Why You Need a Marriage Preparation Course

Getting married is the most important life-long commitment you will ever make. So preparing as well as possible for marriage should be at the top of your “to do list” for the wedding. After all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend all your time, money, effort, and energy getting ready for one day, and spend no time at all getting ready for the thousands of days after that.​

Marriage preparation is for couples living together or separately before marriage, for thriving, average, or conflicted couples, for any couple that wants to be fully alive in their marriage! Besides that, if you are getting married in the Catholic or Anglican Church, taking a marriage preparation course is mandatory, not optional. It is also highly recommended (but not mandatory) in United and Presbyterian churches.

At the wedding you are committing yourself to love your partner in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, for the rest of your life. This commitment to unconditionally love your partner forever is a major undertaking because, while marriage is often for better, richer, and experienced in good health, fairly often it is spent struggling with various challenges.

Over time many things can happen: our appearance usually changes so we may not be as attractive as we are now; children can take most of our attention and energy away from our spouse. Even sex can become boring after the thousandth time; you can start taking each other for granted; there can be health issues, financial issues, and a thousand other challenges on the journey of marriage.

All the time, effort, and money you are pouring into the upcoming wedding will be wasted if you separate or divorce.​

A marriage preparation course is a special opportunity to focus just on the two of you and your long-term relationship, rather than on all the clamor about the one day, the wedding. A good marriage preparation course includes the following: practical hands-on training in communication skills; safe conflict resolution; how you interact given your different personality types; the stages of marriage. It also includes family of origin issues; mutual couple goal-setting; sexuality; finances; housework; spirituality; children; in-laws; expectations and so on.

Marriage preparation is not time-consuming, it’s fun, affordable, and if you already have a good relationship, it will make it even better. If you have been living together, you may already be in patterns of communication that are not effective, so now you can learn better ways. Feedback shows that couples who attended marriage prep courses are delighted they did so, and it has a lasting effect.