I try to stick to my wedding scheduler as much as possible and I can see that my wedding preparations are somehow less stressful. I’ve already heard loads of blood freezing stories about how hard is it to organize Polish wedding so I braced myself and started getting stuff ready in advance. The plus is that my fiancé is willing to help – that’s a big relief!
So, it came time to attend pre-marriage course. In Poland, there are various options of premarital courses available. It actually depends on the parish. Premarital course usually consists of several evening meetings which make take up to 3 months but there’s even online option available (which is quite surprising in Poland).
We decided to choose quick 1-weekend option . Such weekend premarital course is convenient especially for people who are busy at week days and want to do it fast. In contrary to usual evening courses, such weekend option is paid – it costed us 150 PLN (about 40 USD) with meals included.
What’s also worth to know is that such course doesn’t have expiry date – you can even do it a few years before the wedding.
Anyway, like majority of bridegrooms-to-be, we were rather skeptical of this course. To be honest, it was just another thing to tick off from my wedding scheduler. I thought it’ll be boring and focused mainly on religious matters. Also, I feared that the coaches may be nuns and priests who don’t really have marriage experience. Simply – a waste of time.
Fortunately, it turned out that it was organized by funny, laid back couples who did their best to make the participants satisfied.
The most important thing is that the trainers were positive people in long-term relationships. I could tell that the coaches were carefully selected people who know what they are talking about – all happily married for long years. And I could tell they were happy – you can see if there’s love and respect between people.
If I were to describe this premarital course using just one word it would be: refreshing .
It may not have been tremendously revealing but the course did remind us of the most important things in relationship. We were told of psychological and social aspects of effective communication and shown how to solve issues smoothly.
Fortunately, it wasn’t only given in a form of lectures – each discussed aspect was done using exercises. I liked it a lot - we did loads of practical exercises which helped us better understand each other. Let’s be honest – in everyday, busy life there’s not much space for serious talks about relationship and emotions. Such premarital course is an opportunity to start taking greater care of your relationship and also discuss some serious stuff which you don’t talk about on everyday basis.
And the romance. At the end of this pre-marriage course we were asked to fill up a survey giving feedback. Obviously, there was a question “Which exercises did you like best?”. Together with Bartosz (not consulting this with each other) we stated “Writing a letter”.
They actually made us write a letter on paper to each other and we both liked it immensely. It was our first romantic letter on paper ! If, like us, you’ve never written a paper letter to your significant other, do it now. Seriously. It does lift your spirit and enhances the experience. I’m sure I’ll reread Bartosz’s letter many times in the future!
To sum up, this premarital course motivated us to work on our relationship more and refreshed our knowledge about psychological stuff. I’m not sure how the other pre-marriage courses look like but the one we attended was definitely worthwhile.
Have you ever attended premarital course? Did you like it?
