Premarital Counseling in Sandy Springs: What Imago-Informed Prep Looks Like
Most engaged couples spend more hours picking a venue than they spend talking about how they’ll handle conflict for the next fifty years. That’s not a judgment — a wedding has deadlines and vendors and a date on the calendar, and a marriage doesn’t feel urgent yet. But the couples who come through premarital counseling before the wedding, rather than after the first hard year, tend to walk into marriage with something most couples never get: an honest look at their patterns before those patterns have had years to calcify.
I’m Michelle Morris, LPC, a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist practicing in Sandy Springs, Georgia. Here’s what premarital counseling with an Imago-informed approach actually covers, and why it looks different from a generic pre-wedding checklist.
Why premarital counseling isn’t just a formality
A lot of engaged couples assume premarital counseling is something you do to satisfy an officiant’s requirement — a box to check before the ceremony. Done well, it’s the opposite of a formality. It’s the one structured space where two people who are about to merge their lives legally and financially sit down and actually look at how they fight, how they repair, and what they each learned about love before they ever met each other.
Every adult walks into a relationship carrying an “imago” — an unconscious template of familiar love, built from childhood. You don’t choose a partner randomly; you’re drawn to someone who fits that template, including the parts of it that will eventually frustrate you. Couples who understand this going in tend to interpret early conflict very differently than couples who don’t. Instead of “something is wrong with us,” it becomes “this is the normal friction of two people with different histories learning each other” — which is a much more workable starting point for a marriage.
What we actually talk about
Premarital sessions with me aren’t a worksheet you fill out together. They’re structured conversations, and they tend to cover:
Your conflict style, before the stakes get higher. Every couple has a recurring pattern — one partner pursues and the other withdraws, or both dig in and escalate. Engaged couples usually have a milder version of this pattern already visible, and premarital work is the easiest possible time to name it, because the stakes (a mortgage, kids, years of history) haven’t piled on yet.
The Imago Dialogue. I teach engaged couples the same structured communication tool I use with couples in longer-term distress: one partner speaks, the other mirrors back what they heard before responding. It sounds almost too simple to matter. In practice, it’s the skill that lets two people talk about money, in-laws, or sex without the conversation turning into a fight — and it’s far easier to learn before old resentments have built up.
Money, family, and the conversations people avoid. Finances, how holidays get split, whether and when to have children, how much contact is normal with each set of parents — these aren’t romantic topics, which is exactly why many engaged couples skip them until they’re living the disagreement in real time. Premarital counseling creates a low-stakes place to have them out loud, before the wedding, while both of you still have room to adjust.
What each of you actually learned about marriage growing up. Your model of marriage — what’s normal, what’s a dealbreaker, how disagreements get handled — came from somewhere, usually your parents’ relationship or its absence. Making that explicit to each other is often the single most clarifying conversation engaged couples have.
Who this is a good fit for
Premarital counseling works well for couples who are already getting along and simply want a head start — and it works just as well for couples who sense a real pattern (a recurring argument, a difference in how they each handle conflict, a topic they keep avoiding) and want to address it before the wedding rather than after. If you’re the kind of couple who’s curious about Imago relationship therapy as a framework and wants to build your marriage on that foundation from day one, premarital sessions are a natural starting point.
It’s not a substitute for addressing active crisis issues — infidelity, untreated addiction, or abuse need their own level of care — but for the great majority of engaged couples, premarital work is preventive, not remedial.
What it looks like logistically
Most engaged couples I see do somewhere between three and six sessions in the months leading up to the wedding, though this varies with how much you want to cover and how far out you’re starting. Sessions run 75 minutes, which gives a real conversation room to breathe rather than rushing through a checklist. I work with engaged couples in person in Sandy Springs and via secure telehealth for couples anywhere in Georgia, Pennsylvania, or California — which matters for couples where one partner is relocating for the marriage and the planning is happening long-distance. If that’s your situation, I’ve also written about how telehealth couples work holds up for couples managing a relationship across distance.
Starting the conversation with your partner
If you’re the one who wants to do premarital counseling and your partner isn’t sure it’s necessary, that reluctance is common and usually isn’t about the relationship — it’s about not wanting to suggest something’s “wrong” before the wedding. Framing it as skill-building rather than problem-solving tends to land better: you’re not going because something is broken, you’re going because you want tools before you need them.
Frequently asked questions
When should we start premarital counseling before the wedding? Three to six months out is a comfortable window — early enough that you have time to actually use what you learn, late enough that the wedding planning stress is part of the real material you’re working with. Starting earlier is fine too; there’s no real downside to more lead time.
How many premarital sessions do we need? Most couples I see do three to six 75-minute sessions, though this depends on how many topics you want to cover and whether you’re also working through an existing pattern. There’s no fixed number — we tailor it to what you need.
Is premarital counseling the same as couples therapy? The tools overlap, but the starting point is different. Premarital counseling is generally preventive and forward-looking — building communication skills and surfacing expectations before problems set in — while couples therapy more often addresses an established pattern that’s already causing pain. Many premarital couples use the same Imago framework I use with longer-married couples, just applied earlier.
Does premarital counseling work for couples who are already getting along well? Yes — in fact, that’s an ideal time to do it. You’re building skills from a stable base rather than trying to learn them under pressure. Couples who come in without a crisis often move through the material faster and retain it better.
Do you offer premarital counseling by telehealth? Yes. I see engaged couples in person in Sandy Springs and via secure telehealth throughout Georgia, Pennsylvania, and California, which works well for couples navigating wedding planning across a distance.
If you’re engaged and want to start your marriage with real tools rather than hoping things work out, book a free 20-minute consultation. I offer premarital and couples counseling in Sandy Springs and via telehealth, and I’m glad to talk through what your sessions could look like before you commit to anything.
Michelle Morris, LPC, is a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist with 30+ years of clinical experience, practicing in Sandy Springs, GA and via telehealth in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and California.