I went in there with an open mind and I think that my FI and I both took some value away from it that we didn't think we would. We even did one of the "homework" assignments last night and made our "contract" for fair fighting lol. It was a funny exercise at times but I think it also will help us in the future though too!
Despite the fact that it would mean giving up 2 days of football...I do wish it were maybe one of the weekends instead of just the day. I felt that there were some important topics that were brushed over or not addressed at all that I would have liked to be included.
The main one I thought was wrongfully excluded was a finance discussion. With the economy how it is and why it went wrong in the first place, I think that this should have been priority #1 especially since finances between couples cause a lot of marital problems too. I know finances differ from couple to couple but I think a general discussion of different ways to approach the subject of budgeting, how much you want to save, how much do you need to save before you have children, etc would have helped us a lot.
My cousin said that when she and her husband did it 11 years ago, they were asked to write down on a piece of paper how much they would feel comfortable spending on an item without discussing it with the other. They then shared it with their FI. My cousin wrote down $500...her husband wrote down $50 lol. She said it was funny at the time but it actually started a helpful discussion between the 2 of them on how they were going to manage their spending.
So that was the one thing I really felt the day was lacking but I honestly don't think that the other topics dragged on in any way so I think this only could have gotten accomplished by making the program longer. A parenting discussion might have been nice too (at least an activity where the couples could talk about their views on discipline, education, etc).
Communication and conflict resolution took up probably 90% of the day. The discussion was extremely helpful though and the main couple running the day were a funny couple to see interact during these discussions. They were so helpful when it came to talking over conflicts (and entertaining too!).
The NFP discussion was led by a guest couple since the main couple did not use the method. The guest couple was extremely nice and open during their presentation. It was kind of a shock to the audience a little bit though when it came out at the end during Q&A how many of their 5 kids were not planned. The women had already told us that the first method they tried did not work for her body so most of us were thinking 1 or 2 were not planned because the first way did not work. Oh no. They didn't switch to a new method until after the 4th unplanned pregnancy. The 5th one was successfully planned with another method though. Based on talking with people after, I think it scared some of us when the number 4 got thrown out as the unplanned aspect.
Unfortunately though the couple leading the day did say that our archdiocese is implementing a more conference-style presentation now for these engaged enrichment days. They were allowing couples who had been doing it for awhile (ours was on year 19 as leading these) to continue doing it the "old way" but any new programs were going to be more presentation-based by experts, psychologists, etc by topic. Our couple said this was there last year doing it to allow for the "new way" to take over. Kinda sad!
So yeah...anyone who is going into theirs have fun!! Also, I would probably recommend the longer weekend since I'm assuming more topics would have gotten discussed than what got covered in a day.