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ugh not any help but we were about to sign up for the march one as well.
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Are you just looking at the options on the Philadelphia Archdiocese website? Because my Fiance and I are doing Precana at the church we are getting married at, and it is one all-day Saturday program. I am a little unclear from your description if you have contacted the church you belong to, but I would try that and see if they offer a Saturday Precana.
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@Sunflowers --Yes, I started by contacting my local parish priest, and while they offer a twice-yearly pre-cana, we are not available the weekend of the spring session. Otherwise that would have been our best option. Many parishes don't have that information posted on their websites (if they have a website). I don't have time to call other parishes individually. When and where is your program?
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Ours is on March 14th at St. Andrew's Church in Newtown, Bucks County. And we are only paying $100 for the day. They also only offered it twice a year, and the other option was on our wedding day in November, so obviously that doesn't work! I figure that's probably standard, so we were lucky that we are both available that day. I just checked the website, and it says that if you can't make the scheduled dates of Precana to contact the Archdiocesan Family of Life Center. That may be who you contacted, but if not, their phone number is 610-660-9002.
Good luck! I hope you can get this figured out.
OMG we are having the same problem, we live in Ardmore but our wedding will be in Wilkes Barre where my FIs family is. We finally gave up on trying to do our pre-cana in philly and will be driving up to wilkes barre (it's about 1 1/2 hour drive) to do ours . . . I'm not sure why the Philadelphia Archdiocese is so hard to work with, it's VERY annoying!
Follow-up
On the advice from all of you, I called a number of Philly area churches to find out if they had a pre-cana. St. Mary's of the Assumption in Manayunk does, but it's limited to 30 couples and it's already full. So, I went back to the Archdiocese. My pastor suggested that if the Archdiocese wouldn't let me switch courses then he would call on our behalf (v nice of him!). This wasn't needed. The woman I spoke to this time around was very helpful and agreed to switch us into the March course. Situation resolved!
I still wish that there were more pre-cana courses offered and that the Archdiocese offered some of the Fri night/Sat all day courses. Weekday evenings can be difficult due to work committments and grad student schedules!
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Argh! Has anyone else in the Philadelphia Archdiocese experienced difficulty in scheduling their pre-cana course? Here's my story:
Getting married in Vermont in July 2009. Priest who will be doing our ceremony suggested getting in touch with our local parish in Phila to complete the pre-cana requirement. After reading on local Phila parish website about pre-cana courses and clicking through to Archdiocese website for schedule, was very disappointed with available courses. It appears to me that there doesn't seem to be enough courses at times
that are convenient to working professionals or graduate students.
Option 1 - Engaged Encounter: FI is not Catholic so the Engaged Encounter Weekend Retreat I think would be too much for him not to mention he is a grad student and an entire weekend time committment would be extremely difficult. That leaves us with the meager selection of the 4-evening courses.
Option 2 - Evening Courses (4 evenings): FI has meetings for his job on Monday evenings through May and classes on Wednesday and Thursday evenings through April 28 then finals (two weeks). FI is also considering taking an internship in Vermont for the summer, which eliminates June courses. This leaves two courses: Tuesday evenings in March in Phila for 4 weeks (best choice) and Tue/Thu evenings in first two weeks of May in Warminster (2nd choice, but not great as during FI's finals). Warminster is 40 minutes away, at rush hour even further.
Phone the Family Life Office to ask before registering if the March course still has availability. Woman on phone was v short with me and said i "just have to send it in b/c it's filling up fast." Sent in our $150 and registration immediately for fear of not getting into March course. Turns out March is full and we were assigned the May course, which, yes, was our second choice but not a good option.
Didn't think about it at the time, but looked up Camden, NJ Archdiocese pre-cana and they have much more reasonable course schedule with several options for the Friday eve/all day Saturday type course that married friends have told us about. Horray! And Camden has online registration that tells immediately which courses are still available. Bonus! Asked local Phila pastor about Camden, but he brushed off question and said to call Phila Family Life and plead case for original March course. Harumph.
Questions for Bees: Has anyone taken pre-cana outside their respective archdiocese? Has anyone had to cancel/change registration for pre-cana? Will Phila Family Life give me a hard time for changing to Camden? Will they give me my $150 back so I can apply to Camden? Why does Phila have so few pre-cana courses and why don't they have any of the Fri night/Sat day ones?
Am I being unreasonable and not willing to change my schedule for God? Granted most of conflicts are because of FI's schedule. Am also concerned that if I have to travel for work (not an unreasonable request) that pre-cana mid-week evening courses would have to take precedent. I think work would understand, but given the economy I need to make work a priority too for fear of losing job while FI is in school and only one full-time income between us.
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