Marriage preparation classes

I haven't but my friend got married in a church and had to go to them. She didn't say much about the classes but it was obvious the vicar had gotten to know her and her groom throughout the service which made it lovely.

Erm not entirely sure beyond what's in my first post, Trickers. In our letter about it it just gives the dates, times and location. It also says 'We hope you will be able to make it to Sunday worship from time to time as a number of couples from the churches will be helping in the preparation classes, and this helps us to get to know you and pray for you both'.

We've been made so welcome by them - we attend every other week or so. Rev Kev is an absolute dude, too!

What?! Im getting married in Church and I havent been informed of any of this...not that I actually would want to go to these....Hmmm They sound interesting though x

Ive got my first session tonight too CB slightly nervous on what they are going to ask! x

Good luck! You'll have to let us know what it's like! How many do you have? We've got 4 in total.

We did these - three classes run by a Catholic marriage counselling group (ours were probably more full on the CoE!)

They were fine, some bits were really useful and sweet - writing / talking to each other (in private) about our qualities, our relationship, discussing practical things like tasks and money if we had children - all quite basic but useful to talk about if you haven't already - we hadn't!

Some parts were a bit cringey and patronising - I remember something about don't buy your wife s*xy underwear, can't remember why?! But all in all it was fine, fun and we took it all as part of the excitement and planning of getting married. We also went to the pub after every week which is never a bad way to end an evening! ?

Ive been to one of 4 so far.. at my church, it hasnt been about my wedding as such...

we sit and have dinner with other couples and discuss wedding planning ect (which is quite nice)

discuss general marriage and religious reasons ect with vicar..

go off in our couples and write down qualities ect and share together..

it is actually quite nice and i do enjoy it.. but i suppose for someone who isnt religious and just marrying in a church just if they like it or something, i think it would be a bit uncomfortbale for them as the vicar does expect you to be religious considering you are having a church ceremony.

xxx

Hi CB,

I'm not sure what church (denomination) you're getting married in but me and my H2B are Christian and we're having Pre-Marital Counselling.

It's a course of 13 topics ranging from finance, to family, to sex, to conflict resoultion and so much more in between. We've found it really benificial for preparing us for marriage. Neither of us have been married before and we've both learned a lot about each other.

We still have 5 topics to cover before the wedding but i think the general idea with any Church is to set you off on the best possible start to marriage, to ensure that you both know each other and are prepared for the things that maybe you haven't thought about. If you and your OH have been together for ages or live together, you may not find most of it that useful but i still think that it's worth going, like your vicar said, with an open mind and see what happens.

If nothing new is gained then at least you met some new people!

HTH

x

we have 2 in total so one tonight and then half a day tomorrow. apparently the last vicar used to do it over 6 sessions and charge £200 for it! they have since decided to squeeze it over one weekend and charge alot less (£25!)

will let you know how it goes, alot of the couples i expect will be getting married this year but church said we should get it out of the way this year so next year we will have time to sort everything else out.

xx

I'm Catholic and OH is not but we're having ours with the priest who will marrying us in church. Ours runs for about 2hours every month leading up to the wedding. So far we've had 4 so probably 10 sessions in total. It covers everything as mrsdedewo has mentioned from practical matters on the wedding day, the happy honeymoon period and preparing us for when those rose tinted glasses come off. We've both really enjoyed it, it isn't too heavy on the Catholic front so far (but that may be for my OH's benefit). We've both learnt a lot about ourselves, how we treat the other person and how we should take this forward and improve our relationship/ For example, how we deal with arguments and anger....takes a while to grasp the forgiveness quickly bit though!

Some of it is obvious, but talking about it and having a third party there who wants happiness for you is quite nice. You build a relationship with your priest/vicar and I think it will be nicer on the day because it feels like he has invested time in us and doesn't view us as just another random couple.

I am completely serious when I say that my friend who had lessons for a Catholic wedding received in-depth instructions on how to measure the viscosity of her woman-flue secretions to check when she was ovulating. It involved too much usage of the term "egg white" apparently.

