Would You Pay Extra For Premartial Counseling? Prepare/enrich Premartial Program

We're doing premaritial counseling now, but our officiant offers the 5 sessions for free. We've been together for 8 years and living together for 2.5, so I don't find them super useful in terms of preparing us for married life. If you have never lived together, I'd definately do them. Otherwise, use that extra money for a few date nights as the wedding gets closer.

We are doing Pre Cana through the Catholic Church. The cost of our one day retreat is $85. We have also been meeting with our priest, but more so to discuss the wedding day itself. I don't know anyone that has done premarital counseling outside of the church, but I think it sounds like it would be beneficial!

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Oh yeah, we've lived together for a little over a year now so maybe it won't be too helpful.

Since you've already lived together a year you could probably just have a discussion about expectations and get as much out of it as a class. You could google questions. I thought about doing classes but for us it would be a waste, we've been together 10 years and lived together around 8 years, our finances are combined. We're both on the fence about kids and would be OK with or without. Neither of us have expectations of things changing dramatically when we get married. I know he's not all of the sudden going to start putting his dishes in the dishwasher and he knows I'm not going to start loving cooking and cleaning lol.

View Quoted Comment Guess i should look more seriously into this. I've only lived with one person as an adult and we weren't in a romantic relationship. Couple that with the fact that I will be 50 and the cabin is literally 3 large rooms including the bathroom and there are bound to be some growing pains.

YES!!!! Prepare and Enrich is an incredible program. You will love it. My church offers it, but if it didn't, we would have looked for someone that used prepare and enrich. It is, in my opinion and I'm halfway through my masters in counseling, the best program to use. It brings up all the right "hard" questions.

View Quoted Comment I would definately reccommend it for you!

We're not doing premarital counseling, and I know a lot of people on here will disagree with me but I think it's a waste of money if it's not needed. So I definitely would not spend the extra money, if I felt like I needed any sort of counseling with FH we wouldn't be getting married right now.

I’m currently doing the prepare/enrich program with my FH and priest. We only had to pay like $40 to register. I think it’s worth it because it makes you guys look at issues you never considered before and gives you tools to work through issues together. FH and I have been together for 5 years and we live together so a lot of it is stuff we had already worked out but it serves as a good reminder.

I’d definitely recommend it for couples who have been together for less than 2 years and couples who have never lived together.

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Oh, so we can just pay and do it ourselves? I might just look into that...

View Quoted Comment I actually don’t think you can do it yourself. The priest set up our account and sent us the link for the “quiz,” which requires the $40 registration fee. You still need someone to facilitate and review the results.

I think premarital is a great idea for everyone. I've known multiple couples who after living together for years without issue wound up divorcing shortly after their wedding.
It does seem more expensive than other options so I think it's ok to ask why. Ask if there is a success rate of any sort available. (I'd pay a couple hundred dollars if there was evidence that it worked.) You're still a consumer, so just ask questions.

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Https://www.prepare-enrich.com/webapp/pecv/home/template/DisplaySecureContent.vm?id=pecv*home*homepage.html

Here is the website link! There is real research to back it up, I think it's worth it, but we're only paying $110 through our church.

That’s a deal! I am paying a counselor $200/session for prepare enrich. My counselor doesn’t go by the book with it, but I’d do that if I were you. See if any reviews talk about it.

Oh and to add, we’ve lived together over a year. But I have found that once we got engaged, it brings everything into focus. We talked about issues that we have discussed on our own—but having someone to really be a neutral party who also pushes us to consider things is very helpful. I’m considering additional sessions. I like it that much!

That’s pretty pricey. Maybe you should try couples counseling with a therapist. At least you would be able to use your insurance.

We had 5 sessions with our rabbi. I don’t think it was useful for expectations or making sure we’re on the same page since we are very open and had all of the hard conversations before getting married. It did help us define what we wanted for our wedding, the ceremony, what was important to us, and discuss traditions. Most importantly, it helped our rabbi get to know us so he could design our wedding with us in mind and speak about 2 people he actually knows vs some canned speech. We’re really glad we did it but got different reasons than advertised.

I would personally love to do the classes or sessions. We've lived together for 1.5 years but are constantly finding things we've never discussed coming up. I would love to find better ways to communicate or work through issues. Possibly talk about expectations for the future with things like kids or finances. I think it would all be hugely helpful. But our officiate doesn't offer it and the only one I fond that does it independently is like $1500 for the cheap package.

As far as I was concerned you only pay the officiant a donation to do the ceremony. Not everything else, at least that is what I was told. Also I have never heard of officiant getting more than $150.

She’s on the higher end I won’t lie. But, this pastor through my FH’s mother’s Church was charging us $300 for simple vows. She’s going to do personal vows, be there for rehearsal and do some counseling even if we don’t get the premarital counseling program package.