Premarital Counseling in Atlanta

For couples who are doing well and want to stay that way — not couples in trouble.

Most couples arrive at therapy after something has gone wrong. Premarital counseling is the opposite: you come in while things are good, and spend the time learning how the two of you actually work before the stakes get higher. It is preventative, it is finite, and it is one of the few kinds of therapy people finish feeling like they got ahead of something.

What you work on

Preparing for marriage can be joyful and can also bring up anxiety and overwhelm. Whether your relationship has never felt stronger or there are specific things you want to address first, the work usually covers:

• Healthy communication patterns and conflict resolution
• Identifying strengths and areas of growth
• Addressing potential challenges before they harden
• Money: what each of you learned about it, and how you will decide together
• In-laws, extended family and the roles you each expect to play
• Personal and shared goals, including if and when to have children

A good deal of it is simply finding out where you have each quietly assumed the other agrees with you.

Prepare/Enrich

Some of our work uses Prepare/Enrich, a structured relationship assessment each partner completes separately. It maps where you already agree, where you differ, and where you think you agree but do not. Rather than starting from a blank page, sessions start from your own results, which tends to make the conversations more specific and considerably shorter.

Josh Wayne and Danielle Jeraci are both certified Prepare/Enrich facilitators. The assessment is designed for couples at any stage, not only those about to marry.

Georgia’s premarital education provision

Georgia law reduces the marriage license fee for couples who complete a qualifying premarital education program. To qualify, the program must run to at least six hours, cover marital issues such as conflict management, communication, financial responsibilities, parenting and extended family roles, be completed together within twelve months before you apply, and be delivered by a professional counselor, social worker, marriage and family therapist, psychiatrist, psychologist or member of the clergy.¹ You give the probate court a signed, dated certificate of completion, and the exact fee is set by your county.²

Worth being straight about the money: the reduction is roughly forty dollars in most counties, which is a fraction of what six hours of therapy costs. It is a nice footnote, not a reason. The part that tends to matter more is the shape a six-hour program gives the work — a defined beginning and end, and something finished at the end of it rather than an open-ended series of appointments. If that structure appeals to you, say so on your consultation call and we can talk through how a course of sessions might be put together.

What a session looks like

Both of you attend together. Sessions are conversational rather than lecture-style, and your therapist will interrupt the pattern in the room as much as discuss it — noticing how a disagreement actually unfolds between you is usually more useful than describing one from memory. Most couples come for a defined block of sessions rather than open-ended work.

Not only before a wedding

Couples who have been together for years, couples remarrying, and couples who are not marrying at all but are combining households or finances get the same value from this work. Nothing here depends on a wedding date.

Take the next step

A free consultation call is a low-stakes place to start — a short conversation about what you want out of it, with nothing to commit to.