I know of a Cathedral Director who was being prodded by his diocese to have more volunteer singers at that Cathedral’s televised Mass. It was all about optics and not sound. That Cathedral Director toyed around with the idea providing a paid quartet at weddings of couples who agreed to a 6 month term (BEFORE the wedding) in the Cathedral Choir.

Then the world sorta ended and that Diocese no longer wanted more singers on television. They just wanted 4 of them and they wanted them in plexiglass boxes.

That doesn’t really answer your question but it was the thought that came to mind.

But, yeah, charge them.

We have an 8 voice choir that will be singing for a wedding in rural Minnesota this October ... If I remember correctly, I'll be taking my normal fee of $200, and then each if the singers are getting something in the realm of $50-$100 each.

I need to finalize things, but I think the final number will be about $1000 total for music for this couple's wedding.

If anyone enquires about my (volunteer) choir singing for a wedding, I just quote for myself plus a quartet or octet. These may be drawn from within the ranks of the choir if capable, or from outside. Going rate (this is not in the US) is about 200USD per singer, about 300 for myself as organist/conductor. Weddings are so expensive as it is, this is far from the largest expense they will incur for the amount of beauty value added; I have no qualms. In fact, I'm thinking of raising my own fee just for the sheer amount of admin involved in planning for picky couples over a 10+ month period.

It's because people consider choirs simply to be an embodied-android presentation of music they'd otherwise play from a recording.

I don’t want to go into all of the details publicly though I did tell Jonathan and others can ask in private but I’ll say this: my pastor decreed that musicians must accept the fee, to the extent that a couple will not be given music for free and the requisite amount of money is paid to the church a month in advance, to be distributed accordingly the day of the marriage. The individual musicians are then able to return the money to the couple after the Mass or donate it to the church or otherwise not keep it as income. But following the good advice of a forum member who has a lot of similar weddings in another commuter parish, I encourage neither, and I don’t allow peer pressure: you can take, return, or donate your fee, but it’s no one’s business.

We got paid for a funeral, but ordinarily we would do those for free. We just have so few (two burials in six years, one Mass of the third day where the deceased had been buried having died out of state near family) that we’re unlikely to have the funeral of a really cultivated person requesting something like a polyphonic Mass (and we’d probably only need to pay our non-Catholic section leaders if it’s familiar rep).

Yeah it’s a rounding error and yet.

I think music was actually the most expensive line item for our Church basement reception wedding...

Well, [church basement wedding receptions] aren’t typical anymore

It depends really depends on the parish, the local culture, liquor laws, and public health regulations, etc.

Where I live, there are couples who rent out the hall at the nearby Anglican Use Ordinariate parish, which is significantly less expensive than renting out a full service banquet hall at a hotel, but what one saves in money, one picks up in labour and stress involved. There are many Catholic wedding receptions that take place there from nearby parishes.

If one has a parish with a suitable space and a person on staff, who can handle organizing the logistics, navigate the liquor laws and public health regulations for private events, as well as and vendors, etc, it’s a more viable option.

and even for the church fees a cantor (even one capable of doing the propers alone) is not that expensive, and the organist here is a volunteer but does get compensation for weddings. Given the time involved it’s more than fair, and that would be less than the cheapest photographer worth paying around here.

Is that really the message we as a Church want to give to people for whom this may be the one few times they step foot in a Catholic Church and attend Mass? I don’t attend many weddings anymore, but the last Catholic wedding I attended that wasn’t at my parish, was the saddest liturgical affair I had been to for awhile. Big beautiful Gothic revival church, great acoustics, terrible over-mic’d cantor with too much vibrato and an out of tune piano.

The point I’m trying to make is that Catholic marriages are not private events. The sacraments are public and belong to the Church, not the couple. For that reason, I am of the humble opinion, that we as a Church have an greater obligation to provide Catholic couples who are practicing Catholics in full communion with the church (ie: not couples who are shacking up and not properly disposed to receive the sacrament of Matrimony), the resources necessary to have a nuptial Mass with a greater degree of solemnity than just what one would expect for your typical Sunday Mass. We do it with every other sacrament (minus extreme unction and penance), but matrimony we seem to leave it to fall entirely on the couple to cover financially. If we truly believe lex orandi, lex credendi, then when it comes to the sacrament of Matrimony, it reasons that our nuptial Masses should be aesthetically more elaborate than the reception to properly teach the congregation the dignity, solemnity, and importance or marriage, regardless of the couples’ financial means.

@Jahaza I think I sang for that. I can’t believe how much time has gone by.

I am very sure that they are cheap. That is not exclusive of folks not being able to pay for things.

LOL no they are a pain. Do you do any music for weddings where you have to directly interface with the couple? Because I don’t appreciate being told that I am wrong in what I and our parish wedding coordinator go through with couples.

Weddings, and funerals, are a huge time suck.

Bingo.