Premarital Counseling in San Diego
Get to the alter, together.
Prepare for a lifetime of love and understanding with our premarital counseling services, designed to strengthen your bond and equip you with the communication and conflict resolution skills needed for a happy and enduring marriage.
Work to establish a solid foundation of understanding with a licensed therapist.
Now that you’ve said “yes,” it’s time to really start planning your new life together!
Engagement is a cause for celebration. Once the word spreads, people congratulate you on your next step: marriage. But marriage is also complicated and needs the support of a healthy, strong foundation. Two people must work together on solidifying that foundation before they can walk down the aisle. To solidify that foundation, they need premarital counseling to build the essential skills to nurture their relationship for a lifetime. At Estes Therapy, we work with people daily who want to resolve arguments, work on their issues, and build strong communication. By equipping couples with skill-building techniques, we can all work together to mold your marriage into one that will survive all the challenges it may face.
At Estes Therapy, our counselors offer a premarital counseling package in Oceanside and Mission Valley in San Diego County, California. We also provide the option to continue counseling at your therapist’s typical rate if you so choose. The premarital package is designed to help you prepare as a couple for a solid marriage, understand your strengths, and improve your areas of growth. These sessions will be customized and catered to your relationship.
Let your wedding bliss continue forward as a strong and enduring bond with premarital counseling.
San Diego's best Premarital Package - Counseling and Tools for Soon-to-be-Wed
Estes Therapy's premarital package includes coaching tools and counseling to create a healthy foundation between you and your partner before you tie the knot.
1. Online Relationship Assessment & Report
The first part of premarital couples therapy is a quiz. This easy online assessment is completed before starting the initial premarital counseling. It is customized to each person to provide benefits of insights you and your partner may not be aware of.
It determines the relationship strengths of a couple and growth areas. These areas of improvement are potential issues for your future marriage. By turning them into therapy goals for you and your partner, you can address these issues. This process will help assess you and your partner’s personality styles and create a map of your relationship dynamic.
Your couples therapist will review the results with you during your three sessions. You will receive a copy of the report to help you visually identify the strengths and understand each other deeper pre-marriage. In these therapy sessions, you will learn to work with each other’s differences. This assessment will also help stimulate essential conversations and help guide you through the couple’s workbook (the assessment is an additional $35.00 but worth your time and money.), providing you with the best premarital counseling services in San Diego, California.
2. The Couple’s Workbook
3. Three Therapy Sessions
Through these therapy sessions you and your partner will explore relationship strengths and identify potential issues that need addressing. With the help of your therapist in premarital counseling, you will:
- Strengthen communication skills to help address and prevent future conflict
- Identify and manage major marriage stressors (in-laws, finances, parenting).
- Define the boundaries of the relationship as well as your own individual boundaries to help your marriage grow.
- Gain the tools to resolve conflicts and understand each other in a deep and meaningful way.
- Practice expressing vulnerability in a safe space and learn skills to create and strengthen your secure bond with one another.
- Acknowledge the shared values of husband/wife roles in a marriage: a partnership built on love, mutual respect, and shared responsibilities.
- Provide support for partners with mental health conditions, such as OCD, depression, and more.
What to expect from our Premarital Package
Your therapist will cater your premarital package to you and your relationship. That means this is not a strict guideline, but a general idea of what to expect!
How Much Does Premarital Counseling Cost in San Diego?
Our Premarital Package is a one-time fee of $425. That’s all! One upfront, pay-in-full price for working with select therapists to lock in your relationship before the big day!
Give us a call, text, or email to find out which therapists are currently doing the premarital package. If you wish to pay as you go, or work with a specific Marriage and Family Therapist, it will be at the typical rate per 50 minute session. You can check out our therapists, their availability, and their rate on our Estes Therapy Team page.
Read on to learn more about how we further support you through premarital counseling for your upcoming nuptials!
Therapy Session 1: Identifying and Targeting your Customized Relationship Goals
The first session is about the therapist getting to know you two as individuals and in the relationship. In this step of premarital counseling, your therapist will explore your comfort levels with each other and how you work as a team. Together, you will teach the counselor about your relationship and how your relationship developed. Your therapist will explore with you the strengths of your relationship and your concerns for the future (if any). Together, you will create goals for your relationship based on the assessment. Your therapist will then review the assessment results with you (this will continue throughout the 3 sessions).
For example, you and your partner may not agree on some things when it comes to religious beliefs (Catholicism, Protestant, Christian, etc.). Your therapist helps you and your partner communicate and learn how and when to establish boundaries if needed.
