Published by Fava Counseling Associates
Clinically reviewed by Liz Fava, LPC, CPS — Licensed Professional Counselor (Georgia) | Certified Prepare/Enrich Trainer | Level 3 Gottman Method Therapist | Certified Professional Counseling Supervisor | NPI: 1952735326 (Verify credentials) | Last reviewed: May 2026
Most couples spend more time picking a venue than preparing for the marriage. Not a judgment — wedding planning is genuinely consuming. But the ceremony is a few hours. The marriage is everything after.
Prepare/Enrich is the evidence-based assessment and counseling program that shifts that equation. My premarital practice has been built around it for over 15 years, and it’s the framework I use with every engaged couple who comes to us in Atlanta. What follows is a full accounting of what the program actually is, how the assessment works under the hood, what sessions look like from week one through the last, when to start, what it costs, and what I’ve learned from working with couples that you won’t find in any brochure.
Read straight through, or jump to the section most relevant to where you are right now.
A Few Things Worth Knowing Before We Start
- Prepare/Enrich has been used by more than 4 million couples globally, supported by over 1,200 published research studies
- Couples who complete premarital counseling are up to 31% less likely to divorce
- Drawing on data from over 500,000 couples, the assessment predicts with 80–85% accuracy which premarital couples will go on to happy marriages vs. those who won’t
- Georgia couples can receive a $70 discount on their marriage license after completing 6 hours of qualifying premarital counseling
- The assessment costs $35, paid directly to the Prepare/Enrich platform — not to your therapist
- Starting 6–9 months before the wedding gives couples the best conditions for lasting skill development
- At Fava Counseling, I hold the Trainer credential — one of a small group of clinicians nationally authorized to certify other facilitators. That distinction matters, and I’ll explain why below.
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What Is Prepare/Enrich — and Why Do Therapists Use It?
Prepare/Enrich is a research-validated relationship assessment and counseling program developed by Dr. David H. Olson at the University of Minnesota in 1980. Over four decades it’s been used in more than 50 countries and validated by over 1,200 published studies. Today it’s the most widely used premarital tool in the world — not because it’s popular, but because it works.
Worth saying clearly upfront: this isn’t a compatibility quiz. Compatibility quizzes tell you what you already suspect. Prepare/Enrich gives both partners a data point about their relationship that isn’t filtered through either person’s perception of it. Each partner completes the assessment separately. Neither knows how the other answered. We look at the results together in session, and that’s where the actual work begins.
One of its better features is adaptability. First marriage? Blending families from previous relationships? Living together already? Coming from a faith tradition? Cohabiting with children already in the picture? Every couple gets questions calibrated to their circumstances, which is part of why the feedback generated is genuinely useful rather than generic.
Here’s something I tell couples early on: I don’t just use Prepare/Enrich. I train other therapists to use it. The Trainer credential sits above the standard Facilitator certification. Holding it means I’ve been authorized by the Prepare/Enrich organization to certify other clinicians in this methodology — which means I understand not just the mechanics but the clinical nuances behind every scale and every pattern a report can surface. When you work with someone at Fava Counseling, you’re working with, or under the direct supervision of, the person who trains the trainers in this region.
The research backing the program’s validity is available on the official Prepare/Enrich research page. For the peer-reviewed structural overview of the full assessment instrument, SpringerLink’s entry on Prepare/Enrich is the academic reference.
What Does the Prepare/Enrich Assessment Actually Measure?
Most articles about Prepare/Enrich stop at the surface: it covers communication, finances, and family dynamics. Accurate, but incomplete. The assessment is a four-layer instrument, and understanding what each layer does changes how useful the feedback becomes.
