the memorable ROYAL wedding reception they must have enjoyed?

Especially for the Bride to know that her loving husband the future King David of Israel circumcised 200 penises of dead Palestinians…

Most likely David never washed his hands before the reception dinner. Jesus Christ was teaching that the washing of hands was a Priestly hypocrisy (Mat 15:2-3).

Finally King David died as a senile old man. He had no more wives to keep him warm in bed at night so his servants went out to look for some beautiful virgin girls to do it, but David’s libido was no longer responding (1 Kings 1:1-4).

Use Google.

But I'll tell you one thing: a non-religious wedding would be a hell of lot more badass than a religious one.

one says divorce is a no no and marriage is until death do us part..... while the other says divorce is OK and marriage is until my "feeling" for you remain. (i.e Kardashians)