Today, I’d like to share two conversion stories: my friend’s, and my husband-to-be’s.

I first met Emily on a sweaty, late August day during the chaos of freshman move-in. Dressed in a red RA t-shirt, she calmly fielded mothers’ questions and fathers’ jokes while shouldering suitcase after suitcase up the stairs for her future residents. 

Online marriage prep is still a fairly novel idea. It’s natural to have questions about it, and easy to fall prey to certain assumptions. As a person who went through CatholicMarriagePrep.com just last fall, I’ll use my recent experience to differentiate between some of the most common “myths” and “facts” about our program.

Long-Distance Relationship: Marriage Prep Edition

My mom’s voice buzzed over the phone: “You have not taken enough ownership of the wedding-planning process. You should have thought more of the details through before attempting to plan your wedding from a different state.”

If someone told me when I was nineteen that I would be married to Dalton Sala in four years’ time, I would have laughed.