Christian Questions to Ask Before Marriage
Twenty questions for engaged Christian couples working out how the marriage will actually run: what the vows commit you to, whose church you will join, praying together, money and giving, children, conflict and forgiveness, and what happens if one of you stops believing.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What do you think we are promising each other when we say the vows?
Most couples have never said this in their own words. One of you may hear a covenant that holds regardless, the other a commitment conditional on the marriage staying good, and that difference matters far more than any wording in the service.
- 2
Which church will be ours once we are married, and have we told them?
Deciding is only half of it. The half couples skip is telling the church they are leaving, which is why one partner often stays half-attached for years while the other assumes the question is closed.
- 3
What will praying together look like in our first week, not in theory?
Ask for the actual shape: who starts, when, out loud or not, what happens on the night one of you is exhausted. Plans without that detail are the ones that quietly stop by the end of the first month.
- 4
What will Sunday look like for us?
Mornings, serving commitments, lunch with whose family, and what you do when only one of you wants to go. Sundays cause more low-level friction in a new marriage than any doctrinal question, because they recur every week.
- 5
How will we decide what we give, and does it come out before or after everything else?
The order tells you whether giving is a commitment or a remainder. Couples who fix a figure and a moment in the month argue about it far less than couples who agree on the principle and settle the amount each time.
- 6
What do we do if one of us does not want to go to church for a month?
This will happen, through illness, a new baby, a job or a loss of appetite for it. Agreeing in advance whether the other goes alone, waits, or asks questions prevents a temporary slump from turning into a standoff about faithfulness.
- 7
How will we settle a decision we genuinely cannot agree on?
Push past the language of mutual submission to the mechanism. Whether it is one of you deciding, deferring to whoever cares more, or asking someone outside, you need a method that works when both of you are certain and tired.
- 8
What does forgiveness look like when one of us has actually been wronged?
In the abstract this is easy. Ask what it requires: an apology, changed behavior, a period of not being trusted. Couples who treat forgiveness as immediate and unconditional often end up with grievances that never get spoken at all.
- 9
Who are the two or three people allowed to ask us hard questions about our marriage?
Name them and tell them. Marriages that get help early almost always have someone with standing to ask, and the invitation is much easier to issue now than in the month you need it.
- 10
What will we tell our parents about our decisions, and what stays between us?
In-law strain usually begins with information rather than opinion. Deciding now which subjects, money and conflict especially, are not reported home saves a great deal later, particularly where one family expects full access.
- 11
How will we raise children in the faith, in practice?
Baptism or dedication, prayers at bedtime, which school, whose tradition at Christmas. These get decided by default in the first three years if you have not talked about them, and defaults tend to follow whichever family is more insistent.
- 12
What if we cannot have children?
Painful to raise while everything is hopeful, and much harder to raise later. Ask what each of you would want to consider, and whether either of you would treat it as something to accept rather than to treat, because that disagreement is agonizing to discover in the middle of it.
- 13
What would we do if one of us felt called to something the other did not want?
A move, ordination, a mission posting, a drop in income. The question is whether a sense of calling in one person automatically binds the other, and couples answer that very differently once it is concrete.
- 14
How much church involvement is too much, and who gets to say so?
Serving expands to fill whatever is available, and one partner is usually more reluctant to say no. Agreeing that either of you can call it and be listened to protects the marriage from the church, which sounds strange until it is needed.
- 15
What would you consider grounds for ending this marriage?
Ask it plainly once. You are finding out whether you hold the same view, and whether it has been thought about or only inherited. An answer of nothing at all deserves a follow-up about abuse, which most people have not considered when they say it.
- 16
How will we talk about sex, especially when we want different things?
Couples raised on purity teaching often have careful language for restraint and none for desire or refusal. Agreeing now on how either of you says no, and how you raise a mismatch without it becoming an accusation, matters more than anything you plan for the honeymoon.
- 17
What happens if one of us stops believing?
Faith moves over decades, in both directions. The answer tells you whether the other would be someone to remain married to or a problem to be corrected, and it is far easier to ask now than in the middle of it.
- 18
If we were still stuck on the same problem in five years, what would we do?
Every couple has a recurring argument, and it is usually already visible. Naming it and agreeing on a point at which you would get help stops the same disagreement being relitigated for a decade.
- 19
What would you need from me on the worst day you can imagine?
Answers split into people who want presence and people who want space, which is exactly the mismatch that turns grief into loneliness. Better to know now than to guess during a bereavement.
- 20
What are you most afraid of about marrying me?
Ask it last, and answer it yourself first. Almost everyone has something, and a fear said out loud is manageable, while the same fear kept private tends to come out later as a complaint about something else.
Preparing for the marriage rather than the wedding
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Premarital counseling
Premarital counseling
Start earlier than you think
Six to nine months before the date leaves room to act on what comes up. Beginning six weeks out, with deposits paid and family flights booked, means anything difficult is heard as an obstacle to the wedding rather than information about the marriage.
Ask for individual sessions too
There are things each of you will say alone that neither will say in front of the other. A counselor who offers only joint sessions is working with a partial picture.
Cover money in numbers
Bring actual figures: income, debt, what each of you owes and to whom. Couples who discuss stewardship as a principle and never exchange balances get their first real surprise after the wedding.
Things worth settling before the date
Things worth settling before the date
- Which church, and whether the person leaving has told theirs.
- The giving figure, and the day of the month it leaves the account.
- Whose family gets Christmas and whose gets Easter, for the first three years.
- Whether accounts are joint, separate, or a mixture, and what either of you can spend without asking.
- Who you would call first if the marriage were in trouble, and whether they know you would call.
- What is not discussed with parents.
Where these conversations go wrong
Where these conversations go wrong
Scripture used to win
A verse offered to end a disagreement leaves the other person arguing with the Bible rather than with you. If a passage genuinely bears on the question, look at it together at a calmer hour instead of quoting it mid-argument.
Spiritual language covering an unmade decision
Saying you will trust God with the question of where you live, or with money, is sometimes faith and sometimes a way of not deciding. Test it by asking what you would each do next month.
Praying instead of finishing the conversation
Closing in prayer can be genuine or can be an exit. If a subject gets prayed about three times without being resolved, it needs a decision, or someone outside the two of you.
Treating agreement as the goal
You will not agree on everything, and pressing for it before a wedding produces answers people do not mean. Knowing precisely where you differ is more use than a list of things you have both said yes to.
If something serious comes up
If something serious comes up
An engagement is the last point at which these questions are cheap to answer. A postponement costs money and is embarrassing to explain, and it is still far less costly than a marriage entered while one of you was privately unsure. If you find yourself hoping a difficulty will resolve itself after the wedding, say that out loud to your counselor or pastor, because it almost never does.