We recently participated in the Pre Cana activity as part of our prerequisite to getting married at a Catholic Church. Pre Cana, to those who do not know, is like a seminar/retreat/information session on what to expect after you say “I do”.

We were given an activity book  and there were 32 couples with us from 9:00am to 4:30 pm on a Saturday. The fee for each couple was $190.

All we did was mingle with the couples who were sitting with us at the table. We talked about the activity at hand and had a morning and afternoon snack, which was provided. Lunch was separate, we had to go out for that. The day was not boring, but it was not exciting either. All I can say is that there are a lot of topics to think about as a couple that we would not have thought to talk about if we did not attend the Pre Cana.

One thought I did have was how much revenue that one session accumulated. With 32 couples at $190 each, that’s $6,080 in 6 hours (we had an hour and a half for lunch). This Saturday session is equivalent to $1,013.33 an hour. Most people don’t even make that in a month. With four Saturday sessions in a month that’s $24,320.

Now the questions is how much goes to the Church and how much goes to the presenters? I know I could have presented the different activities better than the couple that hosted it. I mean, all they did was read from the book and pressed play on some videos.

What if you can host your own Pre Cana session? Obviously you have to be connected with a Church somehow, OR maybe you can even create your own church or nondenominational church and simply host this kind of activity. The possibilities are endless, I’m checking out the archdiocese web site now…