Planning Your Unforgettable Wedding Ceremony
Problems and Issues
"We're already living together."
Relax! To us, this is not a problem or an obstacle.
In fact, we are more concerned about couples that are not living together: What happens the morning after the wedding if you suddenly discover that you can't stand each other in the morning? Living together is difficult and a challenge, and we figure that your odds for lifetime success are better if you have already shown that you can stand the difficulties of getting along in close proximity over an extended time.
It used to happen a few years ago (though we haven't run into it recently) that couples would come to us with a plaintive story: "We had a minister all lined up, but when he found out that we were already living together, he said, 'Oh, I can't possibly marry you if you are already living together." And our thought, frankly, was, "His loss is our gain." Because our impression in just about all these cases was that here is a couple who seem ideally suited to one another, and we are pleased and honored to marry them.
So should every couple "shack up"? No, that's not what we're saying. But if you are seriously considering marriage, then it might be good to have the experience of living together before making what should be a lifetime commitment.
But what if you are morally opposed to premarital sex or living together? We are not telling you to violate your own moral standards. But we would urge you to recognize that there is an area of knowledge about this other person which is difficult for you to know without that living-together experience. So if you choose not to live together before marriage, then you really need to work extra hard to know each other in other ways. You need to be sure you are able talk openly and honestly about everything that -- as far as you can know -- will come up when you live together after marriage, and you need to spend as much time together, in fairly intimate circumstances, as possible, in order to simulate as much as possible the knowledge of each other that might have come if you had lived together.
