Marriage Preparation Program

My "ideal" Marriage Preparation Program will take place over a one month period before the wedding is to take place. It will be composed of four private sessions and three group sessions. Each session will be approximately two hours long and will be led by the Church Priest and the group sessions will have a speaker proficient on that weeks topic. Session I: This will be a private introductory session in which the Priest can learn about the couple and the couple can learn about each other. The Priest will explain what is expected in a Catholic marriage; the couple will explain their expectations from the marriage (children, careers, home life, etc.). Some questions asked will be: What can you do to prepare for life together? How do you envision growing as individuals and as a couple? Do you know your own and each other's strengths and weaknesses? Have you discussed the challenges that you will face as you make the transition to a long-term emotionally committed relationship? Also, the couple will take a FOCCUS inventory. This will enable us to design a program specifically for this couple. Also, we will help give the couple insight of what the program is about and what it plans to achieve. We will also learn what the couple hopes to gain from the program.

Session II: Will be a group session. The first hour will be to discuss children in marriage. We will have a speaker come in and discuss child raising techniques. The couples will then split into groups and work on a group project. They will be given hypothetical situations and must come up with a way to handle it. The group leader and speaker will then discuss and go over each groups way of handling the situation. In the second hour, we will discuss Natural Family Planning. The couples in the session will learn what NFP is and how to utilize it. We will inform the couples that Natural Family Planning refers to natural methods used for avoiding or achieving pregnancy which are based on a couple's