Layer 1: The 10 Core Relationship Scales
These are the areas most people expect when they picture premarital counseling:
- Communication — how openly each partner expresses thoughts, feelings, and concerns
- Conflict Resolution — your patterns for handling disagreements, and whether those patterns are working
- Partner Style and Habits — lifestyle preferences, day-to-day rhythms, how each person’s habits fit together
- Financial Management — alignment on spending, saving, debt, and financial values
- Sexuality — expectations for physical intimacy, frequency, affection, and connection
- Leisure Activities — how you spend time together and apart, and whether those preferences fit
- Relationship Roles — who does what, and whether your assumptions about that actually match your partner’s
- Spiritual Beliefs — shared or divergent values around faith, meaning, and practice
Each scale generates a score reflecting both individual responses and couple agreement. We can see not just where you are on a given dimension, but where you diverge from each other.
Layer 2: The SCOPE Personality Assessment
SCOPE is built on the Big Five model of personality, one of the most validated frameworks in psychological research. Five dimensions: Social, Change, Organized, Pleasing, Emotionally Steady.
Nothing here labels anyone as difficult or easy. What it does is show how each partner’s personality style shows up under pressure. A partner who scores low on Change (preferring routine and predictability) paired with one who scores high on Change (drawn to novelty) isn’t an incompatible match. But those two people will approach major life decisions very differently, and knowing that before marriage gives you a framework for those moments instead of just friction.
Layer 3: Relationship Dynamics Scales
Four scales here: Assertiveness, Self-Confidence, Avoidance, and Partner Dominance. This layer can surface patterns neither partner has named yet — a tendency for one person to withdraw rather than engage, an asymmetry in who drives decisions, conflict avoidance that looks like harmony on the outside but is actually suppression. Catching these patterns early, when there’s no crisis attached to them, is some of the most useful work premarital counseling does.
Layer 4: The Couple and Family Map
The intergenerational layer. The Couple and Family Map assesses cohesion and flexibility in both your current relationship and each partner’s family of origin. Consistently the part of the assessment that generates the most surprise, because most of us have absorbed our families’ relational patterns so completely we don’t know they’re there until we see them reflected back in data. More on what this work looks like in the section on generational cycles below.
A practical note: plan 30–60 minutes to complete the assessment online. Each partner does this separately and honestly — don’t compare answers beforehand. The $35 fee goes directly to Prepare/Enrich and produces a 10-page personalized Couples Report, the document we use as the foundation for every session that follows.
What Actually Happens in Sessions? A Week-by-Week Walkthrough
“What are we actually going to do in there?” Almost every couple who hasn’t been through this before asks a version of that question. Most articles don’t answer it with any real specificity. Here’s what actually happens.
Before Session 1: Intake and Assessment
After your initial call with our intake coordinator, each partner receives a link to complete the Prepare/Enrich assessment independently. Complete it alone. The diagnostic value depends on both partners responding without knowing what the other said.
Session 1: The Couple’s Story and Strength Mapping
First sessions don’t start with problems. Instead, we get to know you—your history together, how you got here, and what you’re hoping to achieve.
Then, we open your customized Prepare/Enrich Couples Report and start with your strength areas. We do this deliberately. Couples need to know what’s already working before we look at what needs work. By the end of Session 1, the anxiety most couples arrive with is usually gone. One hour of structured, guided conversation consistently does more than years of hoping you’ll eventually get around to discussing the hard stuff.
Sessions 2–6: The Deep Dive & Core Skill Building
Over the next five sessions, we systematically unpack your report and put the custom Prepare/Enrich workbook exercises into practice. We don’t lecture about relationships in the abstract. Instead, your report gives us a direct map of your specific dynamics.
Each session combines a deep dive into your data with hands-on skill-building. Together, we move from discovery (“I didn’t know we viewed this so differently”) to daily application. We will work directly through the core pillars of your relationship, practicing tools designed to hold up under pressure:
- Communication Habits: Mastering assertiveness and active listening so both partners actually feel heard.
- The 10-Step Conflict Model: A structured, predictable way to resolve differences without letting them turn into major arguments.
