For any of you who have gotten married in the Catholic church, you have had to go through some kind of marriage prep. From what I have heard, there are many different ways to do this- from multiple meetings with the priest, to full weekend gatherings, to a number of small meetings with married couples. Ours was an 11 hour day, where we heard from 9 different married couples about all different aspects of marriage.
Going in to this day, I'm not going to lie and say that I was looking forward to it. Even though I had heard positive things about different Pre Cana experiences, I just knew that it was going to be an incredibly long day. Spending 11 hours doing ANYthing is difficult.
Arriving at 8:30 in the morning was a little rough. We may have been up too late/drinking a little too much the night before due to the Ohio-UNC basketball game, in which my beloved Bobcat's unfortunately lost in overtime. But damn that was a good game!
Back to Saturday though. It was definitely an early morning, but the day went by quickly. The day was broken down into multiple sections- including finances, every day life, and defining who you are as an individual and as a couple. There were also the super uncomfortable ones...sex and sexuality and natural family planning (not bashing it in any way...just not the right decision for us!). For each section, the married couple would talk for about 20 minutes. We then had 10 minutes to reflect on the topic on our own, and another 15 to discuss with our partner.
So we've been dating a little over 5 years, talking marriage (though maybe not super seriously...but still knowing that it was going to happen at some point) for the last 2. So we have talked...about a lot of things. The day brought up some new points for discussion, but for the most part, we had already discussed these things. And it honestly made me feel even better about our relationship to know that we had already had open discussions about our goals for life and how many kids we want and what we plan to do with our finance- before we were prompted to do so at Pre Cana.
It was a long day. But we both came out it feeling confident about our relationship and our upcoming marriage. We also came out of it stuffed! Our Pre Cana day was held at Holy Rosary Church, located in Little Italy. Dinner consisted of lots of Italian food, some good wine and a giant heart shaped chocolate cake- all served to us by the married couples who had been leading us throughout the day.
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| Our cute little candlelit dinner for 2, which a much appreciated glass of wine after a long day! |
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| Personal heart shaped cake with raspberries and whipped cream..yummm |
