Planning a wedding involves countless decisions. Preparing for a marriage invites you to have conversations that matter long after the wedding day.
Premarital counseling provides an intentional space to better understand one another, strengthen communication, explore expectations, and develop skills for navigating life together. Whether your relationship already feels strong or there are areas you'd like to better understand before marriage, counseling can help you begin this next chapter with greater connection and confidence.
At Congruency Counseling, Sherae offers premarital counseling incorporating PREPARE/ENRICH, a research-based assessment and skill-building program designed to help couples identify their strengths, understand relationship dynamics, and explore important areas for growth.
What to Expect
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Meet with Sherae to discuss your relationship, your upcoming marriage, and what you hope to gain from premarital counseling.
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Each partner independently completes the online assessment. PREPARE/ENRICH reports that it generally takes about 30 minutes to complete.
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Sherae will walk you through your results and help you identify strengths, differences, expectations, and areas where deeper conversation may be beneficial.
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You'll move beyond simply discussing the results and practice skills for communication, conflict resolution, connection, and navigating challenges together.
Marriage Brings Together More Than Two People
It Brings Together Two Histories.
Each partner enters marriage shaped by a lifetime of relationships and experiences.
How did your family handle conflict?
How was affection expressed?
What happened when someone was upset?
Who managed money?
How were responsibilities divided?
What traditions mattered?
What did marriage look like?
What role did faith play?
You don't have to repeat the relationships you grew up observing, nor do you have to reject them entirely.
Premarital counseling provides an opportunity to become more aware of what each of you is bringing into the marriage and intentionally decide what you want to build together.
When Faith Is Part of Your Marriage
Building a Marriage Grounded in Shared Values
For couples who desire it, Christian faith can be intentionally incorporated into premarital counseling.
Counseling can provide space to explore how faith influences your understanding of marriage, commitment, forgiveness, intimacy, family, decision-making, spiritual practices, and the values you want to carry into your future home.
Faith integration is always based on the couple's preferences and goals. Couples do not need to identify as Christian to work with Sherae or participate in PREPARE/ENRICH.
PREPARE/ENRICH also includes spiritual beliefs among the relationship areas that can be explored through its assessment.
Meet Sherae
MA, LPCC
Your Premarital Counselor
Sherae is passionate about helping couples develop healthier, more connected relationships. Her clinical interests in relationships, attachment, family dynamics, life transitions, perfectionism, and shame give her a valuable perspective when helping couples understand not only what happens within their relationship, but also the deeper experiences and patterns influencing how they relate to one another. As a PREPARE/ENRICH facilitator, Sherae provides couples with a structured but personalized premarital counseling experience. She creates space for honest conversations while helping couples recognize their strengths, understand their differences, and develop practical skills for navigating marriage together. Her goal isn't to teach you how to have a marriage without disagreement or difficulty. It's to help you develop the communication, understanding, connection, and resilience to navigate those experiences together.
FAQ
You don't need to wait until immediately before your wedding. Beginning several months beforehand can give you time to thoughtfully explore important topics without adding another deadline to the final weeks of wedding planning.
When should we start premarital counseling?
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No. Premarital counseling can be valuable for couples with healthy, stable relationships who simply want to invest intentionally in their marriage
Do we need to be experiencing a problem?
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What if PREPARE/ENRICH identifies an area where we disagree?
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Differences aren't automatically problems. The assessment gives you and Sherae an opportunity to understand those differences and have conversations about expectations before they become recurring sources of conflict.
It can be. Sherae can incorporate Christian beliefs and values when both partners would like faith to be part of counseling. Faith integration isn't required.
Is this Christian premarital counseling?
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Yes. Premarital counseling can be especially helpful when preparing for remarriage because couples may also be navigating previous relationship experiences, children, co-parenting, finances, grief, and the process of blending families. PREPARE/ENRICH includes assessment options addressing remarriage and stepfamily dynamics.
Can you work with couples who have been married before?
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