- Financial Management: Aligning your spending styles, financial goals, and uncovering the personal histories that drive how you handle money.
- Partner Style & Habits: Understanding how your individual personalities and day-to-day habits interact and complement (or clash with) each other.
- Relationship Roles & Expectations: Gaining clarity on unspoken expectations around responsibilities, decision-making, and daily life.
Between sessions, you’ll use the workbook exercises to practice outside the office exactly what we’re developing inside it, turning these insights into long-term habits.
Sessions 7–8: For Couples Who Go Deeper
Some couples reach their goals and conclude at six sessions. Others choose to go further, particularly when the initial assessment surfaces deeper complexities that need room to breathe. Sessions 7 and 8 dive into this meaningful territory, tailoring the framework to areas like:
- Blended family dynamics and step-parenting
- Significant divergence on parenting styles and values
- Deeply rooted family-of-origin patterns
- Complex financial histories or major life transitions that require true alignment
The Final Session: What Was Built
We close by taking stock — what the couple came in with, what they’ve added, what they’re leaving with. Not a graduation ceremony. An honest accounting of the work done and a clear picture of what to keep practicing. Some couples continue meeting with us on a maintenance basis. Others go into their marriage with a framework they can sustain independently. Both are good outcomes.
Our full premarital counseling services page covers what to expect when you reach out to us.
When Should You Start? The 6-Month Rule and the “Wedding Brain” Problem
The research-informed recommendation is 6 to 9 months before your wedding date. Not because 6 months is an arbitrary threshold — because of what happens inside a brain under sustained stress.
The “Wedding Brain” Problem
In the final 60–90 days before most weddings, couples are managing a compounding logistics load: vendor timelines, family expectations, financial pressures, last-minute decisions arriving faster than they can process. Stress hormones rise. Cognitive flexibility drops. A brain under sustained stress has significantly less capacity to integrate new behavioral patterns — to actually change a communication habit, not just understand intellectually why the old one doesn’t work.
Every year I see couples who reach out three weeks before their wedding. Helping them is worth doing. But it’s crisis support, not foundation-building. Relational muscle memory — the habits that hold when things get hard — takes time and repetition to form. That time needs to come before the final sprint.
The Three Phases
Foundation Phase (6–9 months out). Highest-capacity window. Emotional bandwidth is high, stress is manageable, and couples have room to identify patterns, practice new habits, and let them settle into something automatic. Deep work happens here.
Integration Phase (4–5 months out). Some logistical pressure has arrived. Couples are practicing tools they’ve already built. This phase consolidates rather than introduces.
Survival Phase (under 2 months out). Focus shifts. Not building new habits at this point — protecting the connection through the sprint, managing de-escalation, keeping the relationship from taking a back seat to the event. Valuable work. Different work.
Already Close to Your Date?
You’re still in the right place. A One-Day Premarital Workshop covers the core Prepare/Enrich experience in a concentrated format, qualifies for the Georgia marriage license discount, and sends you into your marriage with real tools rather than good intentions. Not the same as 8 weeks of sessions — it isn’t meant to be. But it’s far more than nothing, and a well-facilitated intensive day can genuinely change how a couple shows up for each other.
The Gottman Institute’s longitudinal research consistently shows that relationship skill-building is most durable when practiced during lower-stress periods. Starting early isn’t anxious — it’s strategic.
How Much Does Prepare/Enrich Cost — and What Are Your Options?
Cost transparency is one of the things couples most want from therapy practices and least often get. So let’s be direct.
The Assessment Fee: $35
The Prepare/Enrich assessment costs $35. That fee goes directly to the Prepare/Enrich platform — not to Fava Counseling. It produces the 10-page Couples Report and is a one-time cost regardless of how many sessions you complete. That’s the only fixed number in this process.
