to not understand why girls need to wear a wedding dress to get confirmed?

[AndyWarholsBanana]

DH is from an Irish Catholic family so I have seen loads of photos of his nieces on their confirmation days in a white dress with a veil and always thought it looked a bit odd but never quite got the connection with it looking like a wedding dress.
Yesterday, there were 2 girls aged about 10 going into our local Catholic church and they were unmistakeably dressed as brides - full length white dresses with trains and veils. I just found it really disconcerting and a bit yuck. I'm sure they weren't bothered and probably enjoyed getting dressed up but it just freaked me out a bit. Is it supposed to symbolise getting married to God or something?
I don't know if I'm overthinking it but I am very aware through one of the charities I donate to about the forced marriage of young girls in some developing countries and wonder if this is part of the reason seeing prepubescent girls in wedding dresses makes me feel so uneasy.

I am not meaning to be patronising (and I have no indication any of the posters on this thread are Irish catholic, unless they expressly say so). I am just trying to point out the huge difference between belief and faith. I have been 8yo, I have an 8yo. I believed at 8yo, I most definitely did not have faith. At 8 I had never been tempted. I had never been tested by God.

That all came later.

I always thought it looked like a mini wedding dress, too. Mind you I also find the idea of trussing yourself up like a sacrificial virgin to get married quite odd. I guess all these ritual dresses have some sort of pagan root, which may explain it.

I think the white wedding dress is a relatively new fashion. I think it was Queen Victoria who started it.

At 8 I had never been tempted. I had never been tested by God.

Well, you might not have been but who's to say other eight year olds haven't? By the age of eight, I had certainly been exposed to sad, testing times as I'm sure many, many others have. Eight year olds can make morally significant decisions.

I was raised Catholic by a devout mother and by the age of eight was already a fairly hardened agnostic. No amount of churchyifing and "indoctrinication" could breathe belief or faith into me.

So if it works that way for a child, why can't another child have faith?

I've not been confirmed but I did kind of wear a wedding dress for First Holy Communion. It was the white dress Mum got married in and she had cut it down. I didn't wear a veil either, just a white mantilla.

Our parents decided that we should decide ourselves when we wanted to be Confirmed. So I haven't been. Well lapsed now...

Nocomet nowadays it's usual for churches to give communion to baptised adults and sometimes children - it's unusual now for communion to be dependent on confirmation. Certainly I recieved communion before confirmation and there was no pressure on me to be confirmed.

So, if you have Holy Communion age 8, do you get wine?

The Catholic churches I've been to in Ireland have no wine. The ones I've been to England have wine off to the side seperate from the communion but only a few went for it. The one I go to now, a Polish one in Sweden, has no wine but on some days the priest dips the wafer in what appears to be tripple concentrated alcohol.

My ds is 11 in year 6 Roman Catholic primary, he made his 1st holy communion in year 3 and was 8, boys wore suits, girls white dresses, and his class then got confirmed last summer in year 5, he was 10. All children wore their school uniform.
Communion age has changed this year to year 4,( 8 and 9 year old's) though I don't know why. In the past they had children arriving at church in limos and horse and carriage etc, was very showy, last few years have been simpler:)

Myrtle not in our rural bit of middle England.

If you're not confirmed you take your service book up with you and you recieve your blessing, but no bread or wine.

Me, I lurk in my pew. I'm just an eccentric bit of the furniture. The person who appears periodically, helps wash up sometimes, but makes no pretence at believing, but then I think many older CofE parishioners go for peace, a sense of tradition and to feel part of the village too.

Myrtle not in our rural bit of middle England.

If you're not confirmed you take your service book up with you and you recieve your blessing, but no bread or wine.

Me, I lurk in my pew. I'm just an eccentric bit of the furniture. The person who appears periodically, helps wash up sometimes, but makes no pretence at believing, but then I think many older CofE parishioners go for peace, a sense of tradition and to feel part of the village too.

They wear either school uniform or an alb ( which is a cream robe over their clothes) for the ceremony then its usually smartish clothing underneath the alb.

