Marriage Preparation Lessons - Anyone done these?

Bluespirit

OH and I are getting married in a Catholic church, and the priest has said that we have to do a marriage preparation course. Just wondering if anyone else has done something similar, and if so what should I expect?

I'm a bit nervous about it as I'm not at all religious (OH is). The course that we're booked on is a day long group thing, and the info that we've been given is very basic - only that it will involve group and couple exercises and that we'll be completing a relationship questionnaire which is going to be anaylsed and discussed. :eek: I'm worried that there is going to be quite a lot of religious content on the day, which I disagree with and which I can be quite argumentative about. OH's religion means a lot to him, which is why we're having the church wedding, and he knows my feelings about it, but I'm not sure how acceptable it'll be on the course, which could make for a very uncomfortable day. (Added to the fact I'm annoyed that its yet another wedding expense that we've got to pay for, and it involves giving up a whole Saturday!)

party_piglet

Hi Bluespirit, I haven't taken one of these myself but I know a lot of people in Ireland (where I'm from) have as most people get married in a Catholic Church and it is a requirement. I have heard from a lot of people that the day was much better than they expected with very little about religion and much more on the partnership, dealing with problems etc side of things. Obviously this could be different for different courses but go into it with an open mind and you could be suprised.

aarchk

Only one saturday??? You got it easy! I had a whole weekend including a special holy communion church service... A friend had every thursday evening, just the vicar, her and H2B, for a month...

Not sure if yours will be the same but the questionnaires we did were fairly simple. You fill them in individually and then discuss the answers with your H2B followed by a general group discussion. Its about do you want children, when, if your partners work took you to a different part of the country would you move to be with them. All the standard stuff that you dont really discuss! Theres no right and wrong answer either and there wasnt too much God talk. Again the church wedding is H2Bs idea, although I would class myself as a christian I have a slight problem with the Cof E which rejected me on no less than 10 occaisions as a child when my parents tried to get me christened.

BanburyBride

We have ours next weekend and I am in the same situtaion, OH is catholic, I have no religion. I was worried and spoke to the priest and he explained it is more about discussing how we will deal with things in marriage ie conflict resolution etc. He said it is nothing to worry about!

When is yours? I will update more once we have been next Sat

clearing_out_my_pockets

We had ours (a series of one to one sessions) over the course of a month on Friday evenings. Only the last session (briefly) touched on God as it was about the service. I think a lot of it depends on the priest. Ours just seemed to want a chat. Although they were meant to be 1 hour sessions starting at 8pm, they rarely only lasted an hour and one lasted until 10.45! He did give us wine though...

We generally discussed love, marriage and the reasons people get married, etc as well as a session on work & money too. Our were really informal and I was very surprised that at no point did he want to discuss our choice of readings, hymns, etc. He just gave us a stack of previous orders of service and asked us to let him know when we've finished ours!

Primmer

We are getting married in CofE Church and are having marriage preparation classes on three Friday nights during May/June which I understand to be more about preparing you for married life than about religion.

twirlypinky

I had these before my first wedding. Need i say more...?

twirlypinky

Oh and i had every wednesday evening for a few weeks, and the priest came round for dinner one night, and (as we got on well) we took him to the cinema one night as he said he'd not been in 20 years and we felt sorry for him. We took him to see Signs (with Mel Gibson) and he screamed at one point and threw all his popcorn in the air. It was hilarious.

At the end of the day, if you're not religious and don't believe in God, then does it make any difference really about the religious content? If it means a lot to your other half, personally, i would just go along with it - it's one day of your life. If you don't believe there is actually a God there to hear these prayers etc, then where's the harm?

Not trying to provoke or play devils advocate by the way -

MissPixie

twirlypinky wrote: »

We took him to see Signs (with Mel Gibson) and he screamed at one point and threw all his popcorn in the air. It was hilarious.

Off topic but this made me lol thankyou

Sammy85_2

We've had three meetings with our vicar (CofE) and at no point has any of it been what i would consider to be marriage preparation. We've just discussed the wedding service really.

I suppose the only thing close to that was discussing how we met and giving the vicar a list of what we dont like about / annoys each other! (alot more difficult than i expected since you have to go through the list infront of each other!) The vicar said its to help us work through the little niggles before we get married and also to give him some ammunition for the wedding service. (should be interesting!)

Never during these meetings has he asked up anything in depth about our beliefs.

chelle2k9

we have to do this course as well and im dreading it really not confident about speaking in group discussions so am gonna hide at the back and hope they don't pick on me.....pretty much like back at school really