Welcome Clergy and Wedding Officiants

No one gets a closer look at how couples and families manage the emotional aspects of weddings than you do. Some clergy have told us they could write a best seller about the stress and intrigue that culminate at the wedding rehearsal. You can sense the family pressures on the bride and groom, the in-law strains, and the impossible expectations for a perfect wedding. You know that couples find it difficult to access their deeper spiritual values in the face of endless to-do lists and squabbling families and wedding parties.

When you have the couple in a premarital counseling session, it’s natural to avoid discussing wedding planning, aside from the ceremony, out of a desire to deal with what everyone is avoiding talking about—the future marriage relationship. But we have concluded that it is fruitless and unwise to ignore the gigantic elephant in the premarital counseling room—the wedding planning process. People learn more from current pressure points in their lives than from future challenges they can only imagine.

The First Dance takes engaged couples where they are living and breathing—namely, in the crucible of planning the most complex logistical and interpersonal event of their lives--and helps them learn how to make decisions based on their values and to relate to their families under stress. It also helps parents understand what is happening to their family and develop effective ways to walk the tightrope of guiding but not directing their adult children. Couples who have taken the program report less stress in the months leading up to their wedding, more ability to handle the pressures as they come, and more wisdom to carry over to their marriage. They also want more premarital education now that they have tasted its fruits.

Ways you can use The First Dance:

*NEW* Advertise your officiant offerings or your premarital class.
Group setting of 3-7 couples. You can be listed for our couples interested in a group experience. Just let us know when you're ready to be contacted by potential couples and we can get you listed on the group page.
The Couple DVD. This version of the DVD is aimed at individual couples and their parents. Some couples may want to purchase it after your group in order to watch it again or with their parents. If you do not have enough engaged couples at one time to offer the group program, you can recommend that couples purchase it on their own (the individual version costs 9.99) and discuss it with them later. Or you might purchase the Couple DVD ($5 marriage educator price) and give or lend it to couples.
Take Back Your Wedding, our new book, is an excellent tool for you to read as an educator along side the DVD or by itself. If you wanted to give your couples a copy you can get them wholesale for 40% off retail ($12.99) by going through booksurge.com.
The First Dance Couple Check-Up, powered by PREPARE/ENRICH, a couple inventory created 25 years ago and used around the world. Couples can go through the inventory at home, without a counselor, and learn a lot about themselves as a couple that will help in their marriage.
Suggest wedding stress coaching to your couples who need more personal help around the wedding planning and their families.
Premarital marriage therapy - we have a list of top notch marriage therapists who love working with engaged couples in a therapy setting.