I'm Irish (albeit a northerner) and catholic and have never heard of this!! wtf is an alb??

The white dress for communion thing is just a tradition and tbh it matters more than anything else on the day (looking nice, that is). It's pretty much all the girls give a shit about anyway (aside from their after-party and the amount of money people will give them).

Hmmm nocomet what diocese? That's very unusual - even in very high churches it's the norm for all baptised Christians to be welcome to receive communion. IME this is encouraged as otherwise Christians from denominations with baptism but no confirmation (eg Methodists) could not partake, and ecumenism is encouraged. I think I've only ever encountered one church which insists on confirmation before communion.

Never an alb is the plain white robe which priests wear under the stole and chasuble, and acolytes often wear.

I haven't the foggiest idea what they do with Methodists. I'm guessing they come under the good standing in their own church bit (I didn't know they didn't have confirmation)

Children certainly don't get communion and adult visitors for christenings get blessed.

I was always firmly of the belief that you had to be confirmed to have communion except in very liberal churches that wanted to encourage DCs (which ours isn't brilliant at. Children sing, go to fun club, come with school, but don't disturb services).

Also with a CofE school that doesn't use faith for admissions as it's undersubscribed noticing which DCs were weren't baby used could be divisive too.

DD had a plain white dress and no veil for her First Communion in 2012.

DS1 is making his next week. He goes to Mass most weeks, but up until a couple of years ago did not believe in God. I always tell him no-one has any proof. He is still not 100% sure what he believes, just like most of us, I suspect, but First Communion is a cultural milestone, so he has decided to celebrate it.

My experience is as nocomet's- unconfirmed adults do not take communion, just get blessed.

I also subscribe to the view (as nocomet details upthread) that confirmation is a public attestation of one's faith. Is this not the case for catholics then?

I'm not the most devout Catholic in the world (understatement) but I don't think the white dresses are that ridiculous. Every religion has random traditions and outfits for certain occasions.

Ahhh... the alb thing is what priests wear. That rings a bell. I have never seen a child getting confirmed wearing a robe. Converse boots, yes, lol.

I grew up in a Catholic church in the US. First communion was a white dress to symbolize purity and it could have a veil or flower crown if that's what we wanted. Mine was a flower crown. But that's the last a white dress was worn for any sacraments. The communion dress is only worn by children. Once you're an adult joining the faith, you just wear something nice because you're getting all the sacraments in one night normally on Easter vigil.

Confirmation came in high school when we were old enough to confirm our faith. I didn't get confirmed because I don't believe in Catholicism and it was part of my teen rebellion to make a show of rejecting all things my parents believed in. You could wear whatever you wanted for confirmation.

8 year olds can have faith, I was skeptical at a young age while others were not. I kept insisting that the wine was not literally the blood of Christ, because it was wine. My Catholic school teacher kept steadfast that it was not a symbol, but literally his blood because the priest blessed it. I kept arguing it after first communion too that it wasn't blood and the teacher just gave an exasperated explanation that if Jesus could turn water into wine, he could turn his blood into wine too. I still don't get it, but other kids in my class apparently did.

The methodist churches I have been to simply say that by taking communion you are ready to dedicate yourself to living a Christian life. They never made a big deal out of it. At the point in the service communion was offered everyone went an kneeled around the alter. If you wanted to take communion you put your head down and cupped hands out. If not you put your head down and hands on your lap and you received a blessing instead.

I liked the methodists. It all seemed much more about a personal journey than a ceremonial one. If I were to ever find my Christian faith, methodist is how I would go.

I,m catholic I made my first communion at seven it was a big occasion and I wore a white dress and veil I was confirmed at thirteen everybody was between eleven and thirteen as it was when the bishop came to the church he confirmed us ,its all changed now children make both their first holy communion and confirmation within a few weeks at the age of eight ,in my diocese anyway and its not the bishop anymore the parish priest can confirm the children.

NeverTalksToStrangers I am in the Republic of Ireland so maybe its different here but yeah children making their confirmation usually wear an alb over their clothes. Its just for the ceremony, they take it off before leaving the church.