Format 1: Weekly Sessions (Intern Therapist Tier)
At Fava Counseling, we offer a supervised intern tier for premarital counseling. Our interns are graduate-level therapists practicing under my direct clinical supervision. Every session they conduct is reviewed. Every report they interpret has my eyes on it. Couples working with an intern get graduate-level therapeutic presence and senior-level clinical oversight at significantly reduced rates.
For couples managing wedding costs — which is most people — this is often the path that makes the most sense. The quality of the work isn’t reduced. The cost is.
Why working with an intern therapist is a smart financial move for new couples →
Format 2: Weekly Sessions (Senior Therapist Tier)
Sessions with a senior therapist are available for couples who prefer direct work with a more experienced clinician, or whose assessment results surface complexity that warrants that level of experience. Contact us for current session rates.
Format 3: One-Day Premarital Intensive Workshop
A concentrated, full-day format covering the core Prepare/Enrich experience in a single session. Fixed rate. Qualifies for the Georgia license discount. Well-suited to couples with scheduling constraints or those closer to their wedding date.
View upcoming One-Day Workshop dates →
A Note on Insurance
Premarital counseling is generally not covered by health insurance. It’s classified as preventative wellness, not treatment for a diagnosed mental health condition. Plan on self-pay. Our affordable counseling options page covers what’s available.
| Weekly (Intern) | Weekly (Senior) | One-Day Workshop | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depth | Gradual, deep | Gradual, deep | Concentrated |
| Best for | Couples with time | Complex situations | Busy schedules or close dates |
| Georgia license discount | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clinical oversight | Supervised by Liz Fava, LPC | Direct | Facilitated |
Ready to take the next step? Whether your wedding is nine months away or nine weeks away, there’s a path here that fits where you are. Schedule a free consultation → or call us directly at (404) 257-6474.
The Georgia Marriage License Discount — What Atlanta Couples Need to Know
Georgia couples who complete at least 6 hours of qualifying premarital counseling with a licensed provider receive a $70 discount on their marriage license fee, plus a waiver of the standard 3-day waiting period in most counties.
Standard marriage license fees in Georgia run $77–$100 depending on county. The discount covers most or all of it.
What Qualifies
State law requires 6 hours of counseling with a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), or authorized member of the clergy. Liz Fava qualifies under her LPC license. Sessions at Fava Counseling — both weekly formats and the One-Day Workshop — count toward this requirement.
How the Certificate Works
After completing the required hours, we provide a Certificate of Completion. Bring that certificate to the Probate Court in your county when you apply for your marriage license. Without it, the standard fee applies and the waiting period is in effect.
Questions about whether a specific format meets your county’s requirements? Contact us — we’ve walked hundreds of Atlanta couples through this and can answer quickly.
The Detail Most Couples Miss
The 3-day waiting period waiver doesn’t get much attention, but for couples applying for their license close to the wedding date, it matters. Complete your counseling hours, get your certificate, and one logistical pressure disappears.
This initiative is supported by the Georgia Department of Public Health as part of the state’s investment in marriage preparation and long-term family stability.
How Long Does Premarital Counseling Take?
Most couples complete a Prepare/Enrich-based program in 6–8 sessions, each running 50 minutes, spread over 6–10 weeks.
Six sessions is the functional minimum — it meets the Georgia license discount requirement and covers the core assessment dimensions without rushing. Eight is the clinical sweet spot for most couples. That number creates room for conversations that start one place and end somewhere unexpected, which is often where the most important work happens.
Some couples go to 10. Usually this is when the assessment surfaces something significant: meaningful divergence in parenting philosophy, complex family of origin dynamics, or financial situations that need real alignment work rather than just one conversation. No penalty for taking more time. The goal is preparation, not efficiency.
For couples with a compressed timeline: the One-Day Intensive Workshop runs approximately 6 hours, covers the assessment results and core skill-building content, and qualifies for the Georgia license discount — all in a single day. Not identical to 8 weekly sessions, and I won’t tell you it is. Different format, different strengths. For a couple getting married in six weeks, it’s often the right call.
