How far in advance of your wedding did you meet with your pastor?

We got engaged in October and by January we started our pre marital counseling with our pastor. We had 3 sessions than after that we started the wedding talk, our budget etc. we just recently went to
him to talk about what we will need to use for the wedding (dressing room, sanctuary, fellowship hall, kitchen) I would say the sooner the better. Do you guys plan on doing counseling with the pastor as well?

View Quoted Comment Probably not, unless it’s required!

My pastor wanted to wait until six months before to start but that was Easter week so we pushed it back a month. It really depends on how many sessions that your pastor wants to do mine wanted to do 3 or four so one in May(because we were late on it) one in June one in July and the last one in September ( the rehearsal).

I say 6-8 months, but I would contact the pastor and ask. I’m getting married in the Catholic Church and they have a mandatory 6 month prep time. We ended up meeting with the priest 4 times.

I would just talk to your pastor to see what is required. We asked ours about being the officiant 18 months out, she agreed and said we will talk about counseling later. We are 10 months out and still haven’t heard anything about when she wants to start. (Counseling is required to be married in my church).

I guess my first question would be, where are yall getting married? (At your church, a hotel, park somewhere, etc) and do you want your officiant to be your pastor? If so, then start talking to him/her. And go from there

View Quoted Comment We’re getting married at my church by our pastor. That’s already decided!

We met with the pastor a month before the wedding but we did some premarital counseling homework before meeting with him.

For us, we met with our pastor about a month after engagement, so about a yr before the wedding, to see what needs to be done. We got the info, & we need to do a 6wk marriage counseling class & were given 2 couples we could do this with (a decon & wife, & our Spanish service pastors). We decided we wanted our Spanish service pastors.

because we know how busy they are all the time we came to them right away & told them we’d love to have them as our counselors. We made sure they knew when we wanted to do these classes (sometime after mid-January, so 4-5months out due to my schooling schedule, graduate in Dec,& want all the business of the holidays to pass). They delightedly agreed,& the timing was good for them too. So at least we have them booked in advanced per say for these classes already. After this there’s not much else to do church wise with our pastors.

so it really depends on tour church & pastors. ours are all over the place, always doing things for the community, which we love, so we have to make sure we’re all set up with plenty of time.

I went to mine around 5 months before my wedding (our engagement is seven months). He mentioned 6-8 premarital counseling sessions which I was okay with. My fiancé wasn’t too interested, but he said he’d go. Well I guess there are books that go along with the sessions and the publisher has been having a hard time getting the books out for some reason. 49 days till my wedding and we still haven’t had one meeting with the pastor. I’m starting to get really nervous, but each week I ask him about it he says he is still waiting on books. I’d say the sooner the better because then you could set up a reasonable timeline for all the prewedding stuff and if you don’t know the pastor too well it also gives him time to really get to know you to create a more personalized/heartfelt ceremony.

I would find out if pre-marital is required with your pastor. We have started meeting with ours (Wedding is 1 year away) as it is required with our church

View Quoted Comment I wouldn’t say it’s requited but it should be considered...Things we didn’t know we learned and it was an awesome experience.