Meeting the priest

I recently met the priest of the church in which I was to be married. I wasn't looking forward to it. Nevertheless, I made an effort and put on my best purple shirt and washed behind my ears in preparartion for the meeting. That way, if I sat next to him during the meeting, you could then say cleanliness was truly next to godliness. (ouch!)

Meeting this priest is compulsory otherwise he wouldn't let me get married in 'his' church. Secondly, one of us needed to be Catholic or else the church would not be available to us. In this case, it was the girlfriend that professed to be Catholic but in reality she belonged to a group of people that believed in The Giant Bunny in the sky, loosely known as the “Bunnymen”. Then he needed to discuss the need for a marriage course and last and not least, the various charges that needed to be paid for the use of the church.

So the priest asked what religion I belonged to, I said Protestant. He dully wrote 'prot' in brackets next to my name and ignored me for most of the meeting. So he went on to have a Catholic to Catholic chat with Carol, emphazing that it was only ok for Carol to marry me as long as she vows to do her best to bring the kids up as Catholics, within the unity of the marriage of course, bla bla bla. I kept my mouth shut because I knew there's not a chance that was going to happen. The kids are going to be Bunnymen, through and through and we were going to celebrate Christmas on Easter, and that would the end of it!

As mentioned before, one of the things we were encouraged to do was to attend a marriage course. It sounded like a good idea though I don't think I needed it. It felt like a money racking scheme as it would cost 150 euros per couple. Apparently there are couples out there who have decided to get married without considering certain basic questions like if they wanted to have kids, home finance and who would be wearing the pants at home, etc etc.

So the priest yapped on for a good hour without offering me or the girlfriend the chance to ask anything (no tea and biscuits either). I was bursting to interject but decided it was pointless to do so. I may as well comply somewhat because I wanted to use his building for my wedding. By the time it was over, I was just happy to leave because I was getting hungry. But I must say, I was then beginning to feel somewhat excited about the wedding, it was just a sense that it wouldn't be too long now! Hooray!