Pre-marital classes

wheatney22

Hello ladies,
How many of you are taking pre-marital classes? And how long is it at your Church?
FI and I signed up to take it (even though we won't be getting married at our Church). We have to take 2-classes and each one lasts 10-weeks!!!
The first one is called "So You Think You Want to Get Married?". Now, that is a pre-requisite course to getting engaged but they don't advertise it at Church so most folks are caught off guard when they call to take pre-marital classes.
The next one is the actual pre-marital course and requires that you have not only taken but also passed the pre-requisit. I feel like its college and grad school all over again.
Anyways, just wondering who has taken or will be taking the classes, how long the classes are and your experience.

katanne9

We are getting married out of state, and away from our normal church, so it's a little more complicated for us!

- We are meeting several times with the pastor (a family friend) who is marrying us
- We are meeting several times with the pastor from our current church, and took the Enrich & Prepare exam
- We are meeting on a regular basis with an elder and his wife from our church
- We are reading: For Men Only/For Women Only, Saving your Marriage Before it Starts (and the workbooks) and the Walter Trobisch trio

SS2010

We started premarital counceling when we got engaged, so it will be about 11 months long, but it was our idea to start that early.  We just went through the 5 Love Languages (great book!) and are now going to start the Love and Respect video series (I'm super excited!)

On_Cloud_Nine

We tried taking a pre-marital course with the church we'll be attending when I move in with FI. We already go there when I visit him on the weekends, so we know it's a church we want to continue at, at least for now. But the pastor there doesn't do pre-marital, and they instead provide a DVD and workbooks to go through. Well...that wasn't exactly what we wanted. We started it, but only did one chapter. We really wanted someone to sit and talk to.

The pastor marrying us suggested a book for us to read together (His Needs, Her Needs), so we read that, and then we discussed what we read. We've since read Love and Respect, I read a book on engagement whose name escapes me at the moment, and we also got the Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts book, with booklets, but we haven't started those yet. We also did the little test in The Five Love Languages book, and that was interesting. We didn't read the book, though. It was very similar to His Needs, Her Needs.

B&B1221

We took a 12 hour "engaged couples" class (broken into 6 sessions) at my Fiance's church.  Now we are in a 7 month Sunday School class for Nearly/Newlyweds at my church.  And, we will be going through the Prepare-Enrich sessions with the Christian counseling center at my church.  We still don't know who is going to officiate the ceremony since both of our churches are so large, we don't have a personal relationship with the pastors.  We had thought about getting a friend ordained, but I have heard horror stories about people finding out it wasn't a legitimate marriage, after the fact.  So... I think if we use a pastor from my church (which is where we are attending now) they will also require several counseling sessions with the pastor who will officiate. 

And, we've got tons of books to go through on our own, as well.  I figure that no matter what, there is no such thing as being completely prepared for everything, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Good luck, ladies! 

jrpetrik

My fiance and I are meeting with his pastor. Presently, that's on a semi-regular basis because school is crazy and make-up class sessions get scheduled for that time block and stuff like that, but in summer we'll meet much more regularly.

We read "When Sinners Say, 'I Do'" over winter break, which altered the pre-marital counselling plans, since that's the book he would've had us read. (EXCELLENT book about grace-based marriages as opposed to performance-based marriages.) Instead, we're doing a binder-ful of various articles and questions to think through and talk about and things like that that our pastor's mentor's mentor made some years back for engaged couples. It's got good stuff in it.

We also audited the Marriage & Family Counselling course taught over a weekend here at the school, which was really good. It was a class on how to counsel, but it contained a lot of excellent principles and dating, engaged, and married couples will frequently come in to audit it.

dawnbeatty

We are taking pre-marital classes with my pastor as well.  We won't be getting married in my church but my pastor will be marring us.  We meet privately with our pastor each month for about an hour and a half each session.  This has been going on since December and will last up until the end of May.  While doing this we have learned so much about our pastor and him about us.  Since we have been together for 16 years - we aren't discovering anything new about each other that we didn't know already but it is nice to be able to talk with our pastor and go through different exercises and discussion that we might not have done without these classes.    We are currently working/reading the Love Dare - a 40 day exercise and our pastor gave us both a workbook entitled "Premarital Counseling Two Shall Become One."

SuMmErKuTiE

We started taking pre-marriage classes at our church about a month and a half ago. We meet with one of the church leaders and his wife and another couple and we've been reading and talking about the book "Love Life" by Ed Wheat.

SuMmErKuTiE

I forgot to mention that we do one chapter a week, and there are 16 chapters so we won't be finished with the book before the wedding, but we can finish it on our own.

Jeffie86

We start our pre-marital counseling with our pastor about 8 weeks before the wedding (so May for our July wedding).  I'm really not sure what all it will entail. 

We're also going to get some material from our pastor in town (we're getting married in our hometown).  I know we'll read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's sermon on marriage from a prison cell or something, along with some stuff Luther wrote about marriage.  I'm kind of looking forward to it!

bookgirl810s

Wow, I feel like such a slacker now!

