I would get married here, and you wouldn't even have to ask me twice! OR ONCE!
Siena, Italy Summer 2008
Because my Sweeter is in the military and he is overseas right now, we decided to get going on the wedding planning early so he could be part of it...maybe I got lucky when he said he wanted to be involved...?
The religious aspect of the ceremony is very important to both of us so we decided to have a Catholic Ceremony which means that we are getting married in the Catholic Church. Part of this Marriage sacrament consists of attending a Marriage Prep Retreat as well as counseling sessions with the priest who will be marrying us {we affectionately call him: Padre Juan}.
At the first counseling session, my Sweeter and I had do a focus tool {basically a booklet of questions to focus our counseling with Padre Juan. They were questions that had to do with all aspects of marriage and we had rate if we had talked about them with each other or not, and if we had come to a mutual agreement about the topic. The questions covered everything from family planning to finances to who will do the dishes.
Here is an example of a question: My future spouse and I have decided who will be in charge of the bills. And you had to answer it with Agree, Disagree or Uncertain.
After we completed the questions, the Focus Tool was sent {somewhere}and processed for our answers and then returned to Padre Juan. He then called me and we set up our first counseling session. He used the Focus Tool to guide our discussions, where we both used the same answer, we went over it if it was important and if we put different answers, then we would talk about them together with Padre Juan as a mediator and guide to make sure we understood the importance of the question.
The three of us met, if I remember correctly, 4 times. The purpose of these meetings are to make sure that the engaged couple has open communication and is in agreement, or at least in conversation, about the key topics. At this point, Padre Juan has the authority to tell us that he is uncomfortable marrying us!
Fortunately, that did not happen for us, he is excited to marry us! :-)
So this was a pre-post to the one to follow!
3 comments:
We had to do a test like that too (we also got married in the Catholic Church) and Justin and I got 98% of the same answers. Our priest said that's the highest score of compatibility he's seen in 10 years!
Our minister got ahold of that "quiz" (as we all call it) many years ago when he married a Catholic man to a Methodist woman and we had to take it. We passed with flying colors. Our preacher told us we had the best results and only one other couple he's recently married did as well on it as we did. hopefully that's a good sign, righ?? :) And wow that's a beautiful church in the photo!
getting married within the catholic church is such a beautiful thing, i am so happy for you!
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