Love is Patient - Preparing for Marriage During a Pandemic

As has been the case with pretty much everything during the past year, preparing for marriage during a pandemic has required flexibility, determination, and lots of patience. During the past year, we had the joy of helping nine couples prepare for the Sacrament of Matrimony. As the events of 2020 unfolded, we navigated through difficult decisions with our engaged couples. Would conditions improve enough to include large groups of family and friends? Should they plan a small, distanced gathering with just a few people now, and then a larger reception later? How would waiting to be married affect their relationship as a couple?

As it became clear that large gatherings would be unsafe, each couple was forced, in some way, to change plans for their wedding day. And, in many cases, change plans again.

Fortunately, we were able to provide our engaged couples with support during this time through a new marriage preparation program that had been initiated earlier in the year. At the beginning of 2020, the Diocese of Madison launched a new marriage prep initiative called Witness to Love. This program is a parish-based program which pairs each engaged couple with a mentor couple of their choice. This relationship is patterned on the RCIA sponsor/catechumen model. The mentor couple walks through the engaged couple’s preparation journey with them and provides support and modeling of a Catholic marriage.

This engaged couple/mentor couple relationship proved enormously valuable during a time when in-person gatherings were unsafe. Many of our couples took to Zoom and met for their marriage prep sessions that way. They attended virtual Mass together and grew their relationship through the gift of technology.

In the end, some of the weddings scheduled for 2020 were postponed until 2021 or 2022. Other couples kept their original dates and celebrated with fewer family and friends in attendance – complete with a livestream for remote guests. Whatever choice each couple made, we worked hard to prepare them not only for their wedding, but for a lifetime of new life together in Christ!