We went to an all-day Becoming One workshop (formerly known as Pre-Cana) back in October, and we had our first sit-down with the pastor a couple of weeks ago. He talked to us for about an hour, and we're going again tonight for an hour again. I think there's one more one-hour session after tonight, and that's it!

Our pastor said that he used to do a lot more premarital stuff, but he came to realize that by the time people got to that stage, they were going to barrel on ahead regardless of what he said or what they uncovered. We've met with him to talk about various things over the course of the last year or so, though, so I guess we kinda came into this with some AP credits or something.

iamjoesgurl

Our officiant was the wife of DH's best friend.  We approached them about doing something with us and they said they "passed us without counseling" meaning that we didn't need it.  At the time, we went to different churches (in different states) so the counseling question was a little complicated because neither one of really wanted to approach our pastors to do counseling.  

I had heard really good things about Prepare and Enrich so I went online to look for people in my area that were trained to use it.  I found a local organization called the Marriage Resource Center and they train couples to be mentors.

We were fortunate to be mentored by the founders of the organization who were willing to alter the sessions to do them on the Saturdays that DH was down here visiting.  We did three sessions total.  The first one was an inventory (we actually did FOCCUS) and then the others were expanding on the things that we needed based on the inventory.  I would have done more but DH is VERY private and hates talking about himself.  So I had to take what I could get.  

jsimm

We took a 4-week session with our small-group leader (who runs all of the classes lie that at FI's church) with 2 other couples.  We ran through the Saving your marriage before it starts DVD and workbook.  He and I talk about lots of things anyway, but it definitely brought out some cool things to think about and discuss.  I enjoyed the program.  We also read 5 Love Languages on our own, and talked about it.  As a daily devotional, we are also reading through the Love Dare.  I know its geared towards married couples, but its good to get us thinking about some of the things married couples struggle with.  

His pastor is marrying us, and we will be meeting with him a few weeks to discuss more marriage things.  I'm really looking forward to it!  (The other couples in our class think we are huge dorks, and the "teacher pets" of the class ;-) )

FutureMrsMcDaniel

Our pre-marital counseling has been pretty low-key.  We meet with the pastor for about 30 minutes to an hour for as many times as he sees necessary.  We are going for the 2nd time on the 13th and are really excited.

Our pastor says we will be talking about subjects like children, money, wills, communication between us, and our last 'class' will cover what we want to happen at the ceremony.

There's no workbook or anything to read.  Pastor says he judges whether additional material is necessary.  He told us that he's had some couples that have had 3 sessions, and others that have had 10 or more. 

TwylaB123

My pastor has requested that we meet with him six times, once every other week for twelve weeks.  He also said he'd be sending us a link to an online test/evaluation he wants us to complete and that we'll discuss the results (which will be sent to him) during our first two sessions.  We start meeting on May 4th.

eagles347

We will be doing pre-marital counseling with the minister who we would like to perform our ceremony. He requires a minimum of 8 sessions over several months time and he will not perform the ceremony if he isn't satisfied and confident that we are entering into the marriage with our heads on straight, our eyes open, and our hearts in the right place. We start soon and I am nervous and excited about it.

He is not our pastor because FI's church is in his hometown (hours away) and my father is my pastor, but we wanted someone who wasn't already so close to us to provide the counseling and besides that, my dad really wants to walk me down the aisle.

Rhoyal_1

FI and started Christian Counseling in November 2008 (I guess you could say pre-engagement counseling).  He and I knew we had issues to sort through before taking the next step.  So, since we did not have a church home at the time we opted to pay for counseling (PhD level therapist, Christian, counseling is faith based).  Prior to FI proposing we read The Five Love Languages and started reading Rock the Roles. 

Well, FI and joined our current church home in August 2009 and he proposed in December 2009.  Premarital counseling with our Pastor is a minimum of seven sessions before the wedding and two sessions after the wedding.  We use So You're Getting Marriedworkbooks and watch the DVDs during our sessions with our Pastor.  Of course, we have homework that is discussed in our sessions along with discussing what we viewed on the DVDs. 
BTW- FI and I still attend sessions at the Christian counseling session every other week.  Our Pastor and therapist are aware we attend both and the teachings are not contradictory.

FI and I love attending the sessions..even though some nights we are a bit upset with each other (after therapy sessions, we get down and dirty with out therapist..LOL).

ashley.lybrink

We did pre-marital mentoring through our church. We had to attend 5 group sessions in which we go over basic topics and discuss it. There were two other couples and the two leaders (who were a married couple). We had to read a book and do homework every week from that. Then we met with a mentoring couple 4 or 5 times to talk more in depth and get into some more personal subjects. We also continued with the book and homework that we did on our own. I think that this was the best decision we could have made. It gets you talking about things you may never have thought to talk about and helps you prepare for potential issues involved in marriage. None, of my married friends did this, but I am so glad that we did! I know that problems will still arise, but I feel much better equipped after going through this experience. Also, a new feature of the program that our church has added is post marriage mentoring. We will meet with our mentoring couple 3-4 times after we are married for our first year of marriage, which I think is a wonderful idea!