A new study from the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project analyses some of the ingredients that go into lasting, high-quality marriages.

By starting with a sample of over 1000 people who were in a relationship but unmarried and tracking them (418 of the individuals got married), the study’s authors were able to analyse how decisions made before marriage impacted the quality of the union. They drew three major conclusions:

1. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas, so to speak. Our past experiences, especially when it comes to love, sex, and children, are linked to our future marital quality.

2. Some couples slide through major relationship transitions, while others make intentional decisions about moving through them. The couples in the latter category fare better.

3.    Choices about weddings seem to say something important about the quality of marriages.

The study found that relationships that began with casual sex tended to be less happy and stable than those that did not, and that:

Men and women who only slept with their (future) spouse prior to marriage reported higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. Further, for women, having had fewer sexual partners before marriage was also related to higher marital quality.

Cohabiting with people other than your future spouse was also correlated with an increase the risk of divorce and marital unhappiness. People who waited until marriage to have sex and/or move in with their partner, or those who only cohabited with the person they ended up marrying reported the greatest level of satisfaction in their relationships. (For more on this, see the earlier blog post on “Sliding Not Deciding“).

The study’s authors, Galena K Rhodes and Scott Stanley, also found something surprising about the kind of weddings that the happily-married tended to have.

“In what might be called the ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ factor, this study finds that couples who have larger wedding parties are more likely to report high-quality marriages,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. “One possibility here is that couples with larger networks of friends and family may have more help, and encouragement, in navigating the challenges of married life. Note, however, this finding is not about spending lots of money on a wedding party, it’s about having a good number of friends and family in your corner.”

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This pattern held when we controlled for factors such as income and education, which are proxies for how much the wedding might have cost. It may be that having community support both while you date and through your marriage is very important for marital quality.