Wedding Blog

Fourteen months into out 17-month engagement and Mr. Deviled Egg and I have selected wedding colors, contemplated menu options for our reception, decided on favors, planned decorations and centerpieces, worked on our guest list, put together a wedding spending budget, hired a photographer, discussed details of our ceremony and completed several other tasks for making our day special and personalized. While we still have one or two major decisions to make (and what seems like a million minor tasks to complete), the planning process is wrapping up and the plans for the wedding are falling in place.

But, it’s impossible to plan for a wedding without looking past the day on which we will say our vows. Sure, it’s easy to get caught up in tradition and excitement of a wedding day, but we’d be fools to ignore the marriage itself at the expense of making one day perfect as possible. There are so many things we have to think through and prepare for prior to tying the knot. Mr. DE and I have spent quite a bit of time over the past year or so talking about how things will be once we are married. And, it seems like this topic comes up more and more in our conversations as the wedding date approaches. From housing, family planning and money to cooking and cleaning, we are doing our best to discover whether or not we have similar (or even realistic) expectations about how things will be.

In addition to our own discussions, we’ve also started premarital counseling with our Pastor. While the counseling session is standard protocol for a marriage ceremony performed by our Pastor, we both see it as an opportunity for creating an open dialog about marital life that will further prepare us for the “from this day forward” part.

We met with the Pastor briefly a couple of weeks ago for an initial meeting. It consisted of gathering information about the wedding (times, key players, etc.) and giving us an overview of what we could expect from the counseling sessions. He also gave us homework. The assignment for the week was to read and discuss a provided list of Bible verses pertaining to marriage, and the roles of the husband and wife within the union. For each verse, we had to work together and write what we thought it meant in our own words. The exercise was helpful and most of the verses stressed the importance of maintaining faithfulness, respect, honor and love towards one another.

Last week at church, he gave us some more homework—a questionnaire. We each received one and were to fill it out independently. The questions were in line with what I expected them to be, dealing with things that are emotionally, physically, mentally and financially important in a relationship, as well as communication habits, personality traits and family planning.

We met with the Pastor again this past Sunday to turn in our assignments and to have our first official session. We spent a short time discussing how we will handle our housing situation post-wedding (we don’t live together now), but the majority of the session focused on financial preparedness. The Pastor brought up some good points, some of which we have already discussed, like budgeting, and some we hadn’t given much thought to, such as who will be paying the bills (not who’s money since we are planning on combining finances, but which one of us will be responsible for writing the checks and making the payments). Financial issues can cause a lot of stress in a marriage and I’m glad both Mr. DE and I are open to discussing the topic.

Moving forward, I’m sure some of the topics will be a little more difficult to talk about, but having someone help guide the conversation will make it easier. We will have our next session in two weeks and at least one more prior to the wedding day. From all of this, I’m hoping to learning even more about myself, Mr. DE and marriage in general. While I know participating in premarital counseling does not guarantee smooth sailing once we are married, I do believe it is just one more block (a BIG, important one) in building a strong foundation for our marriage.

As the Pastor said, the more work you put into the marriage on this side, the better things will be on the other side.

Did you and your fiance participating in pre-marital counseling? What did you learn?