Questions about what session count fits your situation? Our premarital counseling team can work through that with you during an initial consultation.
Breaking Generational Cycles: The Work Underneath the Assessment
Something that consistently surprises couples who come in expecting a relationship checklist: the deepest work in Prepare/Enrich isn’t about the two of you. It’s about where each of you came from.
The Family of Origin Layer
The Couple and Family Map asks each partner to assess their family of origin on two dimensions: closeness (cohesion) and adaptability to change (flexibility). Neither end of either spectrum is inherently healthy. Families that are extremely enmeshed and families that are extremely disengaged both shape their children’s expectations for intimacy in ways those children rarely notice until they’re in a relationship.
Common pattern: one partner grew up in a family where closeness meant constant togetherness, where space felt like rejection. The other grew up where independence was the norm, and too much togetherness feels suffocating. They’re not incompatible people. They’re people carrying different maps of what a close relationship looks like. Prepare/Enrich gives us language for that difference, and once you can name something, you can negotiate it.
Our page on family of origin patterns offers a deeper look at how early relational experiences shape adult partnerships.
The Four Horsemen
John Gottman’s decades of research at the Gottman Institute identified four communication patterns that predict relationship deterioration with striking accuracy: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, Stonewalling. He called them the Four Horsemen.
Most couples doing these things don’t know they are. They know certain conversations spiral. They know their partner “shuts down” or “attacks.” They know some fights feel uniquely corrosive. But they don’t have a framework for what they’re watching. The Prepare/Enrich conflict resolution scales often surface these patterns in the data. Then we put names to them.
Naming a pattern is the first step to changing one. A couple who learns to recognize stonewalling — not as a character flaw but as a physiological response to overwhelm — can approach that moment differently. They can build a repair strategy, call a timeout that isn’t a withdrawal. Read more on the Gottman Method and how these tools apply in couples work.
Where EFT Comes In
Prepare/Enrich is good at identifying what a pattern is. Emotionally Focused Therapy adds the layer of why — the emotional need underneath the behavior. The partner who criticizes is usually afraid of being left behind. The partner who stonewalls is usually flooded and doesn’t know how to say so.
The fight about the dishes is almost never about the dishes.
When couples understand what they’re each actually trying to communicate underneath the argument, the argument changes. Not because they’ve solved the dishes problem. Because they’ve addressed what the dishes argument was really about. That’s the integration my practice brings to Prepare/Enrich work: not just the assessment mechanics, but the emotional layer beneath them.
Is Prepare/Enrich Right for You? Common Questions, Honest Answers
Is Prepare/Enrich religious?
The program adapts to both faith-based and secular couples. At Fava Counseling, I’m a Christian and comfortable integrating faith explicitly for couples who want that. Equally comfortable with a purely research-based approach for those who don’t. Your therapist follows your lead.
What if my partner is hesitant?
By far the most common situation I hear about. One partner is enthusiastic; the other is nervous, skeptical, or not sure they see the point. My suggestion: frame it as strategic planning, not therapy. You’re not going because something is broken — you’re going because you’re serious enough about this marriage to prepare for it the way you’d prepare for anything else that matters. One session almost always converts a reluctant partner. The anxiety going in is rarely there by the end of hour one.
Is it worth it if we’re not having any problems?
Strong couples often get the most out of this process. Building skills during calm is significantly easier than building them during crisis. Couples who start when things are good frequently surface meaningful differences in expectation — about finances, roles, intimacy, family involvement — that they hadn’t thought to discuss because everything felt fine. Those differences don’t disappear at marriage. Under pressure, they tend to grow.
Can we do it online?
Yes. Fava Counseling offers online counseling statewide across Georgia. The Prepare/Enrich assessment is always completed online regardless of whether your sessions are virtual or in-person.
Who is Prepare/Enrich NOT right for?
