How to Get Married in the Catholic Church: Part 2

Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of people marrying into the Catholic Church like pre-cana. Mr. Unicycle is Lutheran, as I mentioned in my last Catholic Church post, so he was absolutely dreading going to pre-cana. I'm pretty sure he thought a priest would lecture us about "pulling out" for 8 hours while we all held our hands over the bible and vowed never to use birth control, eat meat on Fridays, or have fun again. In reality, it was a lot more enjoyable than that.

For starters, it wasn't run by a priest, probably because priests don't know much about marriage. The full-day retreat, which was held at a church about an hour from my house, was run by couple who has been married for a really long time.

Image via Joseph J. Henderson & Son, Inc.

There were about 70 couples there, and we all sat at round tables with our SOs while the couple leading the program stood at the front. We were given a bunch of stuff, including a booklet, which we worked through throughout the day, and a perpetual calendar full of inspirational marriage notes and tips:

Only if I can wear my culottes.

One of our quotes!

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Pre-cana swag bag! We also got free pens but I lost mine.

We started the day with an awkward ice breaker game, which was to be expected. Can I just say right now that ice breaker games and the people who perpetuate them need to be taken down? NO ONE likes them. Why are people allowed to get away with this atrocity? It benefits no one. Our game wasn't too bad though. We all wrote our names on name tags, which the couple distributed around the room, and we had to find the person who's name we had by yelling their name across the room. Weird story: one of the couples sitting at our table had the exact same names as me and Mr. Unicycle! His name is very common but mine isn't, so it was really strange.

After that, we had to stand up one by one and introduce our fiance to the room, including one fun fact about them. It is much easier coming up with a fun fact about someone other than yourself! It was cool seeing what everyone said too, since couples didn't converse with each other first. Mr. Unicycle's fun fact about me was that I like studying linguistics, and my fun fact about him happened to be that he does really good impressions of foreign accents, which clearly interests me because I like linguistics. A few of the other couples had "matching" fun facts too, which I thought was cute.

For the rest of the day, the couple running the event went through different topics in our workbooks:

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Glamour shot with the workbook

They'd lecture for a bit, let us discuss with each other and our tablemates, brainstorm as a group, and write in our workbooks silently by ourselves. No one had to talk in front of the group if they didn't want to (except for introducing ourselves at the beginning), so it was more like being in a college class again. Some people contributed a lot, and others just observed (that would be me). The topics covered included money, SEX, communication skillz, and the foundation to a good relationship. We did a lot of reflection about ourselves, each other, and our relationship. It was actually kind of fun! It reminded me of when I used to take all of those quizzes in Seventeen magazine. The couple didn't preach to us about SEX or birth control or living together at all. Although they did get oddly preachy about money. Apparently you have to save 10% of your income, starting yesterday. YOU HAVE TO.

Right before lunch, they separated the men and women and we wrote each other letters. Then they let us go to lunch on our own and read the letters and discuss them together. The letter writing activity was nice, and I know a lot of other bees have enjoyed it too. It wasn't that profound for us because we write letters to each other fairly often already, (What can I say, I like to write. Plus we're in an SDR!) but it was still nice, and we'll be able to save these letters forever. Even if they do say "from one lover to another" at the top.

Personal pic with cool blurring so you can't read intimate details about the Unicycles!

I thought the SEX part would be awkward, but the couple did a pretty good job of keeping it PG. They talked about how foreplay should last 24/7, meaning their idea of foreplay is smiling at each other from across the room, meaning it wasn't awkward. They did make us discuss some SEX stuff with our SOs, but other than that, it was short and sweet. They didn't even explain the rhythm method. That's what wiki's for I suppose.

At the end, we all collected our "proof of purchase," which we need in order to get married in the church. I tried to get a pic of us holding it, ya know, for the blog, but it didn't turn out so good.

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But I swear we got one! See?

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I feel a little more prepared for marriage now that we've done pre-cana, and the experience made me feel even closer to Mr. Unicycle. He definitely liked it a lot more than he thought he would too. Even if you're not required to do pre-cana before your wedding, I would highly recommend some sort of pre-marital counseling to every couple.

What are your thoughts on pre-cana? Did you enjoy it? Do you think it's unnecessary?