Tag Archives: Advice For Engaged Couples

Bachelor Parties: Cheating on Your Future Spouse?

Recently, my wife and some of her girlfriends had a ladies movie night. As the evening drew to a close and I emerged from the back room, I walked into an unexpected conversation about Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). The discussion focused on the odd contradiction of gluttonizing oneself the day before Lent and completely gorging oneself the day before fasting.

For some reason, bachelor parties immediately came to mind and it seemed there was a similar parallel. For many guys (and this can go for ladies too), they desire to have a one last night of other women before being chained down to one woman for the rest of their lives. Some men wish to have a stripper come to the party. Others prefer multiple women by going to a strip club complete with lap dances.

In this shallow view, marriage is seen as a sort of slavery, something that will suck the life out of you, taking away your freedom and any chance of fun. Being totally committed to one woman seems daunting, and it’s a reluctant duty rather than a joyful commitment. The mindset, therefore, is that a guy must live it up one last time. This kind of gloomy anticipation of marriage always makes me wonder why they want to get married in the first place. It reminds me of the popular t-shirt which has a bride and a groom standing next to each other. The bride has a huge smile on her face while the groom wears a huge frown. At the bottom of the shirt it says “Game Over.” Now, if this is what people think marriage is, why get married?

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having a bachelor party or a night of fun with friends. For my bachelor party, we played Laser Tag, came back and played video games and watched movies while eating man food. It was fun, pure, and there was no cheating on my fiancée with other women the night before our wedding.

Sadly, this is not always the case. Some desire one last hoorah with someone other than the person they are engaged to. Isn’t this very problematic though? Getting stone drunk or having strippers before marriage is, at best, an oxymoron. For men, it’s an offense against their bride (or vice versa), her beauty, and her dignity. Your wife (or husband) is our number #1 before and after marriage. How can a man claim to love his fiancée and be committed to her while simultaneously going off to enjoy other women for a night?

We don’t promise ourselves to our future spouse on the day of our marriage, but many months before when we propose to them. Faithfulness and commitment don’t start on the wedding day but before—long before. The wedding is just the next step of the journey. So, it is essential to train ourselves in faithfulness to our spouse and to form good habits long before that big day even arrives.

If someone believes they are losing their life and freedom by getting married, then can they really know what marriage is? Perhaps they are not ready or mature enough to enter into this serious sacrament of holy matrimony. Or, perhaps they need to read and learn what marriage is about and then prepare themselves more for that sacrament. It’s important to understand the sacrifice that’s needed for marriage, but also to understand how that sacrifice frees you and fulfills you when you choose it freely. You are not having your freedom taken away in marriage per say, but rather, you are surrendering certain things for the sake of your beloved. The sacrifices are done out of love, and this kind of love yields an amazing power, beauty, and contentment.

Marriage is only a drag when we’re dominated by self-centeredness. As a married man, I am more than happy to commit to my wife, my best friend, my soulmate, and to sacrifice certain things for my bride. While marriage takes work, no doubt, there is no real happiness or fulfillment without it. Love and marriage are about giving, not receiving. But, if both lovers give all they have to each other, then both simultaneously receive. Marriage is a reciprocal gift of self, a beautiful life-long gift of love which makes you holy!

Article originally published by CatholicMatch Institute, which provides resources to help single Catholics develop a strong foundation for marriage through advocacy, programs, and scholarships. Used with permission.

Counting the Days Until Marriage, Not the Wedding

The countdown to the biggest day of my life flashes prominently on my carefully-crafted wedding website and my thorough Knot.com profile, quantifying just how much time I have left before my CatholicMatch boyfriend turned CatholicMatch finance becomes my husband.

Even though there is a lot of time before our big day, the how-to books and online guides have almost convinced me that time is running out before the save the dates have even hit the post office. The wedding world that I am now immersed in might as well just plainly say that each hour, each minute and each second not spent obsessing over table linens, first dances and my honeymoon packing list are wasted.

