Since we’re getting married in a Catholic church, NEPA Groom and I had to complete a pre-Cana class in order to move forward with our preparations. And since the King’s College Chapel isn’t like a regular, full parish, they don’t offer one of their own. NEPA Groom and I looked at all of our options and decided to do the one day seminar style class. Thankfully, the Diocese of Scranton offers a lot of options and is pretty thorough with the information they provide on their website. We registered and attended our pre-Cana class in February, well in advance of the big day.
Now, neither of us really knew what to expect, and I was particularly nervous because I’m not Catholic. All the research I did online really didn’t help because in situations like this, it seems like it can vary from Parish to Parish. So, if you’re doing pre-Cana in the Northeast PA area, my review will probably be more accurate. Either way, I hope you find it useful!
The class was scheduled from 8 am to 4 pm at a church about 20 minutes away from us, so it was an early and long day. We got there and got signed in, and they had some breakfast waiting for everyone. The room was set up with round tables, with two couples per table. There were a lot of good things that we got from the day, and some *interesting* things.
The Good
The class was run by a married couple, and was fairly relaxed. Having gone through this themselves, they tried to keep things light hearted where they could to break the ice. This particular couple was also time conscious, and covered everything thoroughly and still got us out 2 hours early. Sweet!
I think the whole day opened up a lot of good conversations for us – we really heard more about the magnitude of the commitment we were making, and it really started to hit home for us both. We also took the FOCCUS test, and have been having a good time going over those answers with our priest and talking about our expectations of marriage and what we want to see happen.
Finally, the class was very accepting of non Catholics. In fact, the couple made a point to thank any of us who weren’t Catholic for coming and for being open to at least listening to what they had to say. They made a point of not trying to force anything on any of us. They asked that we’d have an open mind and said it was up to us to decide
The *Interesting*
And then… then, well, I guess there’s no nice way to say this. But then there were the other couples in the room. I’m sure some of them were nice. I’m sure some of them were genuine and in love and headed towards healthy marriages. I just didn’t get to sit next to any of them.
We took the FOCCUS test first, and to keep things truthful, the boys from one side took their tests across the room and the girls from over there joined the ladies on the other side. I kid you not, during the test, the 3 other women at my table cheated on the test with each other. They asked each other for answers like it was a middle school math exam, not an inventory designed to identify points for conversation with the person you plan on marrying. They literally took the whole test together, identifying the answers that would cause the least waves, rather than what might be the truth.
After that, the couple that was at our table with us spent most of the six hours we were there texting other people on their cell phones, and showing each other the texts they were getting. At each break opportunity, they jumped up to go talk to someone else. It was a little discouraging to see, but I did my best to focus back on NEPA Groom and why WE were there. I hope maybe something managed to stick with them and will help them down the road!
Has anyone else taken their pre-cana class in the Northeast PA region? How did your experience compare? Did you get anything good out of it?
Neither me or Big Man are Catholic so I don’t believe we’ll have to do those.
Great insight NepaBride! Too bad you had to sit next the texting couple… sounds a bit like high school! Looks like you have things figured out though. Best!
Lil’ Woman – That’s cool. It was kind of a pain to organize but I think we learned a few things. Depending on where you want to get married you might have to do something similar, probably less intense!
Thanks Moriah!
Not so much pre-cana but ran into an experience like none other with an officiant for the Inne of the Abingtons, Pastor Jason Gardner. My fiancé and I met with the Pastor in the fall of 2009 and he left a decent first impression. He required ½ of his fee of $300 up front and did not have us sign any sort of contract. He did not show us any credentials as to professional experience as an ordained pastor, theology education, or education and training in marriage counseling. I’m still not sure what type of training he possesses, he has a full time day job, and to the best of my knowledge he is a youth pastor at a local church. Typically youth pastors do not marry or counsel couples as this is handled by senior clergy in the church because youth pastors usually don’t have the proper experience and are not qualified to do so. He uses a standard ceremony with everyone which he emails for you to add any elements to make it more your own. Due to his day job and wanting to get home as soon as possible he only meets with couples for interviews and marriage counseling weekdays, no weekends, and the latest appointment he can accommodate is 6pm. Thus my fiancé had to leave work early just to meet with him since his hours are so limited. The second meeting we setup for marriage counseling in the winter left us with reservations which we should have simply addressed then and there. The pastor was going through the counseling material and had considerable difficulty reading some of the words to material I assume he uses frequently. I’m not sure whether this was due to illness, tiredness, etc. This made us worried that on the day of the wedding guests might not be able to understand him and the ceremony might lose some of its meaningfulness. What made us most uncomfortable was the story he related to us. He was talking about honesty in relationships and started talking about his wife and a time he questioned hers. I guess his wife had been cleaning houses for someone and had something VERY bad happen to her but instead of telling her husband right away, calling him to pick her up, or simply leaving she continued to go back to clean for this person because the house needed cleaning. My fiancé and I sat there in complete shock and wanted very much to get up and leave. We felt bad for them both but felt very uncomfortable when we left and felt this was something so personal, irrelevant, inappropriate, unprofessional, and depressing to share with a happy couple about to be wed. We checked his reference with Amy at the Inne and she said all his ceremonies were beautiful and she’d never heard anything about his issues reading, he must have been tired due to a men’s retreat going on. We didn’t share the story he told us initially because we ourselves were so embarrassed. So four weeks before the wedding we called to confirm out last meeting and when asking what he and his wife would like to eat because we needed him to bless our meal he told us that he doesn’t do that anymore because ‘receptions get out of hand’. We had mentioned at the first meeting that a blessing would be needed and he never told us otherwise until 4 weeks before, after we had already given a deposit. This was the last straw which led us to locate someone else. We had to scramble at last minute to find someone else, fortunately my godfather who I haven’t seen in years, and reprint the wedding programs entirely. When we explained to him at first nicely why we wouldn’t be using him and that we wanted our deposit back he used every excuse in the world as to why he wouldn’t give a refund: a) that he had no way of knowing we’d be using his ceremony & I even provided proof with the new program, b) that he worked so many hours on it when he uses a standard one with everyone and I was the one who edited it to meet our needs, c) that he couldn’t schedule another wedding to replace ours so he’d lose money, d) sorry we made you uncomfortable but it’s okay that I shared the abuse because it was during a marriage counseling session, and e) even accused me of wanting to use my godfather the whole time. I’ve never encountered anything like this in my life and I would not refer him to anyone. My advice to any bride is meet the person several times, make sure they put together the ceremony YOU want because it’s YOU and your FIANCE’S day, check credentials, and make sure they are a head pastor at a physical church who actually marries members of their own congregation. Better yet use someone from your own church if you both are of the same faith or someone you know personally.