How do you actually know you're ready to get married?

Nobody feels perfectly ready. If you're waiting for the nervousness to fully disappear before you set a date, you'll wait through your whole engagement and probably into the marriage itself. So "ready" can't mean "certain." It has to mean something more specific.

Here's a more useful version of the question: not "do I feel ready," but "are these things true about us."

You've had the argument that scared you a little, and you're still here.

Not a disagreement about where to eat. An actual fight, the kind where a real difference surfaced, maybe about money or family or what you each expect the other to become. Couples who've never had one of these aren't calm. They're untested.

You know what your partner does when they're at their worst, and you've decided that's still someone you want to build a life with.

Everyone has a bad version of themselves. Stress brings it out. If you've only ever seen the good version, you don't know yet who you're marrying.

You can imagine being wrong about something and admitting it to this person.

Marriage runs on the ability to say "I was wrong" and have it land as safety rather than defeat. If that sentence feels impossible to say to your partner right now, that's worth noticing before the wedding, not after.

Your reasons for marrying this specific person outnumber your reasons for wanting to be married.

Wanting a wedding, wanting to stop being single, wanting to please your family, these are real motivations and none of them are about the person across from you. They should be present. They shouldn't be doing most of the work.

You've talked about the hard, unglamorous things.

Money, children, faith, in-laws, where you'll live, what happens if one of you gets sick. Not once, in a single serious conversation, but enough that you actually know each other's answers rather than assuming they match yours.

What readiness is not

It's not the absence of doubt. Almost everyone has a moment, sometimes more than one, of wondering if they're doing the right thing. That's not a sign to call off the wedding. It's a sign you understand what you're actually agreeing to.

It's also not a particular amount of time together. Some couples know quickly and are right. Some date for years and still haven't had the conversations above. Time together is not the same thing as knowing each other.

If you're not sure

Say that out loud, to each other, before the wedding rather than during it. A good premarital process exists for exactly this: not to talk you out of getting married, but to make sure you're marrying with your eyes open rather than your eyes closed and your fingers crossed.

Marriage preparation is not a test you can fail. It's a chance to find out now what you'd otherwise find out in year three.