Certified to Wed!

In the Catholic Church that is!

That's right, we just completed our Pre Cana marriage prep. It was definitely an interesting experience. Mishka and I were the youngest couple there, as well as the next to be married so we had a bit of distinction ;).

I don't know how much of a recap you want/need, so I'll just give you a bit of a "coverall" rundown:

There were three couples there who spoke on a variety of topics from intimacy to finances to spirituality in a marriage. Some were more interesting than others. We even found some of the couples more relatable than others. There was one couple in particular who we particularly liked.

We also got a chance to chat with some of the other couples at our precana and experienced a lot of different types of love and a lot of different relationship dynamics. There's not one universal type of love, I can tell you that.

We ended with a mass where all the tables wrote an intention to be read during the mass. I read the one for our table :). You know, 'cause I don't mind public speaking like that :). I was also excited that one of our wedding readings made it into the precana mass. I'm sure Mishka's father will read it even better, but it was nice to have that as part

Finally, we wrote love letters, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to. We did not share our letters during the actual precana, but instead chose to wait until we were by ourselves, sitting in the car alone in the parking lot. We swapped papers and read silently the words our counterparts had put down for us. I have to say, I almost cried reading Mishka's. I wanted to have it framed so that the world could see it at the same time I wanted to put it in some secret place so that only I could appreciate the depths of love my Mishka is capable of. I'd like to say my letter was as wonderful (Mishka seemed to think so), but I believe Mishka is the one who hit it out of the park.

If nothing else than for that moment in the car in the parking lot, I would call Pre Cana a smashing success :).

But as a more objective look, I don't know how much Mishka and I really learned about each other had we come to Pre Cana unprepared for marriage. They had a lot of cool activities and a lot of ground to cover in very little time. We only had opportunity to talk for 5 minutes after each activity. Their suggestion was to mark down things you discover you need to talk about and have the necessary conversations over dinner that night. It's a good idea, but I don't know how realistic it would be to assume that people who were unprepared would universally take the time to address their unpleasant issues once they no longer have to. Luckily for us, Mishka and I didn't discover any areas we hadn't already worked through.

I'll be interested to compare notes with my FSIL who did engaged encounter to prepare for their Catholic Convalidation ceremony. We'll see what the similarities and differences are.