Featured in The New Times

When Mentors Become More Important Than Wedding Planners

This page introduces Sannan Khan's New Times opinion on why couples preparing for marriage need guidance about the life after the ceremony, not only expertise about the event.

By Sannan KhanThe New Times RwandaJuly 14, 2026
The ceremony needs planning. The marriage needs preparation, guidance, and support.

The complete article remains on the publisher's website. This original feature summary connects its central question to related frameworks and services on SannanKhan.com.

Why do couples need marriage mentors?
Credible mentors can help couples discuss expectations, responsibility, conflict, money, family pressure, and repair with more realism than wedding planning usually provides.

Event preparation and life preparation are different

Wedding planning answers questions about a day. Marriage preparation asks how two people will communicate, share responsibility, handle pressure, and seek help when their first assumptions stop working.

A useful mentor does not control the decision or present one marriage as a universal model. The role is to ask grounded questions, share relevant experience carefully, and help couples see issues they may be romanticizing or avoiding.

Choose guidance with care

Good guidance respects privacy, avoids dependency, understands its limits, and refers couples to licensed or specialist support when a matter is clinical, legal, financial, safeguarding-related, or outside the mentor's competence.

Marriage education

Build preparation around the marriage, not only the event.

Discuss a community workshop, panel, or readiness session for young couples, families, and mentors.