Catholic Engaged Encounter

OK. Gladys has been bugging me to put this update (although she hasn't been updating the blog herself, probably because she's just too busy with PriceScope)

We went for this Catholic Engaged Encounter over the weekend of 12th to 14th Jan. It's a compulsory event Catholics have to go for before we can get married in church. It was quite an interesting seminar actually.

Throughout the 3 days, there were talks on what couples should talk about and how to settle disagreements etc. Basically things that you should definitely discuss about before marriage. Since we have discussed those topics many, many times, we found ourselves just talking about other things a lot of times. However, there were certain parts of the seminar that we still felt very good about, like the prayers and the sharing.

Sometimes it can be quite surprising though, that there are actually couples who have not discussed the issues that we find are crucial to discuss about. And their weddings are like a few months or even just a few weeks away! Gladys' sister told us that she and her now-husband managed to know each other a lot better after the encounter weekend. For me and Gladys? We were just re-assured that what we have been doing so far has been correct.

Of course, not every couple did not discuss the issues before this. Coincidentally, the couple sharing rooms with us (we were separated into all male floors and all female doors, and the guy who shared my room is the fiance of the girl who shared the room with Gladys), felt the same way as us. That the session was more of a reassurance.

Maybe one thing that I did discover about myself is that I have a much-larger-than-normal-people appetite. I can't believe how much I ate at each meal compared to the rest of the people sitting with us.

I guess the main highlight of the whole encounter was the proposal by a guy to his fiancee. After 11 years of being together, the guy finally proposed to the girl during our sharing session at the end of the whole encounter. It was quite a touching scene.

Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves over the weekend. The crowd was great, the priest was great, the presenting couples and the house couples were great. In fact, we felt so happy about the weekend, we signed up offering our help for any other events.

The only not-great thing about the encounter was the travelling, I guess. It's all the way in some ulu (for those non-Singaporeans, ulu = secluded) corner of Punggol. We took almost 2 hours to get there. When we got off the bus stop, we had to walk a long way to the place in the rain, and there were no indications where the place is.

So, for all the Catholics who are reading this, please do sign up for this CEE early in your planning for marriage, or just once you think you want to get married. For non-Catholics, maybe you can come talk to us and find out about what is it that you actually need to talk about before marriage.