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Congrats! It sounds like you had a really positive experience; thanks for sharing!
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Thanks Mrs. Spring. It was a positive experience. I thought I'd share about it since I had questions before attending and I know many bees have had Pre Cana questions.
I loved our Engagement Encounter and I thought the topics had relavent questions that people should ask each other before they decide to get married.
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I don't 100% agree with the whole birth control Vs. NFP either. Our old Pastor at our church had no issues with birth control being used. his thing was "God gave us the brains to also know what we can & can't handle" my MIL told me once too "I am Catholic but I also have my own belief's" TRUST ME, you would not believe the insane amount of "Catholics" who are on some form of artificial birth control. Teenagers & newly weds especially. My generation youth group is a prime example too. don't let little things like that persuade you otherwise. The pre-cana is there to "educate" not force you to believe. just nod your head & go with the flo. once you are married you are free to simply live your life as you wish. its not like the church is going to put a freakn microscope over you & your husband, you know, I just let it go in one ear & out the other. same with my husband & we were both raised & still are Catholic. no such thing as the perfect church. besides there is more to it than just birth control. its about your relationship with Jesus. anyway.. .. Good luck to you guys, glad to hear your experience was over all a good one. My sister enjoyed her pre-cana, & she as well tuned out the NFP stuff. (chuckle). anyway . . . Take care. =)
@ kayakgirl73 - Glad to hear you enjoyed CEE retreat. My fiance and I had a wonderful time as well. To your posting, What is it that you do not agree with NFP, exactly? I wasn't able to ascertain this from your original posting.
I actually sorta wish our Pre-Cana weekend had been a bit longer or more in-depth. I mean, I know we're going to be able to communicate well once married; it was certainly helpful to be gently guided into discussing tough topics -- I think I would have liked to cover more than the four we did, though.
I actually can't wait for our Pre Cana, I hear a lot of good things about it. We really like our church and our priest! Ours won't be until Oct. so we still have a while.
I went to my Engagement Encounter last month and really enjoyed it. My fiance and I already have a great communication but this was a nice weekend to just spend together. A lot of the issues that they have us discuss, we'd already discussed prior to attending but we still enjoyed talking about. I would recommend it to every couple getting married because it's a great avenue to share.
My fiance and I just completed the Engaged Encounter in the Arlington Diocese as well, and we really enjoyed it. Just like Kayak, we were afraid that it would be too preachy for us, but it was not at all! It gave us a a chance to finally clear the air about a few issues, in a safe, loving way. The priest there had flown all the way in from San Antonio - my facorite city - and he was great.
I really recommend Engaged Encounter to anyone. I know they aren't everywhere, but if you can find one and you're Catholic (although I suppose some others may be interested as well) the weekend is a great investment and a nice opportunity to just focus on each other. It has definitely made me fall even more in love :)
I'm in the Arlington Diocese too! My parish allows us to attend something called "Conference for the Engaged" or something like that, which is only $85 and 8 hrs on a saturday instead of $250 and a whole weekend. I assume since my parish allows it, it is also approved thoughout the diocese. But after that we will also have to attend a NFP seminar. We wont be going to the conference until Jan or Feb. Has anyone been to this shortened conference?
We obivously didn't go to the shorter conference, because our priest in the Arlington diocese didn't recommend it. He said it's a lot of info in one day and you don't really have a chance to talk together like you do at EE. If the $250 or so of EE is too expensive they offer monetary help. The EE cost includes the hotel room and all meals.
I did Engaged Encounter (also Arlington Diocese!) and DH and I LOVED it. It was just a weekend of us discussing our relationship in depth, and I really feel that it improved our communication, and helped us work through a few issues we'd just "agreed to disagree" on before. I thought it was worth every penny, esp since your room and food were included :)
My FI recently went to our CEE (Tallahassee diocese) and we really enjoyed it. We had read/heard that it was completely worthless, but we felt like it was definitely a "you get out of it what you put in to it" situation. I will say, it was really nice to have dedicated time to talk about our relationship. My FI even took it seriously too! So proud of him ;)
Adding to this thread rather than starting a new one, since it applies to me. My FI and I did engaged encounter last weekend in the Baltimore archdiocese and LOVED it! We ended up having the best conversations, and we really got a chance to discuss a lot in-depth and lay some great groundwork for the future. I found it helpful and informative, even though we've been together for over 7 years. This probably makes me sound crazy, but I feel like I love him even more than I did before the weekend! I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for pre-cana!
We also did the EE weekend with the Arlington Diocese in VA and highly recommend it. It wasn't preachy (except for the NFP part). We were going in afraid of surprises, but it was nice to see that there were no topics presented that we hadn't discussed already!
I think even if you're not Catholic, you can benefit from it, if only for the reassurance of it all. You also get to spend a lot of time together away from everything.
And we met some great couples there too!
Gah! You are all making me very sad right now. FI and I are scheduled for the EE weekend later this summer, but we just found out that he will most likely be out to sea (he is in the Navy) the weekend for which we are scheduled--and it is the ONLY one we would have been able to make too!
Sigh. you are lucky to have been able to do it.
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My FI and I went on our engaged encounter weekend in the Arlington, VA diocese this past weekend. We really enjoyed it and we got a lot out of it. I was skeptical at first because I was afraid it would be preachy. It wasn't. We listed to presentations, then we each answered questions individually and the we got together privately with our FI and discussed our answers. There was one presentation on NFP, but no questions on it. It was done right before our long afternoon break. NFP is something I have a lot of trouble agreeing with the church's position.
Engaged Encounter was way better than the marriage prep meetings we have had with couples from our parish. It also helped more than the Focuss because we had no discussion of our Focuss results with the priest. We had no access to relook at the questions so it was hard to tell if our different answers were just a matter of intrepreting the question differently or a bigger disagreement.
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