Tis the Season To Get Engaged

Jennifer Bailey — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:00:00 -0500

An article came out on Boston.com saying that although Spring may be the most popular season to get married, the holiday season is the most popular time to get engaged.

Mimi Licht is a clinically licensed social worker in the Greater Boston area who has begun counselling recently engaged couples, and she says that December is definitely her busy period. I have to say that I fully support this idea of counselling before marriage. It helps the couple — normally focused solely on what kind of wedding they're going to have — recognize some of the challenges that they're going to face once everyone has gone home and the honeymoon tans has faded.

There are so many things to consider when getting engaged that it's difficult to list them all in one article. This article mentions factors such as ethnic differences, opposition to the marriage from family or friends, and shaky finances. Add to the list things like where to live, whether to keep your last name or take a new one, joint bank accounts, and children, and you have a volatile recipe for stress. Who helps guide us through the process and ensures we are going into this with eyes wide open?

Traditionally, people turned to their family or religious officials to help them. I've had many friends who wanted to get married in one specific church or another who were told that before the church would agree to marry them, they would have to attend "x" number of marriage counseling sessions. But people are increasingly less likely to attend church than they were 30 years ago, and as the divorce rate has hovered around 50 percent since 1975, we don't feel our divorced parents are necessarily qualified to counsel us on marriage.

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Tis the Season To Get Engaged