Do you think pre-marital counseling in neccessary before the marriage?

I think it's always a good idea. There's nothing wrong with talking to a professional, neutral third party. It's a good way to air out grievances, and learn how to better communicate with each other. It will only make your relationship stronger.

We really enjoyed our premarital counseling. It was useful to learn each other's love languages, personality assessments, and how they affect each other and how we give and receive love. I definitely recommend it!

Agree! What do you have to lose? Even if together you decide you don't love the person counseling you, the process itself can encourage you to talk about things you haven't yet thought about. Daughter & SIL's minister had them read a variety of things -- The 5 Love Languages, one of the Dave Ramsey books on finances, a book titled something like, 1000 questions engaged couples should ask each other, etc. They really liked them all and found it very useful and insightful. Good luck!

I think its especially beneficial to just give you an outlet to talk about things you might not have thought to talk about.

I think pre-marital counseling is great. That said, we didn't do it. Our officiant is a relative who got ordained online to marry us, so they obviously don't provide the service. Also, we've lived together for 5 years and have had conversations about finances (his father is a financial planner and accountant), children, child-rearing, etc. I'm also working toward my clinical psych doctorate and have worked with domestic violence survivors on learning healthy relationship dynamics for about 4 years. Given these factors and our very tight budget, we opted to forgo this expense.

It's not necessary but I would echo others and highly recommend it and advise it. It can be really helpful to think about different things that you might not have discussed yet. It also can help improve communication and help you realize any unrealistic expectations you are having. There are a ton of other reasons as well. Just named a few

I should add some places offer it for free. Ours was free.

We've been to counseling once, earlier in our relationships. We went one time, it helped with our communication a lot. Personally for us, we rarely fight and are pretty much open about everything in our entire lives. We share finances, have discussed children, family, debt, religion, traveling, retirement, working, politics, etc. and have very similar views and have thoroughly talked through all of it. So we aren't doing pre-marital counseling. If we have problems in the future, we will go, but it isn't necessary for us. However, I think lots of couples benefit from it if they haven't in debt discussed EVERYTHING in their lives.

Not necessary but if you feel like something could be worked out and can't do it by yourselves then maybe give it a try.

Thank you all for your input. We have decided to go to pre-marital counseling. We won't start until next year due to our wedding being in December of 2020. But I have heard some good things and bad things about counseling. But we have been together for 5 years and if pre-marital counseling breaks us then it wasn't meant to be. Thanks again