Catholic church requires Pre-Cana, it is one requirement that we can accomplish overseas. Pre-Cana is a course for couples preparing to be married in Catholic church. The name is derived from John 2:1–12, the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee, where Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine.

When we visited our church in the Philippines last February, we first asked them if it's okay to do our pre-cana outside the country. They said it's not a problem as parishes and dioceses are worldwide. Immediately, they asked us to come on the other day as they arranged our Canonical Interview. It was like a confession with only you and the priest. Just be honest will all of his question. In the storytelling, I cried, I was overwhelmed sharing our relationship experiences, trials and challenges. The priest was so gentle and good listener. The interview I had lasted one hour and half. After me, he told a joke to EJ that he knows everything about us, haha :)

After we contacted our parish, we make an arrangement to enroll at Marriage Preparation Course in SG. MPC reservation is by slots available, Q2 is closed already when we inquire so we enrolled for Q3. We are thankful that it is still open. The month of July to August works best for us.

MPC Course Application 2016

Quarter	Availability	Course Starts On	Course Ends On
Q1	Closed	14 February 2016	20 March 2016
Q2*	Closed	17 April 2016	29 May 2016
Q3	Closed	17 July 2016	21 August 2016
Q4	Closed	9 October 2016	13 November 2016

The course fee is $200 per couple. We made payment by crossed cheque via UOB. There is $5 dollar fee for Cashier’s order. The course is held over a period of 6 weekends and not to be missed.

Date	Time & Venue
1st, 3rd & 6th Sessions (Sun) 17Jul, 31Jul & 21Aug	8.30am to 2pm at Catholic Junior College (CJC) Mass is celebrated.
2nd, 4th & 5th Sessions (Sat\Sun) 24Jul, 7Aug & 14Aug	These are Home Sessions, held either on Saturdays or Sundays, in the home of the presenting couple (PC) assigned to you.

3 weekends/Sunday sessions are held at Catholic Junior College and 3 weekends/Saturday or Sunday sessions at the home at our presenting couple.

Our First session

Few days before our first session, we received a message from WhatsApp group for a reminder to be punctual as there will be mass that will start early.

We wake up early and before 8AM we arrived at CJC.  We took a bus and MRT to Stevens Road. We saw couples going to CJC as well, we just followed them. There’s excitement feeling inside because I saw couples inside the campus, talking to each other, holding hands and together.

First, you need to register to confirm your attendance. Afterwards, we sit down and were able to chat with the other couples our group. Each table has group number.

We started the program by attending the mass.

Then, we watched some short clips, the speaker is a couple. The program is couple focused, with presentations and variety of important subjects such as managing conflict resolution for difference, developing positive attitude, balancing differences, exposing inner feelings and forgiveness.

Words that I noted are Commitment, Communication and Complements.

We also had breakfast, Chinese dishes and hot coffee/tea.

After some talks again, we went to classrooms for grouping. Our presenting couple introduce themselves and all of the couples give introductions to know each other. They gave us the Couple Pack or workbooks. The couples in our group are all Singaporean. Some had mixed religion, some felt comfortable sharing, some were shy, some were young, some were established, it was a great mix. We had some activities. EJ and I had a near perfect match on everything.  The orientation is friendly and we learned a lot from our presenting couple life experiences.

They gave us homework, each couple had partner couple and assigned specific topic to discuss for the next meeting which is the home session and then we met Friday at Bugis for group for discussion.

Although this was just our first day, I want to say that we learned some valuable lessons based from other people experience.

Mag-asawa’y di biro nga talaga, there’s more to life after the wedding na kailangang paghandaan, at ang preparasyon na ito ay malaking tulong sa amin dahil baon naming ito habang buhay.

xoxo,