The element of time drives every vendor meeting as we count backward from our wedding date, but even the questions from my friends and family suggest that the clock is ticking.

When is your wedding again?

How many days?

Stressed yet?

The countdown to my wedding has already begun.

Like most brides, I have years of hopes and dreams bundled into a delightful feeling of anticipation for my wedding day. I joined CatholicMatch like many of you did – unsure and skeptical, with a small dose of hope – and the fact that I can even write about my experience as an engaged woman is an answered prayer. An Autumn wedding may not be logistically perfect, but I will walk down the aisle and recite ancient vows in front of God to the faithful man whose last name will become my own.

It’s not a fairy tale. It’s real life and a blessing from God that I am just beginning to comprehend.

I find it interesting that the majority of people ask, “When are you getting married?” It’s as if everyone is asking me when I will don a beautiful white gown, carry a bouquet and become a bride. I give them the date, but it’s not just the day I become a bride – it’s the day that I become a wife.

I will say “I do” and forever join myself to another in the sacrament of marriage. “Two will become one,” and I will no longer live for just me. I will die to myself every day and selflessly love my spouse more than anyone else.

I’ve already spent hundreds of hours preparing for my wedding day from the Mass to the dinner to the dance, but when the final guests retreat to their hotel rooms after a night of dancing, I will no longer be a bride. I will be a wife.

As Catholics, we know that a wedding is not just a big party. It’s a holy sacrament and as our priest recently pointed out in a marriage prep session, it’s the only sacrament that we as lay people completely control. While a priest is present as a witness and a symbol of God, the priest does not marry us. We marry each other as we recite our vows. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, we know that in our wedding-obsessed culture, the focus is much less on the sacrament and much more on the show. I’ve read stories about brides that became so consumed with their wedding plans that they experienced “wedding blues” following their nuptials. One wedding planner summed it up by saying:

You always had something to do, decisions to make, places to be, people to not only spend time with, but who were desperately trying to assist your every whim. And now it’s over…Whether you choose to admit it or not, wedding planning became your pastime.

In the days before my wedding, I may do my fair share of wedding planning, but my only true “pastime” will be preparing for the commitment I will make and live out every day after that. The countdown is not just for that day – it’s for a lifetime together. No wedding planner or Pinterest board can prepare us for that. Only prayer, thoughtful conversation and a commitment to our core beliefs will carry us to the altar.

So perhaps my countdown has been off all along. Maybe my master wedding timeline should point to the day after my wedding, the day after the party has ended and my new life as a married woman begins.

3 Modern Obstacles to a Healthy Marriage

If this story, about a couple married for 62 years who died 4 hours apart, does not make you sigh just a little, well … I’m not sure you have a soul.

Or how about the story about Fred Stobaugh, the 96-year-old widower who wrote an ode to his late wife, “Sweet Lorraine,” and entered it in a song-writing contest? If you can watch the video without tearing up, don’t bother reading on. You’re just not human.

Why do stories like these touch our hearts in such a moving way? I think it’s because stories like these so clearly demonstrate the lifelong commitment marriage is meant to be. Till death do us part. We say the words, and we see in them an ideal to aspire to, something we all long to attain, and yet not all of us do.

It’s cliche to lament divorce statistics, but in an attempt to combat the problem of rising divorce rates and declining marriage rates, let’s take a look at some cultural problems that can be obstacles to healthy marriages.

1. We have a mixed-up idea of married love.

It’s normal to go into marriage with some expectation of romance and lovey-dovey stuff. After all, that’s how people wind up wanting to get married in the first place. They fall in love, they have a romantic relationship, and they are so crazy about each other that they can’t wait to start “together forever.” That’s awesome. That’s fun. That’s how God intends for couples to begin.

Every healthy marriage, no matter what stage its in, does have some measure of romantic love. Just as people have different personalities, though, different marriages do too, and most marriages don’t maintain that full-force “romantic” feeling forever. And we should not expect them to.

