Why We Did Marriage Prep Before Getting Engaged
/MELISSA BUTZ
For better or for worse, the number of couples who call off their wedding after they get engaged seems to be around 20 percent.
PHOTOGRAPHY: CAITLIN RENN PHOTOGRAPHY
And it makes sense. Family demands from both sides, inevitable compromises while planning a wedding, and emotionally preparing for a life together make the engagement period stressful. There are also huge decisions to be made and plenty of learning curves, like where and how to buy your first house.
Catholic couples will also add a Pre-Cana wedding prep course offered by their local parish to the checklist, but that is usually the problem. All too often, Pre-Cana becomes another box to check off on the to-do list and another necessary document to present before saying “I do.”
But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, when my boyfriend and I started talking about marriage after we had dated for three years in Rome, he had one request: we attend our Pre-Cana course before he asked me to marry him.
This tradition is very common in Italy, a country where the typical American “ring proposal on one knee” is quite rare. Most girls in marriage prep classes do not have an engagement ring and might not ever have one. The traditional gold wedding band is often the only ring ever worn on the left ring finger.
As an American, I imagined the proposal more than my wedding. The idea of a man getting down on one knee after asking for my father's permission seemed as “fairy-tale” as it could get--so I hated my boyfriend’s idea at first. It didn't help that my American friends could not wrap their minds around completing a Pre-Cana course before he asked if I wanted to marry him.
Niccolò, my now-fiancé, explained his personal conviction to me:
By completing our marriage prep course before becoming engaged, we would be able to treat it as a discernment course. We could prepare for the sacrament spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, without the distractions of planning a wedding. We could spot areas of weakness for improvement and focus on strengthening areas where we were already excelling as a couple.
Before signing up for classes at a parish in the center of Rome, Niccolò told me, “We have to go into this course with a spirit of discernment so pure, we will even be prepared to break up when it's over, if that's what we think God is calling us to do.” His goal was to truly listen to what God wanted for both of us. Thankfully, a few months after it ended, we got engaged instead!
Those months were our time to not only intentionally discern our vocation to marriage, which we had already done, but marriage to each other. After all, discernment and taking concrete steps toward what we believe we are called to is a serious part of the Catholic faith. Pre-Cana confirmed what we believed Christ wanted from both of us. We prayed our way through the whole course, lifted up our intentions, and were open about any fears that arose along the way.
My favorite part of our six months of marriage prep was talking to Niccolò about each session immediately afterward on our Saturday date night. We learned so much, and he helped translate any misunderstandings I had from our all-Italian classes.
Looking back, I would not do it any other way (even with Americans asking continuously if they had missed the announcement of our engagement).
In fact, now that Niccolò and I are engaged, I feel like we can plan our wedding with the certainty that God has blessed both of us. We are on the right path, if only we keep trusting and looking to the Lord.
