Marriage Preparation

Marriage preparation begins and ends in your parish, so please make an appointment with your parish as soon as possible to begin the process.

These documents are offered to help couples celebrate their marriage in an authentic, Christian way.

These norms especially try to channel the joy and happiness of the moment into a celebration worthy of our belief that human love is founded in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit shared with us.

These norms complement the 1969 Rite of Marriage, and the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law. While these norms give some directives, they are intended to be no more restrictive than necessary and are offered in a spirit of Christian joy and celebration.

Many parishes support a network of married couples who held guide and prepare engaged couples through their discernment period. Our office supports these parish-based programs by training new mentor couples, offering periodic in-service trainings, and overseeing the use of the FOCCUS inventory and other tools. To find out more about mentor couples at your parish, please contact your parish directly. To inquire about becoming a mentor couple, please contact our office for more information.

As a complement to the mentor couples program, God’s Plan for Love is a single-day program that explores the Church’s teachings on:  marriage as a sacrament and a vocation; the human person and God’s design for marriage; and human sexuality. To learn more about the God’s Plan program, please visit their website here.

The diocese offers many God’s Plan conferences throughout the year and in a variety of diocesan locations, although you should only sign up for a conference after your initial meeting at the parish. For more information on dates and locations, please see the brochures.

Catholic Engaged Encounter (CEE) is a weekend retreat for engaged couples to spend time away as a couple and to learn more about the faith and about marriage. On the weekend, couples communicate in depth about their future lives together – their strengths and weaknesses, desires and goals, and their attitudes about money, sex, children, and their role as a family in the church and in society. For more information on Catholic Engaged Encounter, please visit their website here.

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a scientific, natural, and moral way to space or limit pregnancies for couples who have a serious reason for doing so. The diocese offers a variety of ways to learn about NFP – in person, online, and in a live online class. There are also multiple methods of NFP, some of which may make more sense for you as a couple depending on your biological, lifestyle, and personal circumstances, as well as your preferred learning style. To learn more about NFP, please visit our NFP page.