When people mix up married love with romantic love, they wrongly feel that their marriage is in decline when the romance begins to fade. There are fewer rose-petal baths and more insurance premiums. There are no more love songs and an awful lot of day-to-day drudgery.

Fading romance in a culture that tells couples they can quit when it gets hard, leave when they “fall out of love,” or their spouse “doesn’t make them happy anymore,” is a recipe for discouragement and the kinds of negative, selfish thoughts that can lead to divorce.

2. We fail at self-giving love.

This is a problem I have observed even among very “faithful” Catholics who know and love a lot about their faith. Somehow, we as a Church have failed to help some husbands and wives hear and understand that their call to marriage is a call to make a total gift of self to their spouse.

St. John Paul II emphasizes the importance of “self-gift” in Gaudium et Spes:

Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.

That “sincere gift of self” he mentions is a daily call to sacrifice, and I will let you in on a little secret: It’s not feel-good stuff. It hurts. Like sacrifice always does. That’s why they call it sacrifice.

In my own life, I have seen what look like “perfect” marriages on the outside fall apart on the inside because of a failure of one or both of the spouses to recognize this simple fact: Love comes first. Charity above all things. You can be an otherwise “perfect” Catholic couple–earning a decent living, setting up a home, having children and educating them well–but if you fail to recognize the importance of loving your spouse with self-giving love, you are failing. At the most important thing. None of that other stuff matters.

We aren’t all perfect at self-sacrifice, of course, and in a healthy marriage there is plenty of room for mistakes, mercy, and forgiveness. The fundamentally important call to hear, however, is the call to love one another and to fully find yourself through a “sincere gift of self” to your spouse. That kind of love isn’t just “nice if you can find it”; it’s what marriage is.

3. We misunderstand the importance of vocation.

Vocation is a tough concept for many of today’s younger generations to understand. The idea of a calling–not a job, but a calling–to marriage, priesthood, or religious life is a foreign one to many. When we fail to recognize marriage as a calling, however, we belittle it. Culturally, it becomes a hobby or something nice to do “if you’re into that kind of thing.” It certainly isn’t something you would sacrifice your career for.

But our culture lets young people know that career goals can trump marriage. Travel plans can take precedence. There’s no hurry.

The sad result is that when people get married later in life, there is less likelihood that they will meet their spouses when both are ready to make a commitment, and there are fewer marriage-ready men and women in the dating pool even for those who are looking seriously for a spouse.

If marriage is a vocation, that means it’s your life’s work; it’s not a job and not something you do on the side. It’s something you do first, and then build to rest of your life around, not something you try to fit in later, once you’ve saved up enough money and you’ve accomplished “more important” things.

The saddest part of cultural obstacles to healthy marriage is that they negatively affect a lot of innocent people who desperately want to answer a call to marriage. They want to find their spouse, get married, begin a life-long commitment, and practice self-giving love. But our culture sometimes gets in the way.

The good news, though, is that our God is an awesome God. The power of an anti-marriage culture may be great, but God is greater and He works with what we give Him. All of us, married, single, divorced, widowed, dating, or something in between, can pray every day for the grace we need to live out Christ’s call to perfection in an imperfect world.

Let’s support marriage. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s encourage each another.

Things You’ll Wish You Knew Before ‘I Do’

One of my favorite parts of my engagement to my fiancé George, (whom I met on CatholicMatch), came after I said, “Yes.” In the days and weeks following that sunny Saturday in June, treasured nuggets of information began to trickle out from our family and friends, cluing me into the behind the scenes planning that led to George on bended knee.

For weeks, my laid-back then-boyfriend carefully crafted a proposal involving our closest family and friends. From contacting my best friend and her husband to take photos and video footage to coordinating an engagement party at one of our favorite restaurants and swearing everyone to secrecy, he planned every detail, including the perfect location—under the iconic arches at our shared alma mater.