But less grossly, she found them quite useful, in a general counseling way rather than in a specifically Catholic way.

?

am speechless! Why do you need to know that?!

Thank the lord im having a civil ceremony thats all I say!!

Catholic = "natural" contraception = necessary to know ovulation. Maybe the clinically-tested and proven "weeing on a stick from an ovulation testing kit" isn't reliable enough? Lol, what am I doing, nothing in a sentence containing "Catholic" and "contraception" should also include the word "reliable" ? Although, to be honest, it was probably more to do with conception (a good Catholic duty) than contraception.

I really, really wanted to do a marriage prep course before we tie the knot BUT we are both atheist and do not feel at all comfortable about going to one in a church. I know people have said that some churches run their courses with the bare minimum of religion but even so, it is not for us. We can't really afford to pay a huge amount of money to any secular alternative so I think we will find a book on eBay or Amazon and maybe take a weekend to work through it together. Just so we already know each other's views on certain topics before we promise to stay together until we die! (Am thinking children, money, caring for relatives, that kind of thing.)

Shouldn't you already know each other's position on children? Although having my mother to live with us in twenty years is admittedly something I haven't broached....?

Im pretty sure that u have to have one if you are getting married in a church and arnt regulars?

Vintage_Mini: We're getting married in a register office; I would never, ever, ever get married in a church!

FTLOMB: we do know we want children. Hopefully having one and then adopting one. But we haven't discussed things like, I don't know... Would I get an abortion if we discover I am pregnant with a baby with a terrible genetic abnormality? What are our parenting styles likely to be? How should we discipline our children? I mean, what if (for example) I would want to abort and that would be a total deal-breaker for him?

I am not saying any of these issues would cause us to break up now and cancel the wedding; but I would appreciate the opportunity to know his thinking on certain issues before I commit to him forever. If that makes sense :s Hate to bring it up on a wedding forum... but with the rates of divorce being as they are, and being as we are relatively young, I would like to talk some things through before saying "yes, I would like to be legally tied in to this man".

...so you could just ask him? ?

I'm gonna, but my thinking is that if I get one of the books, I will know what issues to talk about? They might have some ideas for, I don't know, "common argument-causers between couples" that I hadn't thought about as they haven't come up yet.

Just had our first session which was 3 hours long...was good we started off with dinner and got to chat to the other couples there was about 10 in total. then we watched a dvd on marriage prep which they paused when it got to stages where we had to do or talk about the excercise, it was good we spoke about communication and commitment today and have another 4 hours tomorrow to do to cover other bits. we also have an excercise book with everything in to follow as we go along.

i was very nervous this morning but as soon as i got there i relaxed and chilled out it wasnt a test just more showing you what your commiting to and how marriage needs work and wont just be perfect all the time. its nice being with other engaged couples too coz your all int he same boat.

When OH and I went to our first meeting with our priest I did some research online so I knew what to expect and some of the things couples have to talk about made me think 'surely if you're intending on spending the rest of your life with someone then you would know whether they want children or not and how many?!' Then I read a post from someone (not sure which forum it was but I think it was an American one) saying that she was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did she and her OH want children but they both want two and they wouldn't have even thought to talk about this if it hadn't been for the marriage prep classes! So apparently some people don't discuss this stuff. My OH and I have talked about number of kids we want, when we want them, names we like, parenting styles, how we would discipline them, what kind of school we would send them to, what religion we would like to raise them as, whether one of us would quit work to be a stay-at-home parent or cut back to part-time work, how we feel about nannies/nurseries/childminders/etc. And we don't even want children for several years yet!

We went to some at our church before Christmas and want to go to a few more soon. The classes were called 'Marriage Enrichment' and weren't taken by the minister but by a married Christian couple. It's a 10-week course covering topics including money, dealing with in-laws and sex.

There was a mix of both married and engaged couples there. I was really apprehensive before I went (I get easily embarrassed!) but found them to be excellent. If you are choosing to get married in a church and want a faith-centred relationship then I can't recommend them enough. Enjoy