Being Prepared

Getting married in the Catholic Church comes with a few requirements, which include completing all of the marriage preparations.

Photo from Women Living Well Ministries

The timing for this doesn't get started until six months out from your chosen wedding date.  Some of our material says "Definitive wedding plans should not be made nor contracts entered into until this determination of readiness is made by the priest."  It's okay, you can laugh, I did too.  I guess technically a ceremony date is still up in the air until you're finished the prep, but unless something huge comes up, I think you're good to follow your own timeline with respect to all the other wedding details.




The first step for our marriage prep was a meeting with our priest, Father Phillip.  He has since been promoted to the rector at the St. Louis Cathedral, but he will still be performing our ceremony at St. Francis Church.  Our initial interview was simple, he just had to fill out a form with personal information and some answers from each of us.  Some of the questions were a little obvious for us, like "Are you being forced here against your will?" and "Are you getting married because you are pregnant?" and "Do you believe that this is the right person for you to marry and spend your life with?"  Fortunately, those were easy answers!

The second part of the preparation was to attend a "Day for the Engaged" course.  I was a little nervous about this, (for no good reason) because I didn't know what to expect.  Our class had about 15 other couples, and it was led by an older married couple, who shared their experiences and gave some advice.  And besides introducing ourselves and stating our church and wedding date, we only had to interact with each other.  Phew, no need to stand up and share your answers with the class!

The workbook we used, haven't used something like this since high school or so./Photo via ChristianBook

They instructed us to fill out several workbook pages, and then compare answers with our partners.  The sheets covered topics from household chores and parenting beliefs to communication and sexuality.  They were good to get some discussion going, but after about the tenth set, we were starting to lose focus.

The final part of the marriage prep was the FOCCUS test, which I also shouldn't have been nervous about, but I was.  Who knows what those 150 questions would have to say about us?  Turns out, we had nothing to be worried about!  If you allow me to toot our horn a little, Father Phillip said we scored very highly in some areas where couples usually should focus some more discussion, like communication, finances, and future plans.  But really, when you've been together so long, you cover all kinds of topics over the years!

We took our FOCCUS discussion to Theo's Neighborhood Pizza. Yumm./Photo via Yelp

Father Phillip just went over some important points on the test, and told us to go somewhere and have dinner and read over our results.  There wasn't anything too eye-opening there, it was mostly a discussion of "I interpreted the question like this" or "Yea, I know that's something we need to work on."  But it was still good to have that tool all the same, and be able to talk about our relationship for a little while, not just the wedding.

If you're entering into the Catholic marriage prep, I hope my experience has shown you that it's silly to be nervous about it!  In no part of it did anyone try to quiz us on canon law or grill us for living together, it's all about making sure that you're ready for this next step and how to make sure that you include the church and Jesus in your marriage.  Even though there is a class and a test, it's not set up to restrict people from getting married just because they disagreed on some points.  Even if you score low, it's not very common to not recommend a couple for marriage, from what I understand (unless something big comes out, like a case of abuse in the relationship or that one partner had been married before and the other didn't know).  In most cases, they might just need to meet more with the priest (perhaps separately) to discuss some issues before proceeding.

Our next step will be to meet with Father Phillip and discuss our ceremony readings and the plan for the ceremony.  We received a book with the suggested readings at the Day for the Engaged, and we have flagged plenty of passages, but now's the time to sit down and actually decide what they'll be!

Did you go through any wedding prep?  Were you unnecessarily nervous about it?