He was intentional and purposeful as he prepared to ask me to be his wife, even incorporating details from my carefully-laid hints during our courtship. Perhaps subconsciously, George was setting the foundation for our time as an engaged couple preparing for the sacrament of marriage and later, our journey as husband and wife.

We’re approaching this life-changing commitment in a different way than many of those around us. I’ve posted before about our wedding plans from choosing the venue to booking our honeymoon, but at the core of each of these choices is a focus on why we’re doing each of these things.

I’m called to be George’s wife and he’s called to be my husband. That’s a reality that goes beyond each of us, and we still do not know exactly what impact our union will have on each other, those around us and the rest of the world. What I do know is that we’re intentionally creating a marriage, not a wedding, through each month leading up to “I do.”

We’re intentionally doing marriage prep. Intentionally not cohabitating. Intentionally planning the wedding Mass. Intentionally planning a life based on faith.

Weddings are commonplace in our society, but not marriages. Among my peer group, I hear many reasons of why couples get married, and in so many instances, they accidentally fall into married life because of outside circumstances and not the prompting of the Holy Spirit. For some, they’re living together already and presume marriage is the next logical step in life. For others, they’re struggling with finances individually and hope that two combined incomes are better than one. Or maybe they just think they’re at the age where they should be married. And so they move forward, promising “‘til death do us part” at a wedding ceremony that they happen to be a part of.

Catholic writer Matthew Warner wrote about accidental living in a recent issue of the magazine Shalom Tidings:

“You were made to live intentionally. You were made to choose how you live your life, not to let life simply happen to you…If life is just happening to you, then you are caught up in the mire and mediocrity of accidental living. An accidental life will never be fulfilling to a creature that was made to choose.”

Just as we were made to choose a life that honors God, we were made to make intentional choices in all other aspects of life, including whom you marry. Living an intentional life is not taking the reins and being in control of every detail of your life. It’s choosing to allow God into your heart to guide you in all of your actions and decisions.

In our careers, we don’t expect promotions to get handed to us. We have to make a series of choices to prove ourselves along the way. You don’t accidentally find yourself in a dream career, even if every stepping stone magically aligned in the perfect way.

The same applies for relationships. You don’t accidentally find yourself in a happy, spiritually-centered marriage. You have to intentionally choose to search for the spouse God has planned for you (like by joining CatholicMatch!) and then live that call out with purpose.

Addressing volunteers at World Youth Day, Pope Francis encourages all of us to fight against the temptation of accidental living to not only follow God’s plan for each of us, but to live a life of happiness:

“God calls you to make definitive choices, and He has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move forward toward personal fulfillment…Have the courage to swim against the tide. And also have the courage to be happy.”
– Pope Francis, Sunday, July 28, 2013

Don’t walk through life waiting for the next accident to occur. Live each day with intention—intention to bring glory to God through your future marriage and your life.

“Just Wait”: A Letter from a Newlywed Couple

Photo by Mike Nelson, www.mknlsn.com.

Dear The Dating, The Engaged, The Married,

Valerie: “Just wait. It’ll get worse when you’re married.” “Just wait until you’ve been married for a year…” “Just wait until the seven year itch…“ “Just wait until you’ve been married as long as we have…”

The “just wait until…” scale seems to be sliding further and further away no matter how long you’ve been married. My husband, Rocco, and I have been married for a little over a year and a half and are determined to tell anyone who will listen just how amazing marriage is! Marriage is a gift from God!

Rocco: I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “Oh, you’re engaged? Congratulations, but just wait for marriage…” or “Oh, you’re newlyweds? Congratulations, but just wait until after the ‘honeymoon’ phase…” These are messages delivered with a sense of impending doom. At work or elsewhere, these “just waits” are often accompanied by comments about “the old ball and chain,” snide remarks about spouses, and all kinds of dubious marriage advice.

Valerie: I guess we are never quite married long enough to be considered to know what married life is like, but we would disagree. At no point do Rocco and I think we know everything about marriage. We are learning more and more about one another and about married life every day. But to those who are engaged, to those who are dating, to those who believe their vocation is to one day get married, to those who have already spoken those vows, take heart: Marriage is an amazing, life changing, ridiculously fun adventure!

