6 Tips for Planning a Wedding Novena
/KIKI HAYDEN
You know you’re Catholic when you say a novena for (almost) every occasion. If you never have before, it’s not too late to start!
Photography: Noteworthy Expressions
A novena is a prayer said over nine days, usually for a specific intention. Spending nine days in prayer is an intimate way to invite the Lord into your daily life, whether in thanksgiving or petition. Novenas can be prayed in anticipation of favorite feast days, birthdays, baptisms, holidays, and--of course--weddings. A wedding novena is a beautiful way to unite in prayer with your future spouse, your friends, and your family as you prepare to enter your vocation.
Here, a step by step process for creating a personal wedding novena.
Decide when to pray your novena.
Novena prayers are a powerful way to enter into preparation for your vocation. You can pray a novena early on, just after engagement or betrothal. Developing a habit of prayer early in your engagement keeps Jesus at the front of your mind amidst the overwhelm of wedding planning.
As other options, consider a novena in the nine days leading to your wedding, or beginning on your wedding day and lasting through your first nine days of marriage—a honeymoon novena—to establish a practice of daily prayer in your new life with your beloved.
Don’t limit yourself! My husband and I invited our friends and family to pray two novenas alongside us: one at the beginning of our betrothal, and another leading up to our wedding day. And we privately say a novena for the days leading up to each anniversary. The Lord is so generous and loves hearing our prayers.
Make a list of intentions.
This sets the tone for your novena. You might identify one intention for each day, or you could come up with a list of a few important intentions to pray throughout the nine days. Fitting intentions for your wedding might include commitment to God and one another.
You can also include personal prayers based on your passions, hobbies, and love languages. Additionally, practical prayers, such as prayers for health for you and your family or for peace in your home, can foster trust in the Lord to provide for your needs as a couple.
Keep your petitions open to God’s will. And of course, give thanks for the community who is praying with you!
Write a litany of saints.
Invite the angels and saints to join your novena by including a small litany. To personalize your novena, consider including your patron saints and those whose feast days fall on or near your wedding date.
I also recommend invoking the intercession of saintly couples whose vocation inspires your own, such as Louis and Zelie Martin, or Aquila and Priscilla, as well as any personal devotions to Jesus, Mary, and favorite saints.
If anyone in your family or support network has passed away, you may want to include them in the novena litany too, as a way of intentionally inviting them into your wedding.
If you can’t decide, you can always ask “all the angels and saints” to pray for you.
Decide who to pray with.
After identifying your time frame, intentions, and litany of the saints, decide which living friends and family members you’d like to join in your novena. Ask yourselves if you’d prefer your novena to be a private prayer for just the two of you, a group prayer with your wedding party, or a prayer open to all your guests through your wedding website and invitations.
Ask the Holy Spirit for guidance as to whose prayers you need the most. If you do invite your guests to pray with you, consider saying the final prayer day at your rehearsal dinner or wedding reception.
Consider the religious backgrounds of your prayer warriors.
There are ways to express your Catholic faith that include your non-Catholic guests. If you are inviting Christians who are not Catholic, consider making the litany of saints optional, with an instruction like, “If you feel comfortable asking for prayers from the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), please pray this litany.”
For those of other faiths, offer the option to pray to God the Father instead of to the Trinity. And for guests who aren’t religious, encourage them to think of intentions as “good thoughts” or “wishes” rather than prayers. These modifications invite non-Catholic guests into your wedding preparation and allow anyone who wishes to participate in the novena prayer.
The Lord listens to everyone. Our non-Catholic guests expressed gratitude for being included in my husband’s and my novenas, and we really appreciated their support! No matter each guest’s background, the Lord answered the petitions in abundance.
Pray it forward
After you’ve had the experience of writing your own beautiful and personal wedding novena, consider sharing this gift with other couples.
When friends get married, my husband and I say a novena for them using this process. I usually send a text each day telling the couple the intention or saint of the day for their novena.
For my non-Catholic friends, I modify the novena to meet them wherever they are in their spiritual journey (I send them nine days of “wishes/prayers”). Your friends will appreciate your support, and the Lord loves to spend time with you as you earnestly share the desires of your heart for your friends. Novena prayers are a powerful expression of love for your friends and family, your spouse, and Jesus.
About the Author: Kiki Hayden is a freelance writer and bilingual Speech Therapist living in Texas. She is a Byzantine Catholic. She writes about how God has changed her life through speech therapy at Speaking With Kiki.