St. Thérèse Picked Their Wedding Day!
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With 6 and a half years on CatholicMatch, Mike was ready to get it right.
His brother, having met his wife on CatholicMatch years prior, encouraged him to “just try it.” But after dating over 20 people, Mike, 42, still had not found the right woman for him.
“I spent a good five years narrowing down what it is I’m really looking for…what is super important.” As Mike closed in on his search, he got a message from a woman named Cate.
After years spent in consecrated life and missionary work, Cate was open.
Cate spent most of her 20s discerning a religious vocation with a community. But when God closed that door in her 30s, Cate found herself wondering if she was in fact called to marriage. She spent the next many years in and out of relationships, but none of them seemed to point her in the right direction. “I never had an openness to online dating because I felt like it was too intentional: if I’m supposed to marry someone, he’ll come into my life.”
Yet during the Lent of 2020, while on a mission in Peru, Cate, 38, got stuck in the country due to the Covid travel lockdown. Upon her return to the US, Cate had a weird conviction from the Holy Spirit to try CatholicMatch—“It wasn’t just online dating, it was CatholicMatch specifically.”
Three weeks onto the site and a couple of messages later, Cate decided she wanted to broaden her search. Living in Louisiana, she had primarily been looking for men in the South. Once she widened the search radius to the whole US, she came across Mike’s profile in Colorado.
She was very attracted to everything in his profile, and decided to send him a message telling him what she liked about him. “I sent him a message, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up and expect to hear back from him.”
But, when Cate checked the next morning, Mike had already responded!
For Mike, who had committed by then to always answering every person who messaged him, Cate’s message especially caught his eye. He thought her directness was brave. “In today’s society it’s sometimes hard to have permission to pursue people,” Mike admits.
Mike messaged Cate back that night, and from there the messages became quite engaging. “I wanted to ask more questions, so I quickly moved to giving her my contact information and asked for a video date,” Mike states. Cate remarks that this surprised and impressed her. Even though she took the initiative to send the first message, Mike picked up the role of pursuer from there.
On their first video date, Mike admits that they talked more than he even knew he was “built for.” It lasted for almost three hours, yet it felt so fun and natural. “By the end, the corners of my mouth hurt from smiling so much,” Mike admits!
After the second video date, they both knew that they had to meet in person. Yet with it being the summer of 2020, the Covid pandemic made travel plans challenging. It took five more video dates before Cate finally hopped on a plane in August to meet Mike in person.
They were afraid they wouldn’t recognize each other behind their masks!
At the Denver airport, Mike nervously awaited Cate’s arrival: “I kept thinking, ‘Oh man, do I look like I did in my pictures?’” Suddenly, he got a text message from Cate that had three words: “I see you.”
“I recognized him from a distance, and when I texted him I saw him look at his phone, so I knew it was him,” Cate remembers. Cate then tapped Mike on the shoulder, and Mike turned to see “the bluest eyes” looking out at him over a mask. They hugged, and then got in Mike’s car and drove nearly an hour to the city where Mike lived.
They spent the day talking, and Mike grilled dinner for Cate at his place. Afterward, Mike drove Cate an hour back to Denver so she could stay in a hotel near the airport. “I didn’t want her to have any obligation to see me the next day, so I offered to get her a hotel close to the airport.” Yet while saying goodbye, they decided to officially start dating.
“Have I ever told you I want to marry you?”
After a few more visits and a lot more canceled trips due to Covid difficulties, Cate moved to Colorado that December after getting permission to work remotely. Their relationship continued to grow as they learned to live in the same city and navigate the ups and downs of life.
One day in May, Mike called Cate after work and told her that he wanted to take her out to dinner. Surprised and excited, Cate dressed up and waited for Mike. They first went to the Adoration chapel at the local parish, and while sitting together in prayer, Cate suddenly heard Mike say, “Have I ever told you I want to marry you?” He then took out a ring and proposed!
Cate of course accepted Mike’s proposal, and the two joyfully celebrated all evening long at a local restaurant.
A quick engagement helped them focus on what matters most.
Soon after, Mike and Cate sought out marriage preparation at their parish. They applied for a dispensation to have a shorter engagement than the diocesan requirement. Sadly, Mike’s dad was dying from stage IV cancer, and they were hopeful that he could make the wedding. The church agreed, and they set their wedding date for late September. Yet tragically, Mike’s dad passed away a month after their engagement.
Soon after, Cate and Mike were informed by their parish that there would not be a priest for the date of their wedding. After the funeral for Mike’s dad, they realized that his parents’ parish was actually the perfect setting for their small wedding. Their same September wedding date was still not available at that parish, but the following Friday was–October 1st.
When Cate saw the date, which is the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, she knew it was providential. “Thérèse totally picked the date,” Cate remarks, who has had a devotion to the Saint for over the past decade, and relied on her intercession as she started to date Mike.
An intimate wedding done side-by-side.
At the wedding Mass, Mike and Cate chose to process down the aisle together, rather than the tradition of just the bride processing in. They met up in the back of the church before the Mass began, and then “did the whole thing side-by-side.”
For many reasons, the couple chose to have a small wedding, with just 35 guests in attendance consisting mostly of family and some close friends. “Everybody there was somebody that you could ride the river with… people that would stand the test of time,” Mike remarks.
Though their wedding day went by so quickly, it was filled with a “supernatural peace.” Now, just months into marriage, that peace has continued into the day-to-day living of the Sacrament. “I love being a wife,” Cate admits. Looking out for each other, learning to be each other’s “safe space,” and seeing life “through new eyes,” are all hallmarks of their newlywed life together.
Mike and Cate hope their story inspires people to persevere in meeting someone: “It’s been worth the wait!"