Before you say “I do”: questions worth asking

A wedding lasts a day. A marriage lasts a lifetime.

It’s easy to spend a year planning the day — the venue, the dress, the guest list, the food — and very little time preparing for everything that comes after. We understand why. The wedding is exciting and visible. The marriage is quieter, and some of the questions feel a bit unromantic.

But in our experience, the couples who do best aren’t the ones who agree on everything. They’re the ones who’ve talked about everything — and learned how to work through it when they don’t agree.

Here are some of the conversations we encourage every engaged couple to have.

Expectations: what does a “normal” marriage look like to you?

Each of us walks into marriage with a picture in our heads, mostly drawn from the home we grew up in. Who cooks? Who handles money? How often do we see family? What happens on a Sunday? How do we celebrate birthdays and Christmas?

Most conflict in early marriage isn’t about big things. It’s about two different pictures of “normal” colliding. Talk about yours before they collide.

Money: not just how much, but what it means

Ask each other:

• Do we have any debts? How do we feel about borrowing?
• Will we have joint accounts, separate accounts, or both?
• What are we saving for?
• How much can one of us spend without checking with the other?
• How do we feel about giving — to church, to charity, to family?

Money is rarely just about money. It’s about security, freedom, control and trust. Understanding what it means to each of you will save you a lot of arguments later.

Family: leaving, cleaving and in-laws

Marriage means forming a new family unit while still honouring the families you came from. That’s a delicate balance, especially where cultures, expectations or languages differ.

Talk honestly about how involved you expect your families to be. How will you make decisions together, as a couple, before bringing others in? What will you do if a parent disagrees with a choice you make?

Conflict: how do you fight?

Every couple disagrees. The question is how. Does one of you need to talk it through immediately, while the other needs space first? Does one of you go quiet? Raise your voice? Apologise quickly just to make it stop?

You don’t need to avoid conflict. You need to learn to fight for each other, not against each other.

Agree some ground rules now, while things are calm.

Children, careers and the future

Do you want children? How many, and roughly when? What happens if it doesn’t happen the way you hope? Whose career takes priority, and does that change over time? Where do you want to live in five years? In ten?

These aren’t questions you can fully answer today. But you should know whether you’re roughly heading in the same direction.

Faith and values

What do you each believe, and how will that shape your home? How will you pray, worship and serve together? What values do you want your family to be known for?

For us, faith has been an anchor in every season of our marriage — the good and the hard. Whether it was waiting for God to land a job, or losing a job just when we got pregnant to buying our first house. Having faith in God has helped us conquer so much.

Take a course together

If you’re in Leeds, Cloverleaf Christian Centre runs Before You Cleave, a marriage preparation course designed to help couples have exactly these conversations with support. Wherever you are, a good marriage preparation course is one of the best investments you can make before your wedding — far better value than another centrepiece.

One last thing

Don’t panic if some of these conversations are hard. That’s the point. Better to discover a difference now, with time to understand each other, than five years in.

And if there’s a question you’d like us to answer, ask us.

Tayo&Itee