Engaged? The conversations to have before the wedding

The dress, the venue, the seating chart, the playlist. You'll talk about all of it. Here are a few conversations that don't usually make the wedding planning checklist but probably should.

Wedding planning has its own rhythm. You move through suppliers, dates, guest lists and tasting menus. The to-do list is endless. But under all of that, there's a different kind of planning that often doesn't happen: the conversations about how the marriage itself will work.

This isn't romantic in the bouquet sense, but it's deeply romantic in the practical sense. The couples who talk through these things tend to have less to argue about later.

Beyond the venue and the dress

The conversations worth having before the wedding aren't dramatic. They're calm, ordinary chats about how you'd both like things to be. The fact that you're having them at all is a good sign.

Some couples find them straightforward. Others find them surprisingly useful: things come up that neither of you had quite said out loud before. Either way, it's time well spent.

Money: what you each bring in and how you'll share it

Most couples enter marriage having already talked about money in some form. But the conversation tends to be about now, not about the wider picture.

Worth talking through:

• What do you each have coming into the marriage? Savings, debts, property, investments, pensions
• How will day-to-day money work? Joint, separate or some mix
• How will big decisions be made? Buying a car, a holiday, an investment
• What does 'financial security' look like to each of you?
• What if one of us earns significantly more or less in the future?

You don't have to land all the answers now. You do want to know how the other person thinks.

Family and futures

This one often comes up later than it should. Family is a part of marriage even when you live miles away from yours.

Things worth talking about:

• How involved do we each want our families to be in our day-to-day life?
• How do we want to handle holidays, anniversaries and big family moments?
• If one of our parents needed care, how would we want to handle that?
• What's our shared view on inheritance? What we'd hope to leave to each other, to children, to charity
• Do either of us have children from previous relationships? How does that fit in?

These are the conversations that bring you closer to seeing the same future.

Children and parenting

Even if you both want children (or you both don't), it's still worth a real chat.

• How many do we want, and on what timeline?
• How will we share parenting if both careers matter to both of us?
• Whose support might we lean on?
• What happens with parental leave, work and money?
• If one of us already has children, how do we set that family up well?

If you're not on exactly the same page yet, you're not alone. Most couples work this out as they go. But the conversation itself matters.

Careers and big life decisions

Big career decisions ripple through both your lives, even when only one of you is making the call. Most couples want to talk these through together, but the conversation often gets skipped.

• What if one of us got a job offer somewhere else?
• What about a career change, or going freelance?
• Is going back to study on the table for either of us?
• How would we handle a redundancy or a big shift in income?
• What's our shared ambition for where we want to be in ten years?

The case for a prenup

A prenuptial agreement (prenup) is a written agreement signed before the wedding that sets out what would happen with finances if the marriage ever ended. It's clarity, in writing, while you're both calm and in love.

Every couple getting married can benefit from a prenup. It gives both of you clarity about how your finances will work, sets out what each of you wants in writing, and creates shared understanding before you start out as a married couple.

It can be particularly useful when:

• One of you has significantly more assets, or significantly more potential earnings
• One of you has a business, or a stake in a family business
• One of you has children from a previous relationship and wants to make sure those children are looked after
• There's expected inheritance, particularly family money or property
• It's a second marriage for either of you

Prenups carry real weight in England and Wales, when they've been put together properly. Since a Supreme Court case in 2010, courts have looked at three things in particular when deciding how much weight to give a prenup: autonomy (both people entered freely), understanding (both knew what they were agreeing to) and fairness (the terms are fair to both, particularly where children are involved). The court keeps the final say, but a properly made prenup will heavily influence what 'fair' looks like.

Going through the conversation itself is one of the most useful things you can do as a couple before the wedding. Couples who do tend to feel more grounded.

Bringing it all together

The wedding day is one day. The marriage is the rest of your lives. Spending a little time on the conversations that matter, before the day, makes everything that follows that bit kinder, that bit clearer and that bit more yours.