I always believed that I would be married in a Catholic church. After all, I grew up Catholic. I do believe that marriage has lost something of the "before god and neighbors" that it traditionally meant. Instead, we obsess about dresses and flower arrangements.
I will not be married in a Catholic church. I have not attended a mass in years, nor do I believe God, if he exists, cares very much about my actions. It is not my agnosticism that drove me from a Catholic wedding but the deeply troubling child abuse scandal. My Catholic relatives continue to ignore these events or treat them as a few corrupted priests. But if the distinction between Catholicism and Protestants is based largely on the authority of the Pope and priesthood, this scandal rocks the foundations of the church's raison d'etre. None of this matters very much to me except insofar as I cannot in good conscience stand before such a untrustworthy authority to vow eternal commitment to the most beloved person in my life.
This poses a bit of a problem since there are precious few of these kinds of authorities left to which such a promise might be addressed. The alternative officiants are various Protestant ministers, new age gurus, or friends credentialed last week. I find the idea of a friend officiating a moral commitment somewhat underwhelming. Of course, it's true that in the strict sense I only need to make this promise to myself and my partner. But the performance of that promise is the reason we have weddings. Maybe we replace authority with extravagance as a way to simulate lost gravitas.
(My sister said the Church made her and her husband attend hours of counseling and tests. As my brother-in-law said, I am not sure why an unmarried priest is giving me relationship advice. Their assumption is probably that most problems can be solved by prayer. In any event, I am not anxious to put my partner through that nonsense either.)