First comes love. Then comes ... the prenup? 5 women share how they handled the touchy topic.

Perri Silver jokingly refers to herself as a “child bride”: engaged at 27, married at 29. But the possibility of first signing a prenuptial agreement, or prenup, hashing out finances in the event of a divorce is something she wishes she had taken more seriously.

“I wanted to believe, and maybe was a little delusional about, the fact that we were never getting divorced,” Silver tells Yahoo Life. “We were ... getting married because we were in love. A prenup indicates that divorce is an option. I guess it felt like, Why are we getting married if we’re talking about divorce?”

It was also hard for Silver to believe she’d ever be in a financial position where a prenup would work in her favor.

“I had no real assets,” she says. “I wasn’t making enough money that I could save for assets. And so for me, the financial piece of it felt moot, because I couldn’t even imagine a world in which I would have assets I would need to protect.”

Though a prenup was discussed, Silver and her future wife ultimately ruled it out. It wasn’t until years later, when the couple began divorce proceedings, that Silver started to second-guess their decision.

“At a certain point, everyone is going to have something that they need to protect, and having a prenup would have made everything so much easier,” she says now. “The mediation went on much longer than I think it needed to — like six or seven months, which isn’t cheap. The irony is, if we had the prenup, we probably would have saved a lot of money on the mediation and each walked away with more.”

At the same time, there’s a lot of discomfort around so much as mentioning the “P-word.” For the besotted betrothed like Silver’s younger self, envisioning a worst-case scenario during what is supposed to be one of the most exciting and romantic times of your life can feel ... unsexy.

And there are some who would argue that they’re not worth rocking that boat. That includes Laurie Israel, an attorney and mediator who deals mainly with pre- and postnuptial agreements and has written two books (and a third on the way) on her philosophy about creating more equitable, thoughtful and effective prenups. She is actually against the idea of getting a prenup — for a first marriage, anyway.

“Marriage is a joint venture; it’s entrepreneurial,” Israel tells Yahoo Life. “If you have everything set up as separate from the jump, it takes away the spirit of being partners on this adventure. First marriages require financial partnerships as much as possible, not just personal and emotional ones. It’s the idea of building a marital estate off of your efforts together — that you’re in it together.”

Israel concedes that prenups are beneficial for second marriages, or even first marriages in which there are children, more properties and businesses involved. But more often than not, she says, the law — as in the state laws that apply to legal marriages by default — is sufficient. “It’s the most flexible, and in some ways the most reasonable for both parties too.”

At the same time, there are many practical reasons for having a prenup, despite the stigma attached to them.

Pop culture depictions haven’t helped. In movies, they’re often presented as high stakes, a form of protection for the wealthier of the two people entering the marriage. The visual typically includes one person being smacked with a massive document in the days leading up to their wedding. Often, some massive drama is associated with getting the other person to sign. Sign the prenup or kiss your happy ending goodbye, it seems to evoke.

“That’s so antithetical to how it actually works,” Laur P., who signed a prenup with her partner of more than 13 years when they got engaged in 2022, tells Yahoo Life.

“Everyone has to have their own representation. My lawyer drafted the agreement, which was pretty standard. It literally just says, in fancy legalspeak, that what you brought into the marriage is what you will take out, and anything you choose to purchase together is where you would start to split things up.”

Laur and her now husband viewed their prenup as a pragmatic, nonemotional process. She says it’s had little to no impact on her marriage, or her life, since the paperwork was signed.

“I see it as equivalent to driving,” she says. “Most people wouldn’t get into a car without car insurance and health insurance. That’s not because they anticipate a car crash, and they’re not walking around thinking, ‘I’m going to get into an accident and have to go to the hospital today.’ I very much believe that my marriage will succeed. And while I don’t see that changing, should anything happen to us that changed us irrevocably, I would want us both to be protected.”

Feeling regret over not getting a prenup is not limited to those who have gone through a divorce, either. As one married woman who spoke to Yahoo Life on the condition of anonymity says, she’s come to question her initial decision not to have a prenup due to changes in her personal finances as well as her family situation.

“A month before our wedding, my father died,” she shares. “A year into our marriage, my mother died. When my inheritance entered the picture, we talked about how we should have a prenup. I inherited a significant amount from my family, including property and things like heirloom jewelry. Additionally, my brother and his wife had my niece after our wedding and after the death of our parents; I had not considered her upon marriage. We talk about it sometimes, and my husband has assured me my niece will receive everything I've meant for her, but I do regret not getting one.”

While she says she and her husband have an “excellent relationship,” having the option of a prenup would have helped with some general stress and worry.

“It’s not an insult to your spouse; it’s insurance,” she says. “I don’t think our marriage would have been negatively impacted. Considering life is full of unavoidable stress, this peace of mind would have been welcomed.”

And it’s worth noting that not every bride-to-be sees talking prenups as a downer. Sol Lee was so inspired by the process of building a prenup and planning for her financial future with her future husband that she actually started her own business to help other people do the same.

“If anything, the prenup made our relationship more romantic,” she tells Yahoo Life. “Talking about what we wanted out of our biggest financial decisions in a marriage — like buying a home or starting a family — led to some really exciting and fun conversations about our future.”

Lee adds that both she and her fiancé come from divorced families. Seeing how stressful divorce can be “physically, mentally and financially” played a big role in their initial decision to get one.

“The more we looked into it, the more we realized a prenup was a pretty cool way to kickstart important conversations around our money values,” Lee says. “It was one of the first times we really sat down to openly discuss and articulate what money we were bringing into the marriage, what we wanted to do with that money and how we wanted to share that money in the event of divorce and death.”

Relationships and marriage come with their fair share of ups and downs; the most successful partnerships are the ones in which both people feel they can speak honestly and be heard by their partner. Lee says that having the prenup conversation, even if it’s difficult, can only help to make relationships stronger.

“Reframe what a prenup means to you,” she advises. “If you can talk openly about the best- and the worst-case scenarios as a couple, you’re building a great foundation to prepare for those inevitably challenging moments in a marriage and work through them together.”

Silver agrees, reflecting on what she’d tell someone who might be on the fence about getting a prenup now that she’s lived through a divorce.

“My advice would be this: Nobody goes into a marriage thinking they’re going to get divorced, but everyone who has ever gotten divorced knows what an awful, painful process it is,” she says. “You need to protect yourself, because if you feel like you’re ready to legally bind yourself to this person, then you should also be ready legally to protect yourself and unbind if need be.”