Investing in Your Marriage

In the days when my parents were growing up, getting engaged and planning a wedding was simple. A couple dated for a while and decided to get married. He bought a ring and asked for her hand in marriage. It was that simple. No hoopla. No extravagant engagement plan involving a treasure hunt for her diamond, no perfectly planned engagement party.

The wedding was just as simple. My mom planned her wedding in a matter of months, had a friend take some pictures at the ceremony and reception, and that was it. Things were a lot easier!

As a wedding professional who absolutely loves when a bride thinks through every detail and makes her wedding custom, unique, and personal, I am not in any way knocking wedding style. I love weddings and I love wedding style, so don’t get me wrong. But with today’s focus on elaborate engagements and making your wedding look more like a photoshoot for the cover of Glamour than a day that marks a commitment made between two people, I often wonder what our marriages would look like if we put half as much work into planning for marriage as we did planning for our wedding day.

When I married my husband, I didn’t have a back up plan. He was it. Love is a choice and I choose to love him and only him for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, in America today, one half of all marriages end in divorce. One half!

This means that couples need to be prepared to work hard to beat the odds; modern couples need to be willing to fight to stay together and keep their love alive. Knowing what couples are are up against, statistically speaking, why on earth wouldn’t we spend our engagement preparing for our marriage instead of spending all our energy exclusively on planning a wedding? Below are a few ways you can spend the months leading up to your wedding day preparing for a lifelong commitment to your spouse:

Premarital Counseling

This is my number one recommendation for newly engaged (or even seriously dating) couples. There are so many ways you can do this, the most popular of which are offered via the clergy. Many churches offer six-week classes of premarital counseling, but other options include meeting with your officiate or pastor, or signing up with a professional marriage counselor.

Keep in mind that even though this may feel uncomfortable to you, the point of pre-marriage counseling is to draw you closer to one another through tough conversations about values, family systems, finances, and communication. Sign up for a minimum of six sessions; if you need more, no problem.

Have the Tough Conversations.

Oftentimes, premarital counseling will raise some tough issues, but if it doesn’t, initiate them yourself. Before you are married to your partner, be sure to have conversations about how you grew up, how you want to manage finances as a couple, how you plan to navigate your way through arguments and communication, what you want your future to look like together, how you will integrate your faith into your marriage, how many children you want, what kind of father or mother you want to be, and your expectations of each other as a spouse.

All of these things are important for planning for your future marriage together and too often they get ignored because they are uncomfortable discussions to have. If you get stuck in an area and can’t seem to come to a conclusion, it may be a good one to talk over with a marriage counselor.

Write your own vows.

One of my favorite elements of a wedding are the vows. After all, what could be more important on your wedding day than saying the vows you will keep the rest of your life? Preparing for your marriage will often help you prepare to write your own vows. Not a good writer? That’s okay. Give yourself plenty of time to work on vows (I’m talking weeks) and write straight from your heart. Then, when you feel like you have something that matches your heart, run it by trusted friends or family members.

Make a plan.

Lastly, make a plan for how you are going to keep your marriage alive after the wedding. Marriages don’t last by accident–they last when both partners are willing to put hard work and intentionality into loving their spouse each day. How will you continue to love each other after your wedding day?

Make a plan together. This can be a commitment to weekly date nights, a plan to seek the counsel of older married couples, a plan to take a yearly vacation with just the two of you, a plan to stay socially active both together and independently, to jointly pursue new interests… the ideas are endless. Just as with any other area of success in your life, a marriage can’t be rewarding without hard work and lots and lots of tender love and care.

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