Has anyone done marriage courses yet?

View quoted message Ya, we have changed what we were going to do for our wedding so many times lol. We have been really lucky and both sides have been pretty good with the guest list. My mom had only one person that she said needed to be invited and my FMIL had a few. Our guest list is 187 which seems high but in comparison to some other Italian weddings isn’t too bad. There have been some times that my FMIL gave her “opinion” but I’ve told her how I felt about it and squashed her idea lol. My answer is any of her suggestions is “that’s not really my style” works every time lol

View quoted message That’s really great! I’m really relieved that someParishes/priest/ iunno offer a more modern approach to marriage classes. I know so many people that hated theirs :b

View quoted message Yeah, SYMBIS is really cool. We talked about things like unspoken rules, which are expectations we have for our spouse going into marriage that we may not even know we have....and how to deal with and communicate these unspoken rules.

View quoted message I feel like the girl we’re going to go with does a class similar to that. That’s how she made it sound. I would so just rather it be about communicating and the realities of marriage

We did the SYMBIS course (Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts). It was a good course and it was with other couples. It came with a workbook and it was mostly about communication.

We met with our pastors between 3-5 times. We were given these books with different lessons in it, and we filled them out while we were watching dvd's that had the same lessons being taught to us. We had to do it individually and then talk about what we learned in the lessons to one another. We then met with the pastors and they would pick random questions from the lessons and ask us what our answers were. It was more about our goals in life and if they match with your partner or not, different love languages, what your strengths are in a relationship and what you need to work on etc. It was how to have a healthy relationship and signs of when it isn't healthy, and this actually really helped us. This was given to us by the pastors, and so it was from a Church, but it was based on our relationship - it definitely wasn't about the wife must be respectful of the husband etc....

OMG I just read you profile! Traditional Italian wedding right here too! Wow 6 weeks though! That’s intense! If we do it with a group it’s 9-6 on a weekend and if we do private it’s 11-4 any day she’s available and we’re available.
Do you feel like there’s a lot of pressure from either both sides for planning the wedding and guest list?

We have started. We are getting married in April and so we did the 6 week course. It’s 3 hours a night once a week. I know that there is also a weekend course that is overnight that you can do. It’s run by a psychologist and it’s about the relationship more than the religious aspect.