Did any of you take a premarriage class before you were married? Does anyone take classes/seminars/ retreats now?

We did the 8-hour Catholic church pre-cana class in order to be married in my church, but that was just silly. Shortly after we were married we took an 8-week course with a bunch of unmarried couples at our Vineyard church. It was awesome. We had lived together for 3 years or so before we were saved, but marriage was a whole 'nother ball game! In this class we learned about communication, fighting (fairly), sex, finances, etc. We covered a lot of ground in eight weeks and really learned a lot about each other.

Anyone else?

Ummmm, nope.

Our preacher gave us a questionnaire - which we filled out together to ensure our answers were similar. Having been cheating college students, we knew how to subtly change our answers so they didn't look like we cheated...

Our pastor asked us, "Did you guys have sex yet?" We were like, "Nope."

Ok, we're good to go.

heh heh - it was kinda obvious with ours... :shh:

Nope...

Nope, we didn't have any. In hindsight it might have been a good idea. Infact hubby was my first relationship so I had to learn as we went along which is probably not the best way to do things and probably contributes to the state things are in.

Um I took (am taking) my mariage classes from the Hard Knocks school of Our Lady of the Swift Kick to the Nuggets College of Life (which is a sister college to Our Lady of Perpetual Nut Kicking).....

Actual classes... no... but I'm learning new things every day so technically it's still school..... And I tend to sleep through a lot of the lessons and freak out and barely pass come "test time" so it REALLY seems like school.....

Yes we did.
Our pastor "requires" it. We did 2-3 hour sessions in the span of 3 days. The first wk was about Husbands, the second about Wives and the third about marriage and well **insert blushing smilie**.
Most churches in the area require it. Quite a few do an all day Saturday teaching/lecture using Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
The local Pres. church does a 3 month class :o

OK, the reason I asked in the first place is that alot of the topics or marital disagreements that come up here, are issues we discussed in our classes. So I'm thinking, since so many of you said no...maybe you all need to get your rears into some classes?!! Better late than never. Who couldn't benefit from learning about better communication? Or how to fight fairly? Or how to manage responsibilities/finances/sex/fill-in-the-blank? I know I can't wait till my DH is in a better space, spiritually, so we can go away on our church's couples advance. I figure after 11+ years in marriage, that we could definately use a refresher course.

We learn a lot through experience and trial and error over the course of our marriage. And I know there are tons of books out there, but books like this are based on someone's experience. And they're not always for everyone. Nothing takes the place of a group setting with a seasoned instructor. It's great when you can be in a group setting to hear how other people handle things and learn more about what the bible has to say about it.