Rocco: I’m on a mission: God created me to love Val and sacrifice my life for her. He created her to be my perfect match and for those whom God calls to the vocation of marriage, He’s created a perfect match for you as well. Forget anything you’ve heard from people who’ve become disillusioned and instead “just wait” for the joy, the excitement, the laughter, and the sheer fun of what’s to come!

Just wait… until you come home and your husband, who has just come home from work, has the fire going in the fireplace, Christmas lights plugged in and hot chocolate set out for you.

Just wait…until you come home to a house full of balloons and a gigantic card on your birthday and you realize how hard your wife worked to see your joy and that she’s been planning this moment for a long time.

Just wait… until the first snow since you’ve been married and your husband goes outside and creates a huge heart in the road to show you from the upstairs window.

Just wait… until she hatches a plan to feed the homeless and you remember how much you love her generosity and compassion.

Just wait… until you find the love note he hid around the house for you to find during the day.

Just wait… until you get to open your lunch bag to read the love note she wrote you that morning.

Just wait… until your husband comes home from work and the first thing he does is run, literally run, to find you, lift you up in an embrace, spin you around, and give you a “hello” kiss.

Just wait… until you see your wife waving from the window as you come home from work, with a huge smile on her face, so happy to see you, and she surprises you with a scrumptious meal, a clean house, and plans for the future: fruit of a grueling day while you were at work, and all out of love.

Just wait… until your husband pulls a dozen beautiful red roses from behind his back, in the middle of the week, for no other reason than he loves you and knows you love surprises.

Just wait… until when you serve food for the two of you and she insists you have the warmer dinner, the choicest portion of meat, and the bigger cookie, just because she loves to see you smile.

Just wait… until he changes his routine and brings his laptop over to work with you on the couch because he knows you enjoy his presence.

Just wait… until you two really realize for the first time that you are not just “her” family, not just “your” family, but your own family.

Just wait… until your husband tells you every day that you’re his most beautiful bride and he’s the luckiest guy in the world.

Just wait… until she giggles every time you surprise her with kisses on her cheek.

Just wait… until your husband asks to hold a friend’s baby for the first time, and he instantly melts, and you are reminded for the billionth time how good of a dad he will be one day.

Just wait… until you see your wife cradling a friend’s infant in her arms, and she instantly knows everything to do to calm him, and you are reminded for the billionth time how good of a mom she will be one day.

Just wait… because you have so much joy ahead of you…

About the authors
Valerie is a worship leader in the Washington, DC area and is the music director for campus ministry at George Washington University. (www.valerierepetski.com) Rocco is an engineer and does youth ministry with Youth Apostles, a community of Catholic men. (www.youthapostles.org) Valerie and Rocco also do ministry with their Catholic rock band, The Restless. (www.therestless.net) This article originally appeared on http://valerierepetski.com/blog/ and is used with permission.

A Wedding Planning Reality Check

Most engaged couples—at least the brides–love thumbing through any of the popular bridal magazines, reading the numerous helpful articles, and taking note of the various ads, photos, and other information offered, be it helpful wedding tips, reception planning or honeymoon ideas. These magazines try to be a resource guide for couples who want to have the perfect wedding. This isn’t a negative notion in itself, other than the fact that “perfect” is not reachable, nor even necessarily, desirable.

There is an adage in Catholic Engaged Encounter: “A Wedding is a Day; A Marriage is a Lifetime.” So the key is not to put more emphasis on the wedding plans than the subsequent marriage. These magazines are not designed to do any more than they do: sell gowns, rings, dinnerware, furniture, luggage, travel packages, honeymoon trips, sex appeal, and “take-your-breath-away-beauty.”

