By the time you sit down with someone, a great deal has already happened. Horoscopes compared. Enquiries made. Families agreed in principle. Both sides are weighing education, salary, community, complexion, whether he is settled, whether she will keep working. The one question that rarely gets asked out loud is what you want.

Before I Say Yes asks it.

It respects the way families bring people together, and many good marriages begin this way. Its purpose is to help you take part fully, as yourself, with your own questions and your own voice.

It starts before any profile arrives, with what you actually want a marriage to feel like, and what is yours on that list rather than your family’s. It explains why families expect an answer after one meeting, and gives you the words to ask for two or three conversations in a way that sounds like seriousness rather than doubt. It gives you three sets of questions, one for each meeting, that go deeper as you go, and the things worth noticing beyond the answers. It covers what the other person deserves to know about you before deciding, and how to talk about seer, gold and wedding costs while it is still a conversation.

Then it helps you answer. Yes, no, and the middle answer that families can hear as good news, with words for saying no to your parents and for sending a no through the elders so that nobody loses face. There are pages for the person who is refused, and a quiet page for anyone who does not want this at all.

56 pages, with reading pages, scripts, and room to write. It comes with a separate four page insert written for your parents, which you can hand to them. Written by the counsellors at Hibiscus Counselling in Adyar, Chennai.

What’s inside, if you want bullets

• What I actually want

• The list they are making

• Whose pace

• What I share

• The meetings

• Money

• My answer

• Plus a four page insert for parents