The first step in preparing for a wedding is to contact the parish office at (818) 242-2579 to set up a meeting with a member of the clergy. This must be done at least six months in advance in order to set the date and time for the wedding. At your first meeting with the priest or deacon, you will receive a copy of our Marriage Guidelines and they will review the marriage preparation process with you. As part of the preparation process for marriage, you will need a new copy of your Baptismal certificate, register as parishioners, and attend an Engaged Encounter weekend. The priest or deacon will give you more information about this program when you meet with him. Please note that all music for your wedding needs to be arranged through the parish music director.

For a complete list of the guidelines and preparation process for a wedding at Incarnation, please see the documents in the sidebar.

The Sacrament of Marriage is a covenant between God and his people. This divine covenant can never be broken. In this way, marriage is a union that bonds spouses together during their entire lifetime.

"The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life." (CCC 1661)

The love in a married relationship is exemplified in the total gift of one’s self to another. It’s this self-giving and self-sacrificing love that we see in our other model of marriage, the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love. (CCC 1662). Christian marriage at its finest is a reflection of God’s self-giving love expressed between the love of two people.