Non religious premarital counseling
Guidance for your meaningful wedding + marriageYour wedding is one of the happiest days of your life most transformative times of your life.
How are you and your partner doing amidst all this change? If you’re like most couples, you probably need some support and nourishing quality time to reconnect. That’s exactly what my non religious premarital counseling provides.
Wedding planning is infamously stressful; few realize they can get the support, clarity, and deep connection they crave through non religious premarital counseling.
My approach is inquiry-based. Your stress decreases and your connection strengthens as you explore grounding questions:
- What is beautiful, foundational, and life-giving about your partnership?
- How will each of you nurture your marriage and, in turn, how can it nurture each of you?
- Where are you holding back? What have you been afraid to ask?
- What does this commitment, container, and blessing of marriage mean to you—really?
This is the perfect time to ask these questions. You’ll feel more centered immediately. You can release challenges before they turn into ingrained problems between you.
Religious folks have some support in this process.
They get guidance from their faith leaders such as a priest or rabbi to understand what marriage and the rituals of a wedding mean in the context of their faith. They get an opportunity to connect and reflect with the support of someone who knows and cares about them.
Non religious couples lack this support. And it shows.
Unlike their religious peers, non religious couples don’t have a process in place to help them understand this moment and their true intention.
If you want meaning, you need to create it yourself.
But we don’t learn in school how to make a marriage and wedding meaningful. And with the divorce rate near 50%, couples today don’t have a lot of role models for the kind of marriage they want.
Even wedding pros, who are experts in creating the event of the wedding, don’t prioritize its meaning. That’s one of the reasons that weddings tend to be awkwardly alike, even if the relationships they’re celebrating are diversely unique.
Discover the true meaning of your marriage:
Planning your wedding is a struggle? It’s not your fault.
Preparing the ‘Happiest Day of Your Lives’ isn’t just a big logistical project to pull off. It also brings up everything unsorted in your partnerships, families, and yourselves.
It’s a time of deep transition and challenge. The drama isn’t really about the color palette. It’s about feelings as big as the life changes you’re going through with too little space and support to feel them.
That’s how a simple question about the wedding suddenly turns into a dozen incredibly overwhelming questions. Each one is tied to issues and people that are truly important to you.
Through this process, you will articulate your intention for your marriage and your wedding.
These become guideposts and tools to make decisions with ease and confidence. You will know, you will easily discern, your right answer for the endless wedding planning decisions.
Your guests will notice the difference.
Your wedding changes fundamentally when you prioritize the connection between the two of you and focus on the meaning of your marriage.
Guests don’t remember flower arrangements and cakes. They remember the sacred, intimate moment when they got to witness a unique love between two people. They remember feeling included and connected to what the two of you share with each other. Inviting them into that moment requires deep connection and introspection.
You were never supposed to do this alone.
Preparing for marriage can feel like standing on shifting sands; I am here to offer you a steadying hand.
In my 15-year career as a wedding photographer, I have intimately witnessed the emotional rollercoaster of the wedding day, hundreds of times over. As an ordained Interspiritual minister and trained chaplain, I serve as a spiritual, yet non religious guide, dedicated to supporting your profound inner journey.
My unique background allows me to create a safe and nurturing space for you during the often-overlooked transitional period of planning your wedding.
It’s my sacred duty. I’m proud to call myself a spiritual wedding coach.
My couples tend to call me: fairy godmother. 🧚♀️
Ready for the journey?
Non religious premarital counseling can look like this:
My premarital counseling process is an inner inquiry that culminates in you creating an intention for your marriage—one that is unique to you two. We never know what we’ll find on such a deep inner dive.
During my work with one couple in March 2023, the bride confronted a long-held limiting and painful belief. The kind we don’t want to believe, so we pretend we don’t.
Our process revealed it.
I invited her to say it aloud. Not her favorite thing to say, but she did. And her partner heard her. He could offer his honest view—an antidote—without performance, without trying to convince her. Just his truth. And she took it in.
The painful spell was released.
When we’re held warmly in a non-judgmental space we might be able to finally find the right words. And when we do, something heavy can dissipate in one breath.
What will be discerned or released for you?
FAQs
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How many times do we meet, and for how long?
My inquiry-based non religious premarital counseling starts with each you filling out a reflective questionnaire (it’s just to get started, don’t worry about being articulate!). From there we have a short series of conversations / sessions. Contact me for a full overview.
How is this different than working with a secular couples counselor?
In an increasingly secular world, various folks are stepping in to fill the support gap for non religious engaged couples. Often they focus on compatibility assessments, checklists of conversations, or skill-building. All of those things can be helpful in pointing to where possible problems might be.
However, in my premarital counseling sessions, we get directly to the heart of the matter through reflective questions and pastoral* conversation that reveal what’s most important to each of you. You as individuals, not types. Over three contemplative sessions, we spiral continuously inward. I take the ride with you, and I won’t let you jump off in a moment of confusion or discomfort, but lovingly draw your attention to the path of growth over and over.
