Yes We Can-A (Pre-Cana)

This winter we checked a big item off our do-do list: Pre-Cana!

As many of you know, this is a prerequisite to getting married in a Catholic Church and many bees have already discussed their own experiences with it.  

Disclaimer: Please understand that this is only mine and Mr. Waterfall's personal opinion of Pre-Cana and everyone has a different journey. With that in mind, here is our take on it:

We meant to get Marriage Prep done last summer, while we still had a lot of free time, but always had scheduling conflicts. After putting it off again and again we buckled down and blocked off the next available date; no rescheduling, no excuses.

I begrudgingly sent the diocese a check for 225 big ones, which I personally thought was an OBSCENE amount to charge for something that's mandatory and supposed to be beneficial and help lower divorce rates. 

Anyways, I'll admit that I was very anxious about the whole thing and didn't know what to expect. To be honest, I was half-expecting a public shaming of all couples currently living in sin and a pledge to never use contraceptives. One particular nightmare I had involved Mr. Waterfall and me somehow finding out that we were absolutely incompatible and ending in this scene from The Simpsons:

Each diocese has a slightly different way of doing things, but in our case, it was a weekend-long activity. So, off we went on Friday night after an already exhausting work week, with all of our misconceptions and reservations. 

I must say that we were very pleasantly surprised. We arrived and were greeted with cookies and coffee and given a folder with several worksheets and booklets along with name tags. The facilitators started off by going around the room and having each couple introduce themselves. In total, there were 11 couples from different backgrounds and even several inter-cultural couples besides Mr. W and myself. I would say that the age average seemed to be around the 25-30 mark. At 9 years and counting (new show opportunity on TLC?), Mr. W and I shared the record for longest relationship with another couple who were getting married in a few weeks, but the average length of the relationships was around 2-5 years. 

We discussed a wide variety of topics over the weekend, including:

• Readiness (Why are we getting married now/ to each other/ within the church? What are some of our life goals? What are our expectations for housekeeping, finances, raising children, etc?)
• Communication and Conflict Resolution
• Time and Money Management
• Sexuality...yup, who doesn't yearn to experience the awkwardness of  Sex-Ed all over again!
• Natural Family Planning
• Marriage as a Sacrament

our handouts/ personal picture

We had a lot of different facilitators, some were clergy, but most were married Catholic couples who were able to give concrete examples relating to their own life experiences. For instance, one question for reflection was how we would deal with an unexpected pregnancy and/or having children with special needs and one facilitator was very honest about her own experience and challenges in raising her youngest son, who has Down Syndrome. As a couple, we found this to be very refreshing and a heck of a lot more relatable than getting marriage advice from someone who's celibate! 

Most topics were broken up into presentations as well as individual worksheets that we were called to fill out (sometimes individually, sometimes as a couple). Participation and sharing was encouraged but nobody was made to feel uncomfortable by having to share their answers publically. Overall, the topics of readiness and communication were the most beneficial aspects for Mr. Blogger and me, and though for the most part, it was things that we had already discussed privately (such as goals, splitting up finances, how many children/when/how far apart/how involved will our families be, etc) it was a nice validation to see that we were on the same page for most things. Surprisingly, we still had a few surprises and things we continued to discuss when we got home at night, despite having been together as long as we have. Either way, it was a great way to open up communication on little day-to-day things like who's expected to do laundry or dishes. 

As you can see, we wrote TOYOTA for car maintenance, because, let's be honest, that just ain't happenin'!/ personal picture

It also forced us to visit much deeper topics like dealing with infertility or children with special needs. Interestingly, we learned that the Catholic Church disapproves of IVF, because of the "ethical and moral connotations of discarding fertilized embryos", among other reasons. Huh, go figure.

We also had to sit through a rather awkward presentation on Natural Family Planning complete with talk of mucous secretions and microscopic images of sperm. While Mr. W and I will not be adopting the church's position on this, it was still very well presented  by a certified teacher of the Billings Method, and at no point did we feel forced or pressured into adopting NFP. In fact, they made sure to emphasize that this was only one position and we were free to take it or leave it.

Lastly, we had two priests come in to talk to us about the sanctity of marriage as well as what that entails for the church (marriage is for life, etc.). For the most part, we were very pleasantly suprised at how "with the times" they were, and didn't feel like we were having religion shoved down our throats, despite being a faith-based seminar (except for one particular rant about cohabitation and how it's a terrible way to start a marriage). Though we understand the Church's viewpoint on this, it's also a modern reality that most couples do choose to live together before committing to spend their lives together (this was definitely the case for most couples that we spoke to over the weekend). And while some people still hold those traditional beliefs, which is perfectly fine and their own choice, Mr. W and I are very happy that we already cohabitate, and we don't think it will be detrimental to our married life; In fact, we believe that living together first has been a great way to gain an even deeper understanding of one another. We really do believe that marriage is forever, and while we had already decided to get married before we moved in, it was definitely a nice way to reaffirm the fact that we have chosen the best life partner in each-other.

The weekend wrapped up with a nice mini-graduation ceremony where each couple was called up to receive their certificate of completion among cheers and applause from the others. 

The Bloggers with our certificate. Yay! /Personal picture

Honestly, it was a great experience for us and I highly recommend some sort of marriage preparation before you get married, whether it's outside the church or even privately in your own home. So many couples today say the vows and commit their lives to one another without addressing so many important issues beforehand.

Did you take Pre-Cana? What was your experience with it?