Church and Legal Requirements

When it comes to the worst part of this whole wedding planning stage, the Church and Legal Requirements take the cake! Surprisingly, obtaining the Marriage License was way easier than requesting our respective parishes for permission letters and wedding banns. More importantly, we only paid a total of Php 250 for our Pre-Family Planning Seminar Certificate and Marriage License application in the City Hall, while we had to pay the church where Pete and I are getting married in Php 1,000 just for the Processing Fee of a whole slew of documents we had to get ourselves anyway! (Another Php 500 for Video&Photo coverage approval and a COMMISSION CUT from our supplier of the Church Flowers haha! W-O-W.) And get this, after we PICK UP the Permission Letters (for us to marry elsewhere and not in one of our parishes) and Wedding Banns' reply forms, we still have to pay a certain amount to our respective parishes for "allowing" us to marry in our chosen Church. And what's funny, these payments are exclusive of the total amount or balance we have to pay the Church for our Ceremony. (I guess the aircon, red carpet, ambiance and location of the Church, minus the flowers [separate pay pa, diba? :P], make up for the balance?!) Am I missing something? When did the Catholic Church, as an institution, become so money-hungry? Oh wait, it happened a really long time ago! Be forewarned brides-to-be, if you're Catholic, prepare for this!