At least we got free room and board. And good hotel sex.

Eeesh. Never in my life have I anticipated something so much in order to be so disappointed by it. Unbelievable.

The marriage weekend? The one I rescheduled my life-changing surgery for because this class was going to be just as life-changing, if not more? Was a complete waste of time. Both The Husband and I found it completely lacking.

There's a reason why they don't want you to tell other people about it and make them anticipate it because it's "secret." Because it's boring, has no cohesive structure, is stuck in the 80s and basically takes far too damn long.

Maybe our disappointment was because both The Husband and I have been involved in two highly engaging marriage classes - one of which we've done twice. We're too spoiled, and know what it means to attend a directed seminar on how to make marriages better by applying Biblical standards. We know the information you're going to be presented with because let's face it - the Bible basically doesn't change. Different translations, maybe, but it's the same thing. But why we continue to attend them and seek out new speakers is because we are looking for new nuggets of information that can be discovered even though the big stuff remains the same.

Let me tell you the one little nugget that we gleaned from this seminar. Are you ready for it? Here it is: Junior Highschoolers? They're "pre-people."

Yes, folks, we went to an all-weekend-long marriage seminar and learned that the 12-15-year-old set are "pre-people." Shoot me now!

Very little of the actual seminar was on how to apply things to marriage. We talked about things like forgiveness and communication, and wrote love letters to each other dealing with these topics, but the whole thing was lacking. It seemed as if it couldn't make up its mind if we needed to be bludgeoned into becoming believers or if we actually wanted to hear about how to apply the whole God/Christ, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife relationship thing that so many people just don't understand and have frankly never heard before. THAT's what a marriage seminar should be about. Not about focusing on how we need to praise God and how we should do that.

But the worst thing? They made us sing hymns. Not just any hymns, but obscure ones that the vast majority of us attending had NEVER even heard of. It's one thing for everyone to sing "Amazing Grace" and another to sing these hymns that according to copyright information were from the sixties and seventies and had never seen the light of day since. Oh, and there was no accompaniment.

This obvious dating of the whole class is apparently because the people that run American Family Services are in their seventies and eighties and possibly nineties. They are part of what some of us call the "old guard." And it isn't that the old guard isn't needed anymore, it's just that most of the young people that would come to seminars like this just don't identify with many of the things that the old guard love. The old guard loves these hymns. Most of the young people in today's emergent churches have never heard them. To insist that we sing these hymns, however lovely in sentiment, creates a level of uncomfortableness that I don't think was ever overcome throughout the weekend.

They also played those insipid TBN-style hymns with the organs and harps - lovely words, but the style of music just makes you think of three piece suits, wingtips, shoulder pads, eyelet lace dresses and Tammy Fay Baker hair and makeup. Not the kind of thing you want when you've got young, hip people that are the core of the modern church attending a seminar.

Just so you know, it wasn't as bad as all that. We had some friends there that we had a ton of fun with, we met a bunch of new, neat people from all across Southern California, ate some freaking fantabulous food, and stayed in a really nice room.

As an added bonus, on Saturday night, we all got a chance to renew our wedding vows. This made it the third time The Husband and I have gotten married. But get this. Every time, we have "eloped" (first time in Lake Tahoe on the spur of the moment, second time in Las Vegas in the drive-thru of the Little White Wedding Chapel) and neither of our mothers have seen us get married. And all three times I have been wearing black. Yes, I wore BLACK to my wedding. It's not my fault, it was all that I had and that's what I get for not planning a wedding ahead of time. So sue me. :-P I told The Husband that the NEXT time we do this I WILL be wearing another color other than black.

This morning The Husband e-mailed me when he got to work. "Only 9 more times we'll be able to have an anniversary every month of the year. I like that idea! Up for it?"

Silly boy. I'd marry him every day of the year if I could. Isn't that what marriage should be about?