Pre Marital Counseling

My FH and I did it before we were engaged bc it’s the way our pastor likes to do it. There were six sessions and we met weekly for the most part. He’s going to officiate our wedding so we have time to meet with him about the ceremony and the message/remarks he will make.
Maybe see how long it takes and try to arrange the sessions around your wedding date

We are in pre marital counseling now and we started about 2 months prior. We are doing about a session every other week leading up until the wedding. So total probably about 6 sessions. We are both Christian and it has helped us so much in preparing us. It’s actually been a really fun experience and we are so happy we did it!

We started 5 months before but only do 1 session a month as our schedules were extremely busy. It gives us time to work on the assignments in between sessions so we found once a month was perfect for us.

We went before we were even engaged, with a professional. Highly recommend.

Honestly, it's good to go when your relationship is already strong, because it allows you a safe space to drill into potential problems and conflicts, and learn how to handle them in a better way. All families have different ways of communicating and arguing and problem-solving, so learning to mesh those learned behaviors is critical to a healthy future.

We went once a week (excluding holiday weeks) for about 6-7 months. Life changing, really. We went from a strong relationship with some shaky spots, to rock solid with a lot of self-knowledge. Once we got engaged, we were able to use the things we learned in counseling to handle the conflict and stress that happens with planning, and, now, here we are in lockdown, and we've supports for each other, not a source of stress.

Personally, I suggest secular therapy, as licensing is a requirement for those professionals, but if you are more comfortable with your religious leader, then ask them for help!

We did couple’s counseling for six months (once a week for about an hour) with only two missed appointments. I think by the last month, we knew that the counselor was going to try to wrap up because we had worked through all of our goals, issues, communication barriers, etc. I guess you can say we completed the marriage counseling a year and a half before our wedding date... but we’ve been living together for three years.