My online marriage preparation course is now

FREE for ANYONE – ANYWHERE 

You can read the text down below to find out what makes this course unique.

Or, you can go immediately to the course and get going!

Access the free online course HERE

Getting married in Tennessee? Save $60 on your license. Click HERE to find out how

Preparing for marriage is vital!

But my lands, many of the pre-marriage counseling programs offered cost hundreds of dollars. While I could argue that you should spend as much as it takes to get counseling before marriage – the hard reality these days is that money is in short supply for many.

Not only that, but it has surprised and pleased me to find that this do it at-home premarital preparation course has been called:

The marriage preparation guide that even the guys love!

Yes, I’ve had more guys tell me that they enjoyed the course than even the women. And a frequent word used by both grooms and brides is that the guide was fun.

My guide does not require a lot of reading and study. There’s a place for that. But the accidental genius of this guide is that it is simply a tool to get you talking to each other about your lives together . . . which creates a deeper level of intimacy.

You feel closer than ever before!

I call it accidental genius because I really didn’t anticipate such a positive outcome. The feedback to the guide is gratifying. Here’s just a couple of examples (these are real but only illustrative and no guarantee you will have the same benefit) :

Mr. Griggs, Michael and I had a blast taking your course. Sometimes we laughed, sometimes the discussions were intense, and sometimes we were surprised by our answers. Things were brought to our attention we would have never thought to talk about. We were able to openly discuss things we may have thought were taboo in our relationship. –Dianne

We had been caught up in the wedding plans and had not sat down and talked about our lives in a long while. It was good to come back to the reality of why we’re getting married. -William & Amy

So, What’s in the Guide?

Free Online Personalty Test

Find a link to a free, brief personality test based on the famous Myers-Briggs Personality test. With a few clicks, find out how to show love and how to best communicate to your partner given their unique personality. Couples seem to enjoy this as much as anything in the guide.  Personality tests can be expensive, but this one is quick and free.

Watch a Movie

How easy and fun is this for marriage preparation? Rent this movie that’s used by many pre-marriage counselors. It’s several years old but the movie stars are well known. Watch it, and then talk about how this couple could have prevented things from getting so bad. There’s also a link to a website with a free study guide if you want to use it.  It’s a fun and effective way to learn!

If we had to change one thing we would have the movie required viewing! What a movie. I was in tears! Although fictional, I know, it was very emotionally challenging and a great warning to what can happen when little problems go unattended to. Watching the movie was a great suggestion. – Janet

I Feel Loved When . . .

Stop guessing what makes your partner feel loved. We tend to show love the way we experience it. This simple, brief exercise puts a stop to the guessing and allows you to tell each other exactly what makes you feel loved. Are you sure you know what your partner would list at the number one spot? Does your partner know yours?

Discovering Strengths and Growth Areas

This is a simple and important exercise for finding out what your relationship strengths and growth areas are, and whether or not you both agree as to what they are. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars with a counselor using a scientific  couples inventory to do this, or you can use the simple exercise in my guide to do it more informally.

View all the topics in the guide, and the author’s page if you want to learn about me.

And download a free sample exercise from the guide (1 page PDF) from the guide.

*Couples getting married in Tennessee can save $60 on their marriage license with marriage prep. Find out how here.

Think About This

• You can do the activities in this guide at your convenience. No scheduling meetings and driving across town. Do it as you have time.

• You don’t have to share intimate or embarrassing details with a stranger. This is all between the two of you – unless you decide later that personal attention would be helpful.

• You have the chance to build confidence in your decision to marry, you have fun while learning more about each other, and you become closer than ever before.

• 23 studies show that couples who do premarital preparation report a higher sense of partnership, make better adjustments to married life, and resolve problems better than those who do no premarital preparation – overall marital happiness is 30% greater.

Need more convincing?

Or maybe it’s not you – maybe it’s him, or her. Here are some of the common excuses I’ve heard and some thoughts to consider.

“We already are getting premarital counseling.” Excellent! I’m glad you are. Not everyone is in a position to do that and you are fortunate. I encourage couples to do as much as they can in preparing for marriage, so I would suggest to you that you consider also using this at-home guide. You likely will find things in it you won’t get in your other marriage prep. And as I’ve told many couples, using my guide will help them more quickly pinpoint challenges so if they go for face to face marriage preparation, they can focus in on the key areas of concern. Your counselor will likely appreciate that, and it may reduce the number of times you need to go.

“We talk about everything already.” That’s great, but I can’t tell you how many times couples have sat at my kitchen table and told me that while they believed they were great communicators that simply through the methodical process of going through the guide they, stumbled onto things they had not discussed. And other times, it simply provided an opportunity to go back to some things they had not discussed in a long time.

“We are too busy.” Yes, I know. For couples getting married, on top of planning a wedding, they are often finishing school, starting new jobs, and building a house. This is exactly the reason I put this guide together. It became increasingly difficult to schedule face to face premarital counseling with couples. Sadly, it’s hard to get 3 people together with our busy lives!

Much of what is in the guide is what I’ve done with couples in person over the years – but now without having to schedule meetings. You can find the time. It’s like the couple comment earlier who said the guide was a chance to stop from the rush of wedding planning and remember why they were doing it all to begin with.

“We don’t really need it.” Well, it’s true that some couples need more preparation than others. But allow me to suggest some good reasons for doing as much marriage preparation as you can.

• Prevent unhappy surprises in your marriage. We love surprises…good ones that is. You don’t want to get into your marriage and say to your significant other, “I had no idea you thought that!”
• Build confidence in your relationship strengths & explore new areas. A bunch of couples have told me that doing premarital preparation made them feel even more confident about their decision to marry.
• Get a heads-up on tricky relationship issues, and have some compromises worked out already.
• Begin marriage with the knowledge that your mate cares enough about the relationship to put some effort into making it grow.
• Have fun. Really, I’m not jerking your chain here. When done right, premarital preparation is fun. I hear it all the time.

In case you missed it, couples marrying in Tennessee can get a $60 discount on the cost of their marriage license by using my At Home Marriage Prep Guide. Click HERE for the details.

Disclaimer: This is where the obvious is stated & some other things I want to make sure you know. The marriage preparation guide sold at www.marriagepreparationonline.com is not designed to serve as a predictor of your marital success. If you use the guide, it is not a guarantee that your marriage will be successful. I am not a licensed therapist and don’t present myself as such. If you have great difficulty working through the guide on your own, it’s a good sign that you should seek out professional help. Go to a therapist or see a local minister. The material in this guide is based on my work with couples over the years as a nondenominational minister, as well as my Masters & Doctoral level course work in counseling. With this guide, like most things, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.