- Discuss Goals for the Therapy
- Goals for your Relationship
- Results of Test
- Growth and Problem Areas
Therapy Session 2: Teaming up for Your Marriage and Your Future
Communication is key to a solid marriage between partners. It is a two-way street of talking and hearing each other out. This session will address communication styles, patterns of communication, and ways to create a strong alliance with one another. You will work on staying on the same team as you address and resolve differences, and learn how to communicate effectively as a couple – even when you don’t agree.
- Communication Styles/Patterns
- Learn how to address and resolve differences
- Conflict Resolution: Such as struggling with the in-law, managing finances, parenting, etc.
Therapy Session 3: Tying the Knot
We want to make sure you feel very confident in your relationship when you say “I Do.” This relationship is about where you both have come from, where you are now, and what your future holds. With your therapist and the preparation premarital counseling provides, you will work to have the tools to make this a strong relationship.
- Family of Origin Issue – How to handle the family
- Wedding Planning Stress and Managing it as a team
- Sex & Affection
- Spirituality & Beliefs
- Expectations of Marriage: Roles of one another
Note that this is typically what the layout of your 3 premarital counseling sessions will look like. However, your therapist will want to make sure your experience is catered specifically to you and your needs, so your 3 sessions may look a little different. Some couples want only 3 sessions to prepare for their future. Other couples extend the sessions and focus more specifically on a few items. In other cases, couples continue the work treatment to strengthen some of the skills they learn. You get to make your premarital counseling package unique and tailored to your relationship. If you are looking for premarital counseling in San Diego, call or text us today!
Looking for more? Check out our Communication Toolkit e-book to gain all the tips, tricks and information you may need to have a long lasting marriage.
The Wedding Survival Guide
Planning a wedding can be exciting, but it comes with many complications.
The stress of planning, the financial strains, and the family dynamics can get tangled and drive a wedge in between many couples. Our goal is to help you build a solid foundation and help you two feel very confident when you are saying “I do” at the wedding altar.
We’ve given you the rundown of our premarital package, but finding the right therapist for you will make such a difference. Check out our tips on finding the right premarital counselor for you and your partner.
You wouldn’t try to drive a car without filling the gas tank, and you shouldn’t attempt to nurture a relationship without honest, open communication. Check out our blog for both individual and relational help – such as how to stop beating yourself up or how to communicate during an argument.
The Communication Toolkit is a fantastic resource at any point in your relationship – before you make it to the altar, or after you have already tied the knot. This e-book content and information was specifically designed and curated by three Marriage and Family Therapists here at Estes Therapy, with content that they have seen continually show up in their own couples therapy sessions. Written by three therapists of our own, you know it is going to be good!
All the Ways Therapy Helps Yourself and Others
Here you can browse the different ways we help couples and individuals in San Diego county, California. We provide in-person/face-to-face counseling sessions and virtual/telehealth sessions.
Individual Counseling
Couples/Marriage Counseling
Premarital Counseling
LGBTQIA+ Counselng
Military Counseling
Infidelity and Affair Counseling
Child and Teen Counseling
Affordable Counseling
Online Therapy (Telehealth)
Schedule a free 10-minute matching call with our Care Coordinator today and start healing.
Meet our San Diego Area Relationship Therapists
Think of us as your consultants in recovery. We are the neutral third party that can help you untangle the emotions and figure out what’s really going on.
We want everyone, including children, to walk in our door and get the necessary tools. Our psychotherapy sessions are relaxed, collaborative, and effective for both individuals and couples. We want to hear your story. Each of our licensed marriage and family therapists is dedicated to ensuring you’re in a comfortable space to feel safe and supported when you tell your story. With the help of an Estes therapist in San Diego, you and your partner can heal with empathy and move forward with lasting results. We’re not here to put a band-aid on any different issues. We’re here to get to the root of the issue to facilitate lasting change and success in your goals with couples therapy.
Meet our Founder, Jennine Estes Powell
It’s been nearly 20 years since I first became interested in studying psychotherapy. I began practicing scientific approaches to psychotherapy in 1997, and I have been hooked since then.
I earned my Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family psychotherapy in 2004, and am currently licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist MFT (LMFT #47653) with the Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS).
I focus my practice on empirically based and proven research methods such as emotional-focused therapy (EFT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
I’ve seen these techniques consistently get results, and I truly believe they are the most effective at creating positive, long-term change.
Have a question about fees or insurance?
It is common to have questions before starting therapy. Visit our Frequently Asked Questions page to get all of your questions answered.
