The wedding has a plan. Does the marriage?
Consejería prematrimonialPremarital counseling
Most premarital work starts with one person deciding the real conversations shouldn't wait until after the vows. If that's you, you're not overthinking it.
A structured look at the marriage,
not the wedding.
Premarital counseling here is built on the SYMBIS assessment (Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts) and shaped by emotionally focused therapy. The assessment decides what we talk about. The therapy is what makes the talking go somewhere.
Most couples can already name the topics: money, family, children, faith, intimacy… What they can’t do yet is get through one of those conversations without it turning into the same standoff. That’s the part I work on.
You’re not really arguing about the guest list. You’re both asking whether it’s safe to need someone.
You love each other. But are you ready for the marriage?
Se aman. Pero, ¿están preparados para el matrimonio?
The venue is booked.
The dress is waiting.
The rings fit.
Everything is getting ready for the wedding. But what about the marriage?
Maybe one of you is ready, while the other still has questions.
Maybe family, friends, or faith-community voices are getting so loud that it’s hard to hear your own.
Or maybe you love each other deeply, but conversations about money, family, children, faith, intimacy, or the future keep getting complicated.
You talk about it. You think it’s settled. Then somehow, the same question comes back.
What are you building your marriage on — rock or sand?
Because after the music fades, the pictures are taken, and the last guest goes home, real life moves in.
His family. Your family. Money. Careers. Faith. Children. Expectations. The way you argue. The way you make up. The things you assumed love would simply figure out.
A beautiful wedding can quiet difficult questions for a day. It cannot answer them for a marriage.
Premarital counseling gives you a place to talk about what matters before “someday” becomes your everyday life.
With the SYMBIS Assessment, we look at the things that will actually live inside your marriage: how you communicate, handle conflict, approach money, navigate family, understand commitment, and find your way back to each other when things get hard.
You cannot keep every storm from coming. But you can decide what you’re building on before the rain starts falling.
Talk About What Feels Unresolved
Fifteen minutes, and it costs nothing.
Faith-integrated premarital counseling available upon request.
The SYMBIS assessment gives us somewhere honest to start.
SYMBIS, short for Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, is a premarital assessment built by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott. It isn’t something you can buy and take on your own. It is administered by a SYMBIS Certified Facilitator, and I am one. You each complete it separately, online, in about half an hour. Neither of you sees the other’s answers.
What comes back is a report written for the two of you specifically. Not a score. Not a pass or a fail. A map of where you already move together, where you are quietly assuming different things, and which conversations are worth having before the vows rather than after them.
What it puts on the table.
- How each of you pictures marriage, and where those pictures quietly differ
- Money: spending, saving, debt, and who gets to decide
- How you communicate, and the specific way the two of you fight
- Family of origin, and whose voices are loudest in the room right now
- Faith and values, and how much of them you actually share
- Sex and intimacy, including the expectations neither of you has said out loud
- Children: whether, when, and what you each assume about raising them
How the sessions run.
You take the assessment first, separately. I read the report before we meet, so the first session isn’t spent on intake. It’s spent on what the report actually found.
From there we work through it one area at a time. Where you already agree, we name it and move on; agreement is worth knowing about too. Where you don’t, we slow down, and I help you have the conversation instead of managing it. That is the emotionally focused part: we go after what the disagreement is protecting, not the disagreement itself.
By the end you know which two or three conversations will need to keep happening after the wedding, and you have had each of them once already, in a room where they went well.
If one of you is more hesitant than the other.
That’s ordinary. In most couples I see, one partner arrives ready and the other arrives unsure. It isn’t a sign the marriage is in trouble, and it isn’t a sign the work won’t help.
A hesitant partner is usually protecting something: a fear of being blamed, a suspicion that counseling means being told what’s wrong with him, a worry that talking makes things worse. None of that requires enthusiasm to start. It requires one session where nobody is put on trial.
The assessment helps here more than anything I could say. It asks you both the same questions, privately, and hands back something neither of you wrote. Nobody has to be the one who brought it up.
I don’t take sides, and I don’t run a courtroom. If it turns out premarital counseling isn’t the right fit, I’ll say so early rather than let you spend months finding out.
This is the part worth forwarding to him.
What the work looks like.
- Begins with the SYMBIS assessment, taken separately and online, in about half an hour
- SYMBIS Certified Facilitator, trained to administer and interpret the assessment
- Two-hour sessions at $325
- Emotionally focused couples therapy (EFCT), trained through ICEEFT
- In person in Tampa, or by telehealth anywhere in Florida
- Available in English and Spanish
Session by session, or as a package.
Session by session at the usual rate, or as a package. The packages exist for one reason: they carry the Florida certificate.
All three are built on SYMBIS, from Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott — Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Two million couples have taken it.
SYMBIS Snapshot
The entry point.
$375 · one 2-hour session
The assessment, not the course.
Included
- SYMBIS for both of you, taken separately online
- A 2-hour debrief, in person or by telehealth
- Your report, printed and bound
- His & Hers workbooks
- A first look at your cycle — what the fight protects
No certificate: Florida wants four hours, this is two. Continue within 30 days and $200 credits over — mention it when you book.
For clarity and a shared language.
Foundation
Most chosen.
$1,295 · four 2-hour sessions · 8 hours total
2x what Florida requires, 1/2 the calendar time.
Included
- SYMBIS for both of you
- Eight hours, in 2-hour blocks
- Essentials and Ours workbooks
- Your report, printed and bound
- Florida certificate — the license discount, and no three-day wait
- A written summary, yours to keep
- Your marriage license checklist
- The Steady — 50 minutes before the wedding, free
- A bonding gift · English or Spanish
For depth without a six-week commitment.
Comprehensive
The most room.
$1,795 · six 2-hour sessions · 12 hours total
The blocks, spaced; the gaps let it settle.
Everything in Foundation, plus
- Four more hours of couples work
- All four workbooks
- A summary after every session
- The full binder, bound together
- The Steady — 50 minutes before the wedding, free
- First Anniversary Session — 50 minutes after, free, within eight months
- A bonding gift · English or Spanish
For blended families, remarriage, or crossing cultures and faiths.
Meeting with each of you separately is available in any package — 30 minutes each, free. Some things are easier to say alone first.
The practical part.
$86 → $61. And no three-day wait.
Your certificate lowers the Hillsborough County marriage license fee and lets you marry the same day it is issued. The county accepts certificates only from providers registered with the Clerk of the Circuit Court. We are on that list.
Disclosure
Barbara M. Sosa Baladrón, M.S., is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Florida (MH21862) and a qualified premarital preparation course instructor under §741.0305(3)(a), Florida Statutes. Bethesda Revive Counseling Services, LLC is a registered premarital course provider with the Clerk of the Circuit Court, Hillsborough County.
SYMBIS® is a trademark of its creators, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott. Barbara is a certified SYMBIS Facilitator.
County fees are set by Hillsborough County and subject to change.
Start with a conversation. Just you, if that's easier.
The consultation is fifteen minutes and costs nothing. It doesn't require both of you; plenty of premarital work begins with one person asking whether it's worth doing.
Start Your Journey
It's a conversation, not a commitment.