Are you planning a wedding and don’t know where to start? Or have you started planning and just feeling overwhelmed?

Maybe you need:

• Time alone
• Time with the person you love, to remember why you’re getting married

Your wedding day is one of the most important days of your life, if not THE most important. It needs to be treated as such, particularly the actual ceremony.

The ceremony marks the beginning of your marriage. The promises you make to each other are the words you promise to live by for the rest of your lives. (as long as we both shall live). At the very least, find some time in your busy schedule to give these words the attention they deserve.

If you plan on writing your own wedding vows, our minister will be happy to discuss options and share information from her vast library of resources. You can work on your vows without interference or distraction.

During this time you may consider including pre-marital, or the preferred term, pre-wedding, counseling.

Our minister uses Prepare/Enrich, a customized couple assessment that is completed online. It identifies a couple's strength and growth areas and is widely used by trained clergy members, professional counselors, and marriage educators throughout the U.S. Over 3 million couples have taken the Prepare/Enrich Program since it began in 1980. The program has high levels of reliability and validity, with about 80-85% accuracy.

The assessment is a very simple process. Before the planning retreat, the Bride and Groom would each take an inventory that is sent to their email address. When both have taken the inventory (takes about 30 minutes) a relationship analysis is generated that shows the areas in which there is compatibility and those areas where there may be potential for marital discord in the future. Many times the survey shows disagreement in areas which have not been discussed or explored in depth in the relationship.

During the planning retreat the inventory will be discussed in detail and the couple will receive exercises to be completed once they return home.

Partners in great marriages have a sacred contract. They are settled in their commitment to love, cherish, and care for their love and their marriage, and they do what they need to do to keep it strong through sickness and health, poverty and wealth, and all the in-betweens. They choose to solve their problems in a spirit of cooperation with each other, assuming an attitude of togetherness, not separation. They forgive each other. They are loyal to each other. They treat each other as sweethearts.