Longer than
one day
How the seminar began, what happens on it, and why the church keeps setting a December aside for it.
Being confirmed. The dates and details below are still being checked with the committee. If you were there for any of it and something is wrong, we would be glad to be corrected.
Marriage Paradise began the way most good things in a parish begin: with a handful of couples who had been married long enough to know that nobody had told them what to expect, and who did not want the couples behind them to find out the same way.
It is one day. There is no course to enrol in, no book to have read first, and nothing to sign up to afterwards. Couples come, married people whose spouse could not come with them come, and single people who intend to marry one day come — because the habits that hold a marriage together are easier to learn before there is a marriage resting on them.
It is hosted by RCCG Agape House and open to anyone, member or not. The fee covers the room and the food and nothing else; where it is a barrier, the church would rather waive it than lose the couple.
The seminar exists because a marriage is not held together by the day it began, but by the days after it.
The years
How it grew
TODO: first yearto be confirmed
The first gathering
A handful of couples in the church hall, an afternoon set aside, and no name for it yet. Somebody brought lunch.
TODOto be confirmed
It gets a name
Marriage Paradise. The seminar becomes an annual fixture rather than something arranged when somebody remembers to arrange it.
TODOto be confirmed
Open to the city
The day stops being for the parish alone. Couples from other churches, and from no church, come for the first time.
2026
This year
The nineteenth of December, at the Hilton Garden Inn. Registration, payment and a pass now live on this site — the first year the welcome desk has not run on a printed list.
On the day
What actually happens
Teaching, not therapy
Sessions led by couples who have been married a long time, on the things that actually come up: money, in-laws, children, silence, and the ordinary work of forgiving somebody you live with.
Room to talk
Time set aside for couples to talk to each other rather than listen to somebody else — and, for those who want it, time with someone older who has been asked the same question before.
A meal, together
Lunch is provided and is not an interval. A good deal of what people take home from the day is said across a table rather than from a lectern.
This year’s is on 19 December
Whatever the years behind it, the only one you can come to is the next one.