Getting Married in a Modern but Religious Fashion

Talk to the priest about it. He will tell you what the church deems optional and what is required for the wedding to be sacremental. If he seems to be much too rigid, talk to a second priest to see if he agrees with the first one. With some priests there is a certain amount of conflating "what has always been done" with what the church requires.

My parish priest wouldn't even officiate at my wedding since I chose to get married in a church outwith the parish and not in my local church. He's very old-skool and thought that as the Church is a family, and your parish is your part of that family, I was betraying that family by marrying in a different parish outwith my regular "family area". I spoke to a priest from the other parish, and he was more than happy to do the honours (I still had to get written permission from my parish priest to do this, and he was none too happy about it).

So, yeah, what Aimless said.

i am of the understanding that catholic priests won't perform a wedding not held in the church. then again, there was a church in rochester where they performed secret gay weddings til they got caught and excommunicated or something... so i guess it just depends on the priest and atmosphere of his parish.

(if you want it really informal, get everyone to turn up dressed as goths or punks or something, fuck teh swanky hats'n'suits malarkey, and get people to sing rude words to all the hymns)