The pennu kaanal is often polite, short and tells nobody very much. A set of questions — for the couple and for the parents — that get to what actually matters.
The first meeting between two families, the pennu kaanal, is usually an hour of tea, compliments and careful conversation, after which both sides go home knowing roughly what they knew before. It does not have to be that way.
Give the couple twenty minutes alone
This is the single change that improves the meeting most. Not a chaperoned exchange across a room of relatives — twenty minutes on the veranda, or a walk, with nobody listening. Families that allow it consistently report a clearer decision afterwards. Families that do not are asking two people to commit to a life on the basis of a supervised handshake.
For the couple to ask each other
- What does an ordinary Tuesday look like for you?
- Do you want children, and roughly when?
- Where do you expect to be living in five years — here, a city, abroad?
- Do you expect your spouse to work after marriage? After children?
- Who in your family will depend on you financially, and for how long?
- How do you practise your faith — Sunday Mass, daily prayer, parish involvement?
- What do you do when you are angry? What did your parents do?
That last one tells you more than the rest together.
For the parents to ask each other
- Where will the couple live for the first year, and who decided that?
- What do you expect of a daughter-in-law or son-in-law, plainly stated?
- Is anything expected to be given or received? (See our piece on dowry and the Catholic conscience.)
- Which parish are you from, and who can we speak to there?
- Is there anything about health, work or family circumstances we should know now rather than later?
Answer honestly, including about the awkward things
Every experienced parish priest will tell you the same thing: the marriages that struggle are rarely the ones where something difficult was disclosed. They are the ones where it was disclosed late. A health condition, a debt, a previous engagement, a plan to emigrate — said at the first meeting these are facts to be weighed. Discovered at the third they look like concealment.
Do not decide in the room
Agree in advance that neither family answers on the day. Go home, talk, pray, sleep, and reply in a few days. A decision made under the pressure of politeness is not a decision.