There is a particular fullness to a Neocatechumenal Way wedding — the sense that the whole community has walked to the altar alongside the couple, and that the Mass is not a ceremony to be gotten through but the very thing everyone came for.
Manny and Lauren were married on the fifth of December at St. Jane Frances de Chantal in Valley Glen, in the San Fernando Valley. It was a Nuptial Mass in the Neocatechumenal Way — a wedding shaped by a community that prays together, sings together, and understands marriage as a vocation lived out in the midst of the brothers and sisters who have accompanied the couple for years. I have had the honor of photographing a great many weddings within the Way, and I photograph them differently than I might a wedding I did not understand from the inside.
A Mass sung by the fathers
What made this day singular was the music. Both Lauren's father and Manny's father are cantors, and both sang during the Mass — to photograph a wedding where the fathers of the bride and groom lift their voices in song is a rare and moving thing. They sang alongside the community's own musicians and catechists, in the way the Neocatechumenal Way always does: together, as one body. The Way has a rich tradition of liturgical music all its own — the guitar, the psalms sung in a particular cadence, the whole church joining as a single voice — and here it rose from the community that had walked with this couple, the two fathers among them.
I try, in a Mass like this, to stay entirely out of the way — to let the singing rise and the community pray, and to make my photographs from the edges without ever becoming part of what is happening at the front. The Way's liturgy asks for that kind of restraint. It is communal, unhurried, and deeply participatory, and a photographer who does not understand its rhythm can easily intrude on it.
The exchange of consent
At the heart of every Catholic wedding is the exchange of consent and the vows made before God and the Church. Manny and Lauren made theirs at the altar of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, surrounded by a community that had prayed toward this day for a long time. I keep my camera on the hands, the rings, the faces — the small, true moments that a couple will not have seen themselves, because they were living inside them.
During the consecration I step back. It is the most sacred moment of the Mass, and it is not a moment to be worked. I find a quiet corner, make what photographs I can without disturbing anyone, and let the elevation happen as it should — witnessed, not staged. Couples within the Way notice this, and so do their priests.
The Danza after Mass
When the Mass had ended, the community did what the Neocatechumenal Way so often does in its moments of greatest joy: they danced. The Danza — the traditional dance that follows so many celebrations within the Way — filled the space in front of the altar, the couple at its center, the community circling them. It is one of my favorite things to photograph, because it is pure, unselfconscious joy, and it belongs entirely to the community that made it.
A quiet hour at golden light
Later, we slipped away for a short while for portraits. Manny in his hat, Lauren still in her veil, the late light coming warm through the trees. After the fullness of the Mass and the Danza, these quiet frames of just the two of them are their own kind of prayer — the covenant made, the community sent home, and the marriage now begun.
Photographing a Neocatechumenal Way wedding
If you are planning a wedding within the Neocatechumenal Way, you already know that your Mass will not look like most weddings — and that you want a photographer who understands why. You want someone who knows the shape of the liturgy, who understands the songs and the Danza and the communal heart of it all, and who will honor the sacrament rather than treat it as a backdrop. I photograph weddings within the Way because I understand them from the inside, and it would be an honor to photograph yours.