For this Wedding Wednesday, we are going to talk about something VERY important to us. There is a lot of planning and work that has to go into your marriage BEFORE the big day. All of the flowers, the dress, the guests, so many things are vying for your attention.

But one VITAL thing most people don’t talk about is premarital counseling. We know the idea of “counseling” can be a turn-off for a lot of people, but these counseling sessions can save you a lot of trouble and headache after the honeymoon has ended and real-world sets in (yes, the honeymoon isn’t real world).

For most couples, they only do premarital counseling if it’s required by whoever is performing the ceremony. Most churches or “places of worship” require couples to go through counseling before they are allowed to get married inside the building.

But, there are a lot of couples who are getting married outside and in barns. Unless the officiant requires the counseling, you may not have to go through the sessions to get married in a barn.

Even if you’re getting married in a field or in an old warehouse, we STILL think you should go to counseling.

Why You Should Go To Premarital Counseling

The first reason you should at least considering going to counseling if it’s not required is because of the wisdom! More than likely, the person who will do your counseling will be married or maybe even be older and wiser than you.

During the engagement, it’s easy to have the ideas of perfect marriage flooding your head. About how amazing it’s going to be to wake up next to your love every single morning. Imagining how it’s going to be like summer camp mixed with a fairy tale.

Well, counseling will probably damage all of those ideas (but not completely). There are few things more valuable than getting the insights of someone who has been through the struggles of marriage and came out on the other side.

What Kinds of Things Do You Talk About in Marriage Counseling?

The next benefit of marriage counseling (and the most eye-opening for us) was going over our expectations for marriage. You don’t realize how many expectations you have about how your marriage should be, that you may have never communicated to your future spouse. Not always about BIG things, but about the small stuff that is usually the fight-inducing stuff.

For example, when we did marriage counseling, we did an exercise to help with expectations. We wrote down who we thought was going to do various household chores. Like taking out the trash or making the bed. We realized that how it was done in our houses growing up was our expectation coming into marriage.

Then we compared our notes. It’s so much easier to talk about those things before you’re married, instead of them being a fight later on.

Not only can you manage expectations about chores, but you can also talk about the larger things. Like buying a house, having kids, or if both of you are going to work outside the home. There are so many things you probably haven’t talked about, and marriage counseling will bring those to light.

Marriage Counseling Doesn’t Have to Be at Church

Now, for us, the church is a big part of our lives, but if you aren’t a religious person, there are plenty of counselors who do marriage counseling in Greenville and Anderson, SC.

The topic of God and faith was a large part of our premarital counseling because we wanted it to be a centerpiece of our life. But, even if we weren’t religious, the counseling would have been so useful for us to look at our engagement and marriage from a whole new light.