Planning a Wedding

This may be a surprise to some of our readers (I write that as though there's a mighty T.A.S.K. army sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for a new post every month), but I will be getting married in a couple of months. The marriage will take place in a Catholic church. Because of this, my fiance (ugh...I hate that word...let's just use Beloved. No lie: that's how we were referred to this weekend, "How does beloved feel about this?") and I had to attend a marriage preparation retreat: The Pre-Cana. It consists of a four hour seminar Saturday night, followed by seven hours on Sunday.
Below is an account of this retreat; events do not occur in real time.

Background
In the days/months leading up to the Pre-Cana, I knew it was going to be ridiculous. Not only is it expected that couples make a donation to the church they will be married in, but I have to pay $120 for this mandatory retreat?! Wasn't the Catholic Church one of the richest organizations in the world? Does it really need to charge for this? What happened to all that money? OH! ... ...

Day 1
So Beloved and I arrived Saturday night and went right over to the check-in table. Being the one who signed us up - and the Catholic - I gave my name first. I was ignored. The woman running the table just stared at Beloved until he gave his name. She then turned to me and said,
"I'm not ignoring you. We just have the men listed in the first column here."
Really...it's that difficult for you to shift your eyes a few inches and look up my name? I gave her the look of death until she checked off our names. Which took much longer than it should have: she was LITERALLY looking at our names and said we weren't listed. Bitch, NO! Continuing my look of death I pointed at our names, to no avail. Apparently, I don't know my beloved's name...? That's when the look of death transformed into the voice of death:
"Here! We're right HERE!"
"Isn't that something. Your name is spelled differently from this man's but you pronounce it the same way!"
No, we don't. Those are two completely different names. Perhaps cross-checking against the female's name would have been of use. But what do I know...I'm just a girl.

After that belittling joyful experience, we went to pick up our information folders. I was downright shocked when I was told the official registration form was in my folder! (Why sir, I do believe you are trying to flatter me. Why else would you trust little old me with such an important document? Don't fret, now. I'll hand this off right away to my fiance. He'll be able to take good care of it in his strong, manly hands. I am just simply one helpless damsel without him.) So I gave Beloved the form and insisted, being the man (i.e. more important of the sexes), he needed to take care of the form, to which he mumbled something about it going to be a long weekend.

Boy was he right!

A few minutes later, the priest and presenting married couples entered the room. As important as they think this retreat is, someone should have told Young Wife she could skip the opening remarks so she could finish breast feeding - NOPE! I looked up and saw Young Wife coming down the stairs breast feeding her baby. Huh! Not what I was expecting to see...not at all! (Plus, is it really that safe to be breastfeeding AND walking down stairs?)

The rest of the evening actually wasn't too bad. There would be a presentation, then we divided up to answer some worksheets. After about ten minutes, we searched each other out to discuss our answers. I'll admit, it was pretty nice to have this time set aside to talk without any distractions...except the AA meeting at the end of the hall. The retreat center doesn't have that much space so most of us had to huddle on the hallway floors. I may have mild to moderate OCD, but I'll accept sitting on the floor. However, discussing personal relationship issues with the person you're preparing to spend your life with, surrounded by other couples within earshot, while listening to alcoholic Rob ("Hi, Rob!") discuss his own inner demons...the moment just didn't seem right. Needless to say, Beloved and I weren't taking anything too seriously. So when the "Feelings" presentation began and we were asked to turn to our partner and tell him or her one feeling you're currently feeling, it should be no surprise our answers were:
"I'm kinda sleepy."
"I'm pretty gassy. Why did we stop at Burger King before this? That was a bad idea."

Sleepy and gassy; that pretty much sums up day one.

Day 2
The retreat center was oh so kind enough to provide us with breakfast for the morning: bagels and breads...breakfast foods. I do like me some bagels, but I found it a bit odd that some of the bagels already had cream cheese on them. In one sense, it was a great time saver. I mean, who really wants to be the one to take 50 tiny cream cheese packets, so you have just enough (only to go back up for a few more because you still underestimated how much of a monster you truly are). But on the other hand, it really grosses me out to think a bunch of elderly volunteers were rounded up for this task...with their liver spot covered hands fondling those bagels, coughing their wet, phlegm-y coughs all over them. Then again, it would give the elderly something productive to do, instead of trying to lure unsuspecting parishioners back to their gingerbread houses for Sunday dinner (now that's a story for another time).

