A booklet for the 1962 Nuptial Mass is not a translated Novus Ordo program. The ceremony comes before the Mass, the Propers are fixed rather than chosen, and the congregation needs the Latin and the English side by side. Here is how the booklet is built.
Three structural differences, and each one moves something in the booklet.
The marriage is contracted before the Mass begins, at the foot of the altar. The booklet therefore opens with the Rite of Marriage, complete, and only then starts the Mass — the reverse of the Ordinary Form, where the rite follows the homily.
A Novus Ordo booklet leaves the readings as slots because the couple chooses them. In the 1962 Missal the Nuptial Mass has its own Propers, the same at every wedding, so they can be printed in full — text, chant and all.
The Mass is in Latin. A booklet that prints only Latin loses half the congregation; one that prints only English gives them nothing to follow. Facing columns are the settled answer.
What the booklet has to carry, in the order the congregation will meet it.
The same order is set out beside the Ordinary Form, movement by movement, in the liturgical guide — useful if you are still deciding between the two forms, or if half your family will be seeing a Latin Mass for the first time.
Proper to this Mass and unchanging, which is why a Latin Mass booklet can print them in full where a Novus Ordo booklet has to leave slots.
The typographic decision that makes or breaks a Latin Mass booklet.
Set the Latin on the left-hand page and the English on the right, aligned line for line where the sense allows it. A guest who follows the Latin reads the left; a guest who does not reads the right; and neither has to hunt. Where a line cannot be aligned — the Latin is denser than the English almost everywhere — keep the paragraph breaks matched rather than the lines, so the two pages turn together.
Set the Latin in the display face and the English a point or so smaller in the reading face. The asymmetry is deliberate: the Latin is what is being said, the English is the gloss, and the typography should not pretend otherwise at a Mass offered in Latin.
If your choir is singing the Propers from the Graduale, printing the chant scores lets the congregation follow the neumes rather than only the words. Our Latin Mass templates include them; if a template needs a setting it does not carry, the customization request goes to us with the booklet.
Wording for each of these sections — cover, order of service, ministers, memorial — is worked through with specimens in the program wording guide, and the templates are grouped by form so the Latin Mass ones are one filter away.
Templates carrying the 1962 order, the Propers, the chant and facing Latin and English — you add the names and the details.
Free to design and preview. $5.99 when you download the print-ready PDF.
All 44 readings the Church offers for a Catholic wedding — Old Testament, psalms, New Testament, acclamations and Gospels — with the rules for choosing them.
Read the guide →What to actually write on the cover, the order of service, the wedding party page and the closing note — with wording you can copy.
Read the guide →The order of service in both forms of the Roman Rite, movement by movement, and what a wedding program should list for each.
Read the guide →