Pre-Cana

mcgama26

My finacee and I are bi-coastal (he is in San Diego, I am in DC) until we get married.  Since I am Catholic we will have to preform certain steps like Pre-cana.  Does any one have any suggestions or stories of what they did, so their marriage was to the standards of teh Catholic Church?

I really appreciate any suggestions or advice!

amh04

I would talk with your priest and explain that he is in SD - there should be precana classes in SD and where you are and you might be able to do them seperately. But your priest would have the best recommendations for whats allowed and any other suggestions the church has done previously. - maybe they can webex it to his laptop? (like a online meeting).

TeamBaby

You should post this on the Catholic Wedding board.  You'll probably get more helpful info.

AmandaSC1988

Find a really good priest and they will help you! You really just need to talk to the priest who is marrying you guys and see what he suggests.

My FI is halfway across the country so we were worried that we wouldn't get the requirements done in time also. To be completely honest, I was more worried about that than finding my dress for a while.  But after a heartfilled talk with the priest and we voiced our concerns... We were thrown two options.

(1) My FIs buddy was a younger more technically savy priest. He offered to do Pre-Cana via Skype. That was going to be a pretty cool option. But, we decided that it just wasn't going to work very good for us - Finding time to talk to my FI is hard enough, Finding time to skype for a couple of hours every few weeks was going to be impossible.

A side note is that some dioceses allow for an online Pre-Cana option. Basically an online message board I think. We opted out of that for the same reason as before.

(2) FIs childhood priest offered to bend over backwards to get it all done in one weekend while he was in town for Thanksgiving. We decided to go with this option because it was a little bit more personal and it just worked out best. This is an harder option because if you don't have that personal relationship with a priest they are highly unlikely to be so flexible with the rules.

shan87

We did what Amanda did.We were able to meet our Priest the friday after Thanksgiving to go our compability test, then met again around Christmas time to go over the results and talk more with our Priest.

Otherwise, ask your Priest if it would work to do it separately ... my Cousin and his wife were unable to make the one-on-one with the Priest so the Priest gave them a booklet to read .. it had questions and answers at the end of each section for talking points.

kcana

There is a new online program that would be great for your situation: you just have to check with your priest to be sure it is okay. A lot of military couples are using this option. www.catholicmarriageprepclass.com.

sofiabrian

Definitely talk to your priest about your situation

Our priest was very understanding, and was able to work with our crazy schedule and distance. We started our Pre-Cana sessions super early! We did a couple mentoring program, but we also had the option of a weekend retreat or a conference. The mentor couple was also fully aware of our situation and together we all found the time. 

I've heard a few couples doing it through skype, so that's another option as well!

prettyirishgirl

I jsut started this talking bit the other day with my preist. We aren't in the same cross country distance as yall, but we know he wont really have leave time thing but like some others said there are options. If you find a good preist who is willing to work with you you can do the extreme session. We are thinking we will have to do this so I just had a opening options chat about it. I was told we could do it in a week or two of him coming down here for holidays or something. He was very understanding when I explained it was because of FI's military commitments and they immidiatly proceeded to basically jump through hoops to make it as easy as possible for us.

ps the skype things sounds so cool that was not an option I was told about. haha

mcgama26

Thanks everyone for your post.  I really appreciate all of your responses.  Basicly, right now I am trying to find a priest who is willing to work with our situation.  I am located in the Diocese of Arlington, in Virginia, and everyone who I have spoken with is making everything difficult and is not willing to be flexible to my FH military requirements, which is pretty sad, given the amount of military bases located in the diocese.  I keep praying that something will work out, in the end.  We shall see.  I will keep you all updated, if anything swings in our favor.  Again, thanks!

sofiabrian

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/special-topic-wedding-boards_military-brides_pre-cana?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Special%20Topic%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:13Discussion:9268c304-7d24-4fb0-8f09-4726c3d427fbPost:5d7e3f19-fa19-4e20-9429-e2af25dbe0a5">Re: Pre-Cana</a>:
[QUOTE]Thanks everyone for your post.  I really appreciate all of your responses.  Basicly, right now I am trying to find a priest who is willing to work with our situation.  I am located in the Diocese of Arlington, in Virginia, and everyone who I have spoken with is making everything difficult and is not willing to be flexible to my FH military requirements, which is pretty sad, given the amount of military bases located in the diocese.  I keep praying that something will work out, in the end.  We shall see.  I will keep you all updated, if anything swings in our favor.  Again, thanks!
Posted by mcgama26[/QUOTE]

<div>Hey I was also in Diocese of Arlington. I went to St. Charles in Clarendon. They were great!</div>

mcgama26

**Update**

We are working with St. William of York in Stafford, VA.  The priest that we are assigned to has worked with our situation before and was pretty straight foward with what we have to do and the timeline that we have to accomplish everything by.

Thank you all for your advice I really appreciate it!