Catholic Mass or Ceremony? Whats the difference?

I could be wrong, but I believe that the mass has the whole church service with communion and whatnot, and the ceremony is just a normal wedding ceremony in the church by a priest.

I believe there a three different ways for you to be married Catholic. I went to Catholic University and took a class in sacraments to fulfill my religion requirement lol. So the first and most traditional is the Mass with marriage rite. The vows occur after the homily but before communion. You can only have this is both bride and groom are Catholic and in "good" standing(depends on priest). The next is the marriage rite, which is between a Catholic and non-catholic who has been baptized. The couple must promise for the children to be raised in the Catholic faith. A Catholic couple can choose this if they do not want a long mass. The final is between a un-baptized person and Catholic. And is considered a union, but not equal to receiving the full Catholic marriage rite b/c apparently you can't receive all of Gods love without both being baptized?! Make sense? Probably not, but thats how the Catholic Church works. Also, there are instanances when a priest will work with a cont:

Ooh, girl's got it down!! cantwaittobemrs said it all, but in summary, a Catholic Mass has a gospel, homily, consecration, and communion, while a ceremony doesn't.

Maybe is right, it also takes approx 1.5 hours from what I've seen. I have a link for what the breakdown of this would be.

http://thecatholicwedding.com/topics/order-wedding-with-mass.htm

The Catholic Ceremony would be a "typical" wedding ceremony, about a half hour long. Here is a link to the order of this.

http://www.catholicweddinghelp.com/topics/order-wedding-outside-mass.htm

A minitster of another Christian Church , if for example a bride must be married in her childhood church, but the groom must be married Catholic. The couple would have to be approved by the bishop, and the priest could participate in the ceremony at the other church or even have a Catholic wedding there.

Sorry my "cont" was a little delayed.

Your girls are the best! Thank you so much!

At every Catholic wedding I have been too, the full mass only takes 1 hour depending on how many people take communion. Just the sacrament (ceremony only) is about 45 minutes because it is still the whole first part a mass with the reading but it stops after the vows are exchanged (after homily).

Yep, even full Catholic weddings normally only take about an hour. They can go longer for communion and if you have a ton of long songs (ie singing the responses) throughout the ceremony. Since I wanted to do the full mass but also wanted to keep it short and sweet I kept the singing to a minimum. It was nice because it was the full mass, still just less than an hour and my favorite songs were a little more highlighted since were weren't singing every two seconds.

Cantwaittobemrs got a hole in one - she hit the nail on the head

THe ceremony is everything but communion, from what I understand. That is what we are doing since I am not Catholic....I think its a good compromise. Either will be great though! I think its good to have the option

Cantwaittobemrs has it right. I'm having a full mass. It will take longer than usual because we added the unity candle and a presentation to the blessed mother. So, we're figuring about 1 1/2 hrs.

I went to a full Catholic wedding mass 2 weekends ago for a friend--the ceremony was about an hour long and included communion. It was LONG!!