The Wedding: A Celebration of God’s Love

There is, of course, nothing wrong with a well-planned wedding day; nor for that matter, with a reception and wedding celebration of large proportions – that is, if they fit into the proper context. This means that the wedding celebration needs to point to the reality of what is truly happening with this coming together as husband wife. It is actually a party to celebrate that God loves His people. The husband and wife express this divine love concretely– through words and deeds– as they live out their conjugal love over a lifetime. Their bond of love becomes the image and symbol of the covenant that unites God to His people. This is wonderful! It is wonder-filled. It demands to be celebrated. And the need and desire to have a great wedding celebration is therefore appropriate and fitting.

Sometimes, though, a couple can get so caught up in planning that a reality check is needed. When wedding planning threatens to spin out of control, it’s time to step back and ask a few questions:

Why are we doing whatever we are doing regarding our wedding plans?
What is the purpose of our large, small, costly, intimate, informal, formal, etc. reception?
How are we acting as a visible sign of God’s love for all of us as we participate in the celebration and related events?
Who are we inviting? And why are we asking these people?
Is there anything we can do to help others? Perhaps even assist family reconciliations? How might we be a sign of God’s love to the poor, the afflicted, and the needy?
What does the term “counter-cultural” mean to us in the context of our wedding celebration?
For the ecumenical or interfaith couple (where only one person is Catholic): How can aspects of both our faith traditions be acknowledged and affirmed in our wedding celebration?

The marriage covenant illustrates and illuminates Gods love for us. The couple enters this covenant with their own promise, or vow, to do three things: to be faithful to each other forever, to be exclusively for one another, and to be open to new life. The couple says “yes” – to be their word – while not knowing how they are going to fulfill such a promise. They say “yes” to live out their commitment regardless of whatever circumstances come about in their life. They do so, not solely based upon their own good intentions and abilities, but do so in the confidence of God’s grace. It is God’s faithfulness that we can always count on, and it is this faithfulness that the couple is committed to mirror to each other and to the world.

The promise the couple makes – publicly to God and to community – is a radical departure from any contract, whereby in a contract both parties know up front what will or won’t take place before hand. This promise – or covenant – is counter-cultural, and it is profoundly freeing and powerful.

Marriage as an Invitation to Personal Growth

Marriage is also a social matter. It has always been an occasion for rejoicing, bringing together families and friends. For Catholics (indeed, for all baptized Christians) it is also a sacrament that draws them into an on-going process of sacrifice, compromise, raising children, prayer, and dealing with the joys and annoyances of a life shared together. For the wise couple, it is a challenge that, when embraced, opens the door to tremendous opportunities for personal growth and development. The married couple takes this way of living on as their specific spiritual journey–one where maturity and growth occurs for each person, as God gets revealed over and over through their love for one another.

In addition to making thoughtful and wise choices concerning the wedding plans, a couple needs to put a major effort into their marriage plans. The wedding can often be exhausting and lots of work. It’s only worthwhile if the couple has also prepared for the marriage. Then the work of the marriage, the work that continues long after the bills for the reception and gown are paid, and long after the honeymoon photos are placed into an album or on a website, can become the exclusive focus.

While bridal magazines are exciting and fun to look at, they won’t say all this. And they only tell a part of the story. The rest is about the excitement and fun in store for those blessed and courageous enough to invest in this lifelong journey of work and effort – this thing called sacramental marriage. So plan – for a great wedding – as well as a great and fulfilling marriage.

About the author
Don Paglia is the Co-Director of the Family Life Office in the Archdiocese of Hartford.

The Courage to be Married

It may not take courage to make a promise, but it can take a lot of courage to keep a promise. This is especially true for the promises we make on our wedding day.

I remember when I was an altar boy serving wedding Masses. I recall seeing the nervousness and sometimes outright terror on the faces of the brides and grooms who knelt before the altar. I used to wonder why they were so nervous. Then, years later, I got engaged to be married and got my own taste of that fear.

