I Do!: A Marriage Workbook for Engaged Couples

I bought two copies of this book because it looked like a good present for younger couples and, in a few years, my grandchildren. Then I got fascinated with the engaging exercises. This is a BIG book, abundantly flowing with interactive opportunities for couples to connect and learn things about each other that would typically take years for them to discover. One previous reviewer said that you really need to spend a lot of time using it. That may be true. But I learned a lot by cheating and zooming in and out of several chapters related to my own long marriage and my experience as a widower in later-life relationships. And then I realized that this would be a perfect gift now for my parish priest who often conducts counseling sessions with couples she is going to marry. I gave it to her at the Easter service, and she was delighted. Here’s one suggestion. Many pages offer separate spaces for partners to write candid answers to serious questions like “What makes you feel loved?” I think some readers will want to cover the first writer’s entry before they write their own. It’s easy to hide the spaces temporarily with one or two Post-its. In any case, I can imagine couples returning to the book as a baseline document for many years (we can hope) after their wedding.

My now husband and I read this together and it has helped us discuss things that we missed. It dives deep into your relationship and how to resolve things that you might not agree with. It covers a lot of things that you might not normally discuss with your partner. I recommended this to all my friends!

This book is everything you need for premarital counselling. I have been married before and tried the religious premarital counseling and as a non-religious person felt very frustrated with the process. With this marriage we decided to take a different route. We chose to find a online facilitator in order to take the Prepare/Enrich online assessment to determine our strengths and areas of growth AND do the premarital counseling on our own. Well with this book, it has made it so easy to talk about difficult topics and cover a multitude of issues that we did not even think to discuss prior to starting. Overall, I recommend this book. It is non-religious and doesn't feel biased in anyway.

Half of the book is about discussing kids (should have discussed that way sooner!) and about parenting styles. Not for us....

This workbook is an extremely thorough reflection on the journey of an engaged couple's premarital life - the joys, challenges, the risks, and goals. From intimacy to careers, budget to handling existing relationships. The marriage process for my fiance and I isn't structured so I was worried we weren't ready. It's hard to know what's missing unless someone tells you. Working through this book showed us that we confronted almost every foundational stone of marriage, with deep reflection. We feel closer and ready for our wedding next week. Will definately look back to this for many years to come! Make sure you give yourself at least two months to go through it.

Great workbook for engaged couples. The therapist who wrote this book seemed to put a lot of care into it and it has been helpful. His comments and predictions are quite accurate for us and help engage conversation. We've been together for years but have learned a lot about how each other thinks and why. One activity gave us a realization on why our fights end the way they do and gave us the insight to fix that.

The book says it is for engaged couples but I would definitely recommend it even for people thinking about getting engaged. Unlike other books, this one presents a question and helps you walk through the sometimes difficult discussions that come out of it. By the time we got to our mandatory counseling at the church, the priest was impressed of how much we had already talked about most issues. I’ve gifted this book to four engaged couples already!

We haven’t completed the book yet (we bought it after the wedding) but so far the prompts are very informative and helpful. We love taking the time do work on our book and our marriage!