Engaged Encounters

Being engaged isn't just about flowers and dresses. We put a lot of effort into planning a wedding, and those silly magazines are full of pretty pictures. But that can distract from the real purpose of engagement: the emotional preparation for being married.

I know people who are engaged only about three months and whee! They're married! To each his own, I suppose, but I wonder if they even have time to comprehend what they're doing before they waltz down the aisle. There's a statistic I read in a book titled Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage, and I cannot remember the exact numbers. But it turns out that 50-percent stat is a little misleading. Your odds of divorce are catastrophically higher if you marry in your 20s - on the order of 90 percent, I think - and go down the older you are when you get married.

Is that because you're stupid in your 20s? Well... yes. The older you are, the more likely you are to know who you are, what you want and be more focused on living the rest of your life with someone than cake and centerpieces. It's easy to get swept up in the romantic stuff, to be so overwhelmed with tulle and lace that you shortchange yourself on the things you really should be doing to prepare for your marriage.

In fact, that's one of the criticisms of the whole wedding concept. "A wedding is a day; a marriage is forever!" they yell. This is true, even if it is kind of a killjoy - hey, weddings are fun! And expensive, and preparing for them is complicated. But the other stuff - that's the really important part. That's part of why Jimmy and I decided to wait nearly two years: we have both done this dance before, and we are not lining up for another divorce.

Here's the frustrating thing, for me: I want to do this right. I was just as interested in premarital preparation as I was in finding a good deal on tuxedo rentals. I knew that the Episcopal Church does a version of Engaged Encounter that is quite helpful for preparing couples to be married, and I looked up the local version.

All Catholic. Every local session of Engaged Encounter was Catholic, and we might be next door to a Catholic Church, but we aren't allowed. I'm pretty sure they don't have sessions on marriage after divorce, you know? So I called the Episcopal diocese, and they had no idea what I was talking about. I contacted a friend who worked for another diocese, and he said he had not heard of any such program.

I know I'm not nuts. (Well, not too nuts.) I went through this program with my first husband. It wasn't the full weekend, just a Saturday session, but it was better than nothing. I remember little about it except that we had to draw each other's family tree, and I was terrible at figuring out his family. Heaven save me if they make me do that for Jimmy; he is related to half the state of Tennessee. But the full Engaged Encounter is a weekend retreat, in which the couple spends time with other couples and with spiritual advisers talking about the mental and emotional aspects of binding yourself to another person for the rest of your life.

Finally we appealed to a priest who has been cheerleading for us since he met us a few months ago. He made a few inquiries on our behalf. It seems the best option for an engagement preparation weekend he could find is in central Florida.

Wow. Everywhere I turn, somebody wants to help me pick out lace and floral arrangements. I'm deluged with emails for invitations and china patterns and photo booths. But to me, the most important part of being engaged is our mental and emotional preparation for a lifelong commitment: to love, honor and cherish each other until we are parted by death, including the sharing of a toothpaste tube and not stealing the covers. This is serious stuff.

It seems there should be at least as many opportunities for an Engaged Encounter as there are for interviewing florists.

We can't afford central Florida, much as we'd like to go back to the scene of the crime. And we continue to search for a weekend program that will let us attend. If I have to, I'll find a workbook for the damn thing and book us for a quiet weekend on a lake somewhere, to watch the sunset, wax philosophic and talk about all the things we're supposed to discuss before we take the biggest step of our lives.

Hey, if we have to do it ourselves, we can skip the whole family tree thing. I'll make him remember my birthday instead. Here's a hint, babe: it's this month.