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I 100% agree with you. I have totally been enjoying my marriage prep with our priest.
One of the best things our priests told us was about marriage as a covenant. Legally, marriage is a contract. But it can be broken. However, when we receive the sacrament of marriage, we are entering into a covenant- something that can't be broken. I'm obviously not as eloquent as he was, but it was great.
I LOVE going to our classes, FI is catholic, I am not. Its so funny because even as we drive to our classes (almost an hour away) we are hasing out details and i'm stressing over the latest wedding detail, but then we get there, and talk about US and our future together and everything in between. Its very refreshing, and helps keep me in focus thats for sure.
We recently finished Pre Cana and there were parts of it I really liked - questions and scenarios that really got us to think about and discuss things that we may have never really discussed in-depth previously. And yes, it helps put into perspective that the wedding is about the marriage and a lifetime commitment, not just a big party that we sometimes get overly caught up in. :)
I'm leaving in 2 hrs for 'engaged encounter weekend.' I'll let you know how it went after!
We are a little older (30s) so found that our pre-marriage counseling has not yet addressed anything that we have not already discussed in-depth (FH has been married before, and was married young, so I think he's spent a lot of time thinking through things this time he didn't the first time around). While I am looking forward to our wedding as an AWESOME party and celebration, what I am really looking forward to is our marriage.
Just to throw our two cents in... we just completed an EE weekend and it was honestly amazing and such a gift to our relationship, our marriage, and our future. It was money and time WELL spent! We both went into the weekend not really that into it as something that we "had" to do because we are getting married in a Catholic church. Not that we didn't really want to do it, just more that we had really busy weeks and were thinking that we would have preferred to relax on friday instead of driving an hour to the retreat center. We've been together over 5 years and have lived together for 2 and we both agree that marriage is a union and a sacrament, but we just felt like we didn't really need a weekend of "counseling".
It was such a great experience and time to just be with my future husband. Non of the questions or talks were things that we hadn't talked about or didn't know what we were going to do or where we each stood, but it was more just wonderful to see that we were totally on the same page about EVERYTHING. We both knew where we wanted to be the improvements in our communication or relationship and where we could be more helpful to the other person. My fiance is not Catholic, and honestly most of this prep stuff that we've been doing he does because he knows that it is important to me to have a Church wedding, so he goes along and is amazing with everything, but if I wasn't Catholic, it's not like he would be doing it on his own... UNTIL this weekend. We went out to dinner the night after or EE weekend was over and he said that he thinks it should be a requirement to get a marriage license in any state to go through one of these weekends. He even donated a large sum of money at the end of the weekend to EE (on top of the almost $400 that the weekend cost) because he said that we should cover people who couldn't afford to do this because it is THAT important to do for a healthy marriage. We didn't know that we could be more in love but we do feel that we are closer as a result of this weekend.
Two hours into the weekend, on Friday night he came into my room where I was writing with a HUGE smile on is face, sat on my roommates bed and said " This is great. I'm so glad we're doing this. I love you so much wabride!" So we would recommend it 200%. And if your fiance isn't that into it, as long as he just goes with an open heart and mind he will end up loving the experience!
p.s. we too are 29 and 30, both never married. We are extremely open with each other, each other's best friends, and have discussed everything that was talked about very in-depth over the past 5+ years. It's just a committed 2.5 days that are JUST for the two of you. No phones, no emails, no wedding planning. Just marriage and your commitment. We would have never spent 2.5 solid days just thinking about these things, and NOTHING else, I mean even if you were at home dedicating the same amount of time you would still have to think about "what are we having for dinner" and at the retreat you don't even think about this. Everything non-partner related is taken care of for you. To each their own, I just thought I would share our experience because I was searching sites for experiences too before we went.
Happy and healthy marriages to you all!!
EE is a wonderful weekend. I wrote a couple of posts about my experience back in May.
Marriage prep, so far has been great. Our EE was a wonderful weekend away from everything else other than us. It was just myseld and the FI, similar to what it will be for the most part once we are married. You hit the nail on the head... not many opportunities arise for people to talk about things other than what is on the surface. It's quite nice to think about what the true meaning of the Sacrament is...
For life.... Yes, marriage is intended as a 1 time event, that takes us to the end of our lives together
Fidelity.... Yes, fidelity as a promise to GOD and to our spouse, that no matter what the world throws at us, there will be unconditional love
Children.... Yet another wonderful blessing that is provided when GOD feels the time is right... Note, that I did not say when we feel the time is right. We are ultimately on HIS (GOD's) schedule...
So yes... if you take into account everything... cake matters little, party matters little, flowers, photography... all matter little. The real important part, is the Sacrament...
GOD BLESS...
I agree with you that it's a great way to remind you of why you're actually going to all this work... We got married in the Episcopal Church (Catholic-lite) with a priest that grew up Catholic, so we were required to do pre-marital counseling. We went once a month for 10 months before the wedding. We got a chance to talk about priorities we might not have discussed on our own time, explain to each other why we picked the readings we wanted for our ceremony, etc. It also gave us a chance to form a good relationship with our priest, and now that we're married, he still checks up on us.
It was a great break from the checklists and errands of wedding planning, and it reminded me that you're preparing for a lifetime together, not just the one day (although it's still a pretty amazing day!)
My husband and I both started grad school shortly after our wedding, and we've definitly gone back to some of the things we talked about in counseling to help us make sure our relationship doesn't suffer because of school or family pressure.
Enjoy the wedding planning and your pre-cana! It's all totally worth it!
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I'd love to hear the beehive chat a bit about marriage preparation.
I'm doing the Catholic pre-cana marriage prep with my FI...in fact, we're required to in order to marry in the Church (I'm Catholic, FI is not.)
I'm excited about it because I've gotten to a point in our wedding planning where I feel like I'm losing sight of what really matters about our wedding. Between bridesmaid dresses, family drama, tent decor, travel arrangements, rehearsal dinners, escort cards, caterer contracts (etc etc etc) I think about our wedding nearly 24/7. Going to my church's intake session was just another thing to check off on my to-do list until we got about half-way through the interview form they had to go through with me. The woman asked me a couple of really obvious, simple questions that really struck me, and it felt like a breath of fresh air. She asked me if I plan to promise to be with FI until death, if I would be faithful to him and only him for the rest of my life, and if we planned to welcome children into our family.
I've already said "yes" to his proposal, and I know I will be making these promises when we get married. In general, I know those are things I'm entering into by marrying my fiance. But as I plan my wedding, nobody is talking to me about what "forever" and "faithfulness" and "family" really mean. But really, those are the lasting things that matter, and that will be with me long after my bridal bouquet wilts and my bridesmaid dresses go out of style.
I don't mean to say those other things aren't important. But it was nice to be asked about some of the deeper things, and I'm excited to get further into our marriage prep so that FI and I can start to appreciate even more what it is we are about to enter into. With our busy jobs, applying to grad school, and planning a wedding, I know that we wouldn't take the time out of our days to discuss that stuff on our own, so I'm really grateful to my church for giving us a structured way to focus on it. Some of it will feel less helpful than others (we already live together, won't be practicing natural family planning, and don't fully agree with everything the church teaches on those topics), but I know we'll get something out of it (in fact, I already have!)
How do the rest of you feel about marriage preparation classes/counseling? Have you found it helpful? A waste of time? If you aren't marrying in a church or don't prescribe to a faith, was there another way you and your SO got prepared to tackle the bigger questions about getting married?