For me, it was never the problem that I didn’t love the woman kneeling next to me before God, our families, and friends on our wedding day. The problem was that no human could offer us any guarantees as to what was ahead of us. In fact, our friend Father Rich Simon, who presided at our wedding, presented us with a list of possibilities that didn’t exactly inspire confidence—sickness, poverty, or worse.

But in our decades of marriage so far, what we’ve found is that, most often, the courage we’ve needed has been to respond to the more mundane and everyday challenges that marriage brings. And the more we’ve had the courage to address these challenges, the stronger, more satisfying, and even holier our marriage has been for us. Here are a few of those everyday challenges we faced. You’ll surely find your own.

The courage to say what needs to be said

I suspect that most marriages aren’t harmed as much by what is said as by what is left unsaid. Withholding our truth from one another can kill a marriage. This can range from failing to express one’s love (in words, in deeds, in conscientious responses), to not standing up for oneself, to failing to speak up when something’s wrong in your marriage but you don’t want to rock the boat.

In my own marriage, I am extremely grateful (though usually not at the moment) for the times my wife was able to raise difficult issues I’d rather have kept swept under the rug. And I am glad I have found the courage to speak up about feelings and concerns I had that I knew it would be hard for her to hear. Showing courage in those moments inevitably increased our intimacy, our respect, and our love. Pay attention to what you resist saying. A friend of mine says that when it comes to knowing what inner work we should do, “resistance always points true north.”

The courage to do your own inner work

What behaviors of yours are robbing your marriage? It may be busy-ness, alcohol, anger, compulsive spending, or a whole long list of other distractions and cheap substitutions for the mutual self-revelation that marriage calls us to. Over time, any one of these can kill a marriage. If in your marriage you find yourself doing what you know you don’t want and shouldn’t do, have the courage to get help. It’s funny that people show disdain for turning to a counselor or 12-Step group because they feel it shows weakness, when in truth picking up the phone to make a call for help takes more courage than most things we’ll ever do. Be courageous!

The courage to welcome and let go

One of the greatest challenges of marriage is to find gracious ways to welcome this other person into your life—to make their wants and wishes and needs as much a concern for you as your own wants and wishes and needs. Marriage is all about welcoming—our new spouse, their family and friends, their quirks and foibles, even their maddening habits.

We need to do more than tolerate, we are called to welcome and cherish all of who this person is. It takes courage to open up our lives and invite another in. It takes courage to overcome our own habits of selfishness. And when we do, we swiftly learn that we also need to exercise the Christian virtue of letting go—letting go of old habits and new expectations. And oddly enough, if we are to keep our marriage alive and growing, we need to let go of how our marriage was last year or how we think it ought to be and grow into what our marriage requires or us today. You will change and so will your spouse. Each day, in effect, you need to say, “Once again, I choose you.”

Earlier I wrote that no human being could guarantee what our future might hold, and that’s true. But on your wedding day, God makes you a promise. God promises to be with you every step of the way—for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and not only until death, but beyond. And in reality, that is the guarantee that has meant the most to Kathleen and me. It is in the context of this living faith that marriage finally makes sense. It is in the faithfulness of God that we have found our hope to remain faithful to one another. It is in the reality of God’s constant love for us that we have discovered the depth and source of our love for each other, for our children, and for the world we are meant to serve. May you have courage—the courage to be truly married.

Budgeting for Your Wedding

Costs vary by region, but the average wedding ranges between $20,000 and $25,000. Some couples justify their spending because it’s a “once in a lifetime” event. Others feel pressured by families and friends to stage an elaborate celebration. Expectations may be greater for couples who have been on their own for a while. Presumably, they have more financial resources, plus they’ve accumulated lots of great ideas from their friends’ weddings.

The Catholic Church understands a couple’s desire for an appropriate celebration of their marriage with family and friends. In the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament. All sacraments are to be celebrated because they are encounters with Jesus Christ. A wedding celebrates Christ’s gift of marital love to this particular man and woman. It is a time for rejoicing.