This isn’t another checklist; it’s a transformation here and now.
You will have an experience of deeper understanding and connection—yes, even deeper than you’ve experienced yet! From this place, you will naturally craft a more intentional wedding and a stronger foundation for your marriage.
*pastoral: This term comes from the Christian tradition, but is now widely used to describe spiritual exploration and guidance
Won’t this just add to our pile of pre-wedding todos?
No, not really. More intention means less confusion, faster decisions, and a sense of peace and alignment on your wedding day. That’s why couples I work with think of this process as negative hours of wedding planning.
The default planning mode of jumping into checklists leads to loops of indecision and endless to-dos, and away from a meaningful wedding. Without intention, many decisions will take HOURS more than is necessary. You might keep doubting your own decisions. And the opinions of others are harder to keep at bay.
WITH intention, it’s easy to say, “No, thank you, we’re doing it this way because we want our event to be about (insert priorities).” With intention, the best option for you is obvious. With intention, you can strike certain To-dos from the list out of the gate.
We’ve already allocated our wedding budget. Is premarital counseling worth the money?
In our work together, you’ll discover that most of what it takes to create a soulful wedding does not necessarily have a price tag at all. Clarity about your intention for your wedding and marriage will help you know exactly what to spend money on (and what is not as essential as it seemed) to make this day unforgettable and totally your own.
One result will likely be that you’ll discover items on your budget that are less essential than they originally seemed.
Plus, most of the things you’re spending money on around the wedding will last one day, then be a memory. This expeirence, at such a crucial jucnture of your life, will positively impact your relationships for the rest of your lives.
We care about guests having an epic, memorable time. How does this process help with that?
When you plan your wedding as a celebration of your wish for your marriage, you get to invite your guests into a sacred and intimate moment. You’ll get to show up with the simple reality of who you are to each other. What your guests will remember is not the flower arrangement or cake. They’ll remember whether they witnessed your love.
Do you plan our wedding?
I can help you think through what’s right for you in a Wedding Visioning session (and a bit in our foundational process as well) but I do not plan the wedding. For example, based on your intention, I might suggest that you greet your guests as they arrive and have your cocktail hour before the ceremony. But I will not build your actual timeline.
Do you work with religious couples?
Yes! Thinking about spirituality broadly and integratively is my specialty!
I’m equally well suited to work with religious couples who long for an inner inquiry. While I cannot offer teachings specific to your faith, I have a deep respect and broad understanding of the world’s religions. That allows me to hold space for how your faith informs your personal inquiry in the premarital counseling porcess. You can hear me reflect just after working with a deeply religious couple in this IG live.
What topics do couples end up talking about with you?
Although I have a structure that I offer in our main session, the real magic and transformation happen when we hit a “bump in the road.” The thing that might make it hard for you to answer a question or follow a prompt in the way you think you’re “supposed” to is actually the signpost to the question that wants to be addressed. That means this non religious premarital counseling can take us almost anywhere in your personal or shared histories or concerns for the future.
Common topics include:
- creating and keeping healthy boundaries with loved ones
- blending or examining faith traditions
- repressed fears
- tending to grief while wedding planning
- questions and shifts around gender identity
- visions for family and work life in the future
Ask me your question and get a video response within 48 hours:
Even more support is available. Some optional add ons.
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Ceremony Design Session
Many couples like to design their ceremony with me. After all the groundwork we’ve laid, it takes just an hour to create a ceremony framework that expresses your intentions and makes your community feel like a valued part of your life.
Wedding visioning/ritual discerning
While I will not plan your wedding, I can offer a lot of guidance on the size, structure, location, and timeline—all in service of your wish for your wedding that you’ll articulate in your non religious premarital counseling sessions.
Additionally, I can help you think through “small” details with a big impact like who you want around you the morning-of, how you want to adapt (or skip!) gendered rituals such as the processional or parents’ dances, and just about any decision you can think of! (This is where my 15 years as a wedding photographer come into play: I’ve intimately seen wedding days unfold minute by minute hundreds of times, and I understand the emotional impact of even the smallest decision)
Spiritual coaching
We can explore any of these areas further, or just make space to see what needs to be revealed.
- Faith reckonings: Sometimes wedding planning stirs big questions about faith or even religious trauma. We can add a session for either or both of you, to further explore and heal.
- “Family drama:” Oh, the family drama! It’s not your fault. There are very solid reasons that weddings create conflict in even the most cohesive and loving family. Sometimes you need an additional session to get clear on what’s happening, or to prepare yourself for a difficult—yet important—conversation.
- Grief tending + remembrance planning: Weddings activate—and can complicate—grief of all kinds. You might want a little extra support to make room for your grief in the months leading up to your wedding, and perhaps the day itself.