So Sunday began with Young Couple telling us that, though it may be very hard, in light of everything we've been learning about our beloved, it might be best to postpone or even cancel the wedding. Excuse me?! I waited 6 years, 9 months, and 10 days for this proposal. The amount of money I've already paid to vendors could have been a nice down payment on a house. Did I hear you correctly? You actually want me to reconsider this wedding? Bitch, NO! It will be a bitter, cold day in hell before the thought of even possibly considering postponing this wedding enters my mind. So cold that, when compared to Star Wars' snow planet of Hoth, Hoth will seem like a sweltering, tropical paradise rich with lush, green vegetation. Since you tried to plant this seed of doubt in Beloved's mind, you ma'am, have moved up on my list! (That's right...you made the cut with the breastfeeding incident from yesterday.)

Then it was on to the Finance presentation. This is when we were regaled by the Postmenopausal Era Couple about the time a money issue lead to a wonderful night of love-making. I don't know the connection between the two. All I know is they were discussing the family's finances and Postmenopausal Era Wife was very concerned. To calm her, Postmenopausal Era Husband stroked her neck...then they made love, "it didn't solve the issue, but it brought [them] together."
I don't know about you, but does anyone else think that Postmenopausal Era Husband was tired of listening to his wife and just wanted to distract her from the issue at hand?

Then is was lunch time. I think they purposely plan lunch right after the finances to keep people there:
Beloved: "So, do you want to stay here for the lunch that's provided or grab something down the street?"
Me: "I don't know. Are we allowed out?"
Beloved: "I'm pretty sure we can leave."
Me: "Yeah...but...if we have lunch here, we could save money...money we can use on wine after this."
So we stayed. We initially were only going to see what they were serving, but it was tough to get out once you entered the dinning hall: several round tables were set up with food - four couples to a table! I'm pretty sure they were keeping tabs on who stayed.
So yeah...we all had to play the "WOW! I'm probably never going to see you again so I really don't care what you have to say but I'm sooooooooo interested in how you met/when your wedding is/where you're going for the honeymoon. PLEASE, continue and tell me more!" Unfortunately for you dear reader, Postmenopausal Era Couple didn't sit at our table; nor did Young Couple. I'm sure I missed a wonderful tutorial in breast feeding from Young Wife - ah well!

Guess what the topic was right after lunch...GUESS!
...
...
...
SEX!
Enter couple number three: NFP Couple (Natural Family Planning, or 'Nother Fetus Please). This is the couple that found everything to be funny...except...contraception:

NFP Wife: "Then we had another little blessing. That's seven in total!" *painfully obvious fake laugh* (but you know it's not fake so you try to pity her but you just can't because of that vainglorious undertone) "Now, some women choose to take those hormone pills. Did you know that most of those pills will allow for fertilization but won't let the fetus attach to the uterine wall...which is an abortion! That's right. Those are abortion pills and we all know what to think about those!" *Again, the fake laugh but this time incredibly inappropriate*
I don't know but I'm pretty sure there's some passage in the Bible about not judging others, lest ye be judged. There's no doubt everyone is harshly judging her so I guess she's in the right. Surely this verbal stoning must be over...

70 Year Old Priest: "The secular world says that living together before marriage is fine. What do you think about this: studies have shown that most couples who lived together before marriage end up divorcing. It's true. They have done studies and that's what they say."
First, Beloved and I can't un-live all those years we've lived together in the past. Second, how do you feel about studies that show homosexuality is not a choice?

(On a side note, I didn't need to know that Young Baby was an NFP baby. I also didn't need to know that Young Couple attended an NFP seminar conducted by NFP Couple in order to learn how to conceive Young Baby. I'm already haunted by the thought of NFP Couple meticulously planning sex...no need to add more into the mix.)

The day ended with a mass and distribution of completion certificates (for real), but not until we had to write love letters to our beloved. When Postmenopausal Era Husband said it was his wife's love letters that helped him through the Navy, all I could think of were the love letters of James Joyce. (If you haven't read these...umm...read at your own risk...'nough said.)

So yeah...that's the Pre-Cana in a nutshell.