But what is “appropriate”? The U.S. Catholic bishops have not spoken directly about wedding spending, but couples might ask the following questions before setting up a wedding budget.

What do you want the wedding to say about you and your values?

Couples frequently say they want their wedding to express who they are. Of course, a Christian wedding is much more than a personal identity statement. Still, this is a legitimate concern; after all, the wedding is the couple’s first public act as husband and wife. It should say something about what’s important to them. Do you want to express hospitality, gratitude for the support of family and friends, and a commitment to share your love with others? Then plan a wedding that highlights those values.

Are you willing to go into debt, or put family members in debt, because of this wedding?

According to a national study, debt brought into marriage is among the top three problematic issues for newly married couples. Many couples are already struggling with credit card debt and student loans. Do you really want to add wedding debt to the mix? Financial worries can strain even seasoned couples. Newly married couples are especially at risk.

Are you willing to focus time and energy on the details of a lavish wedding? Will this reduce the attention you can pay to preparing for the marriage itself?

You may have heard the Engaged Encounter slogan: “A wedding is a day, a marriage is a lifetime.” In other words, what are your priorities? The engagement period is not only a time to plan the wedding, but to prepare for your married lives. Too much concentration on the former can take time from the Must-Have Conversations that need to take place before the wedding. It can also turn you into an overstressed Bride- or Groomzilla.

Do you feel comfortable with the amount you plan to spend? Have you considered this in relation to the needs of people in your community?

The U.S. Bishops have called people to “carefully consider our choices and lifestyles.” They point out that “we live in a culture that prizes the consumption of material goods. While the poor often have too little, many of us can be easily caught up in a frenzy of wanting more and more” (Global Climate Change, 15).

Moderation is the key. If you have a feeling that wedding expenses are getting out of hand, they probably are. To restore your focus, consider how your wedding might express your concern for the needy. Some couples prepare a large food basket that they bring forward along with the bread and wine for Mass. Other couples include a request on their wedding invitations that guests bring one or two items of non-perishable food to the church. These are then given to the parish food pantry or a local food bank. Couples can also make a donation, from the money they may receive as gifts, to the parish’s social outreach committee.

Can you really cut down on wedding expenses? Absolutely! Check out the resources below to get started. Then take up the challenge of planning a dream wedding that won’t break your budget.

Balancing Careers and Family

Balancing career and family is one of the greatest challenges facing newly married couples. Just when you thought marriage was going to simplify your life, you start to realize that there are decisions ahead, such as:

Whose career takes priority?
Will both of us continue to work outside the home once we have children?
Is it fair for me to be stuck in a dead-end job in order to put you through school?
Will the spouse with the higher income have more say in how our money is spent?
If you work and I work, who does the housework?

Don’t lock yourselves into a house or car payment that requires two incomes.

All of a sudden, wedding planning looks minor by comparison. And it should, because these are big decisions that affect your future lives together. But you don’t have to make them alone and you don’t have to make them in a vacuum.

This website cannot give you personalized career advice, but we can pass on the wisdom of many practitioners in the field of marriage enrichment. One frequent question that comes up in marriage preparation programs is:

Should one spouse quit work when children are born?

Answer: Maybe yes, maybe no.

It certainly helps to have one parent at home nurture and raise the child according to the values you hold. It makes life a lot easier and less stressful.

On the other hand, this is not always financially or professionally possible. A lot depends on your income and job. Also, some parents don’t have the temperament to spend many hours with young children. It can be draining and exhausting.

Like many couples, you may want to keep your options open. To do this, family life educators often recommend that if both spouses are employed when you get married, try to live on one spouse’s income. Use the second income for one-time purchases such as a down payment on a house or furniture, savings, or optional recreation. Don’t lock yourselves into a house or car payment that requires two incomes. This way, when you have your first child you are free to choose. You may have always expected that both of you would continue working outside the home once you had a child. BUT…you may feel differently once parental instincts kick in. You may not change your minds, but at least you have a choice.

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