Pre-Cana Session 5

As of last Thursday, we have officially graduated from our Pre-Cana class, and are authorized to be married in the Catholic church! Or, we've been "Pre-Cananized" as Chris likes to say.

Our Pre-cana diploma

The Deacon was about a half-hour late to our session, so the first half-hour was a lot of awkward small talk: "Wow...what a crazy winter we had huh?" "Wow...it's so crazy we're all getting married right?" "Wow, how about that superbowl huh?" Gotta love generic small talk. After the Deacon finally arrived, he passed around the workbooks "Together for Life". This gives all the readings, verses, etc. for planning your ceremony. Chris and I got this book awhile ago from the priest who will be officiating our ceremony, so I had already looked through it and picked our readings. Together, we looked through this booklet, went over a few of the different readings, and he showed us how to fill out the packet in the back that will go to the priest conducting the ceremony.

The Deacon also gave us a book on "natural family planning". He didn't go over it with us there...only advised us to look through it and consider it as an option. After a 15 minute break, the Deacon closed the session by going around the room to each of the 5 couples for the "blessing of the engagement rings". Each couple held hands, while he said a short prayer for them over the engagement ring. Then that was it, we were graduated! As we gathered our things, the couple who had been hosting us passed around a gift for each couple. We opened it when we came home and it was a very nice bible:

Our bible

As you know from my previous posts about our pre-cana classes, (Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, Session 4) I did enjoy this experience. There were some nice moments, talks, and worthy things to be reminded of about relationships and marriage. I know that a lot of couples enter Pre-Cana with hesitation and annoyance. However, it's really harmless and can even be enjoyable as long as you both go into this experience with an open mind and positive attitude.