Catholic Marriage-Prep Course

Hey guys! Has anyone else had to take the Marriage Prep course (for Catholic wedding ceremonies)? My FI and I are starting tomorrow, and I was kind of wondering what other people's experience with it has been? We are getting married in a Catholic Church in Cabo, but we are doing all the prep-work here in Vancouver. Looking forward to hearing some insight thanks!

hey! actually, we did our precana class last saturday as an all day one time get it over with quick option. it wasnt that bad actually. they gave us a workbook, we did some worksheets in it separately and compared our answers, we got to write a love letter to each other (what FI wrote me was really sweet, and i had expected him to write something goofy and blow it off, but i saved it because it was so heartfelt). id be happy to answer any questions you might have.

 

did you already do your FOCCUS questionnaires?

For my first marriage we got married in the CAtholic church, we had to do precana but it was special ed precana because my ex-husband had been previously married before me. So my experience with special ed precana was it was kind of a joke. You had to go through a workbook and we sat at tables with other couples and went through our answers. The good things about it is that it made you talk about some things that some couples dont before marriage (kids, money, etc) so I guess it is what you make of it. My ex was an ass so he blew it off, guess if we had taken it more seriously maybe I wouldnt have made the mistake of marrying him.

We weren't even given the option of doing it in one day. We had the choice of doing three saturday's in a row of 4-5hrs each, but that was it. The priest was actually not very excited about that and pushed us to do the 7 week every-thursday night class instead. He said we'll get more time to reflect. With that said he was not very impressed with us period, (a)we're "co-habitating" as he called and (b)we're planning a wedding away and not in his Church He gave us a loooooooong speech about all that, and suggested that I move back in with my parents. I'm not totally sure what the FOCCUS questionnaire is, because we weren't given anything like that yet. We're registering and attending our first official class tomorrow so we might be given it then.

awww! ever since I was a little kid my grandfather always used to tell me how there was a special person out there for everyone, and that God had put someone aside for me. I really believe that, now more than ever, so whatever happened before was probably just a way to bring you that much closer to your true love thanks for your experience:) i really appreciate it

We had our Pre-Cana weekend about 2 months ago - it was very....informative I guess I would say - The priest that was there kept talking about how children before marriage aren't really a part of God's plan because you are not supposed to have sex before marriage and if you do you are abusing God's plan - things I totally don't agree with - so it kind of struck a sour note with me.......We did get worksheets too and a notebook that we answered a bunch of questions on - I loved that part because it really re-emphasized that FI and I are meant for each other! We had our Focus test and that actually went really well! Our priest told us we did really good so that was exciting - then he set us up with a sponser couple from our church which we have met one time. We are meeting them 1x a week for the next 3 weeks. They were super nice and totally put this whole double wedding thing in perspective for me! I was really glad it went so well!! Sorry this is so long!!!

My friend took these clases in december & found them to be really useful. She wasn't looking forward to it, but ended up liking them.

hmmm, I wonder if its done the same way in Canada. The way that the priest described it to us was that we would go into sort of a "group-talk" setting. It would definatley be alot nice if it was a bit more one on one. I guess I'll find out more once we go tomorrow :S My friend did it about a year ago, and they asked a bunch of different questions and apprently when her and her FI didn't totally agree on them the priest made them feel really bad about wanting to get married *ugh

dont feel bad about how the priest treated you --- we also got the "you're sinners" blah blah blah long speech from the local priest here who is preparing us, because we also live together. and yeah they were irritated we are not getting married in the church at home, but they appreciated the fact that my FI is from mexico so that is why we are doing it there. honestly, sometimes id like to tell our priest to shove it, but we only have one more meeting with him before we're done. you will likely take your FOCCUS questionnaire on one of your nights of the class, we met privately with our priest to take it in january, and then did the all day precana because we didnt want to drag it out over 7 weeks because frankly we are busy people and it conflicted too much with our schedules. the foccus questionnaire is kind of nervewracking -- let me tell you in advance that any question you answer "unsure" takes points away from your "compatibility". going over the results of it with our priest was nice though because it got us talking about stuff we dont normally talk about, or things we had discussed awhile back but forgot about. we have one hour appointments with the priest, and we only got halfway through the results, so we are meeting with him again in a few weeks to discuss the other half. showing him our precana completion certificate and then he will put all our documents into an envelope with a letter signing off on our requirements being done, and we will give that to our family priest from new orleans that we are flying to cabo for our wedding.

we went to special precana because if you are over 30 (and my FI is 32) or if you have been married before, you have to go to the "special" one....honestly from what i heard from my friend who went to the regular one, its no different. some of the people at mine had kids already too. one thing i REALLY didnt like was how they pushed the natural family planning stuff on everyone. im sorry i just dont agree with all the teachings of the church, and THAT is one of them. its not my priest's business, and i didnt appreciate that part of the precana at all.

we also did really well on our foccus questionnaire, we got a bunch of 100 and 91 percents! our priest was asking us all these questions about how we know each other so well and he was impressed or whatever that we did so well on the questionnaire, and we really made a sticking point with him of the fact that "well since we live together" etc etc you shoulda seen his face. however, we do not have to do the whole sponsor couple meeting thing like some churches require. thankfully we are a part of a huge archdiocese and they dont require that.

We did the exact same thing, funny! The FOCCUS was so much more meaningful than we ever thought. And the one day class was really fun because the couple that led it was hilarious. There is something to be learned from this stuff so have fun with it.

BTW don't know how Canada is different, but here different parishes have different classes. They all count the same, and if you really want you could probably find a one day class. The first parish we contacted wanted us to attend 6 months of classes...we called the diocese who hooked us up with the one day course