So I have a concern that hopefully those of you who got married Catholic can help me address.
My fiance and I are Catholic. He was born and raised Catholic but I did not come into the church until I was 20 (I'm 22 now) so I'm new to this in a lot of ways. I went to a Catholic high school but I never paid any attention to the religion. My family is not practicing. Not that it's a bad thing but I just need to "set the stage" so to speak.
We are graduating this May (my fiance and I) and we are looking for apartments. We will be getting married August of 2013 which is a little over a year away. We have been looking to get an apartment together since it does not make sense for us to pay rent seperately given that we share the same pool of finances.
My mom and dad have been really supportive--they're pretty excited actually. We've been looking at some nice apartments near work and my parents are scrounging around for left over things in their house that we can put in the new apartment (furniture, silverware, appliances, etc.)
His parents tell me that the Catholic church will not marry you if you're cohabitating with the guy you're going to marry. All of my friends who are uber Catholic inform me that this is true and have shunned me as a sinner for having considered the possibility! I am at a total loss. And I am not kidding when I tell you that I have lost a friend for having considered living with my fiance (we havn't settled on an apartment so nothing is official) and she has no interest in being part of my life anymore. I am completely caught off guard.
What do I do? I suppose we can get seprate apartments but in honesty we're going to be at eachother's places so often it will just be a huge fianance for no reason.