Worth saying plainly: Prepare/Enrich is a growth tool, not a crisis intervention. Couples where one partner is experiencing fear, coercion, or active domestic violence should not begin assessment-based work together. Safety planning comes first, and that work happens individually with a specialist. If you’re unsure whether your situation warrants individual support before couples work begins, reach out — we’ll help you identify the right starting point.
For broader clinical guidance on marriage preparation, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy is a credible professional reference.
Where do I start on communication specifically?
Before your first session, the page on improving communication in relationships builds a shared vocabulary that makes early sessions more productive. Worth reading together in the week before you start.
How Fava Counseling Does Prepare/Enrich — Why That Distinction Matters
Not every Prepare/Enrich facilitator brings the same depth. Certification means you’ve been trained to administer the assessment. That’s the baseline. What I bring is something different.
The Credential Stack
- LPC, Georgia — licensed to provide clinical counseling in this state
- Certified Prepare/Enrich Facilitator — authorized to administer the full assessment and facilitate feedback sessions
- Prepare/Enrich Trainer — nationally authorized to certify other therapists in this methodology; one of a small group in the country holding this designation
- Level 3 Gottman Method — the highest training tier, covering advanced couples therapy techniques grounded in longitudinal relationship research
- EFT Externship (4-Day) — clinical training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, the attachment-based approach developed by Dr. Sue Johnson
- Certified Professional Counseling Supervisor (CPCS) — authorized to supervise and train associate-level therapists in Georgia
- NPI: 1952735326, verifiable through the federal NPI registry
The Trainer designation is the one most people don’t know to ask about. A facilitator uses the tool. A trainer teaches other clinicians how to use it — which means understanding not just the assessment mechanics but the clinical texture behind every scale: how to read a report that looks fine on the surface but has something worth examining underneath, how to facilitate a conversation that starts about one thing and turns out to be about something else, how to hold a couple’s anxiety without projecting reassurance that isn’t warranted yet.
Fifteen years of working with Atlanta couples builds that. A weekend certification course doesn’t.
How the Methods Work Together
Prepare/Enrich serves as the roadmap — it identifies the terrain. Gottman Method tools address the behavioral work: fair-fight rules, bid-and-response patterns, repair strategies after a rupture. Where the assessment surfaces something emotional underneath a pattern, EFT provides the framework for understanding why it exists. These aren’t three parallel methodologies. They’re integrated: the assessment identifies where to look, Gottman supplies tools for what to do there, and EFT helps couples understand why a pattern formed in the first place. Together they produce something more durable than any single approach alone.
Every session conducted by an intern therapist at Fava Counseling is supervised by me directly. You get graduate-level therapeutic presence and senior-level clinical oversight — at accessible rates.
Working With Us
Fava Counseling Associates is located at 4840 Roswell Rd., Suite C202, Atlanta, GA 30342. We serve couples in-person across the Atlanta metro area — Buckhead, Sandy Springs, Chastain Park, and surrounding neighborhoods — and online to any couple anywhere in Georgia.
Phone: (404) 257-6474
Ready to Start?
Couples who get the most out of Prepare/Enrich are the ones who start when things are good and treat the process with the seriousness they’d bring to anything else worth building well. Not because something is wrong. Because they’ve decided their marriage deserves real preparation.
If that’s where you are, we’d be glad to work with you.
Contact Fava Counseling Associates →
Medical and Editorial Disclosure: The information in this article is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual results from premarital counseling vary. Consult a licensed mental health professional for personalized guidance. This content was clinically reviewed by Liz Fava, LPC, CPS, Licensed Professional Counselor and founder of Fava Counseling Associates. This article contains links to Fava Counseling’s services and is authored by a clinician at that practice. Editorial content reflects the clinical perspectives of the reviewing clinician and is not influenced by promotional considerations.
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4840 Roswell Rd., Suite C202, Atlanta, GA 30342