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Course Review
Jonna Sercombe and Steph Salisbury
"Let me type."
"No, let me type."
"I type faster, it’ll be written quicker."
"No, I type more accurately, it’ll be written quicker."
As you can tell, how to write an article about the Marriage Preparation Course run by St Mary’s at the end of last year was not on the curriculum of said course. However, what we can both agree on is that it was brilliant and we definitely enjoyed it!
The 4-week course consisted of a different married couple each week presenting on a specific topic, with couple discussions, short written exercises and plenty of opportunities to ask those burning questions about married life.
What really struck us was the candid honesty of all couples involved. The openness of all was a real blessing, both in the advice we took away and the questions we felt able to ask. Both the good and more challenging sides of the couples’ marriages were aired from week to week, which definitely gave us ‘thinking about getting engaged, engaged or newly married’ couples a lot of hope for the future. Marriage wasn’t painted as a fix-all or as some kind of ‘Stepford Wives’ ideal but rather an ongoing project, involving team-work, communication, forgiveness, love and humour.
Another thing that we found particularly helpful was the structured discussions, based on a short set of questions to help us focus. Before this, our conversations seemed to start with one thing and then balloon out of all proportion, ending with a whole big ‘State of the Nation’ type chat. Never constructive whichever way you look at it!
A huge range of topics were covered from The First Year of Marriage through to Conflict Resolution, all with very handy practical tips and real life scenarios.
Personally speaking, we both consider the course a raving success – mainly due to Jonna’s actions over the New Year period involving one bent knee, a very wet and windy Devon beach and a newly engaged couple!! We are both so excited and looking forward to our St Mary’s wedding, plans for which are coming together nicely. If only we could decide between a Star Wars or Cowboys and Indians theme…
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