Introduction: Marriage and family are one of the factors in mental health and individuals’ life styles and its role in reducing personal and social disruptions is known. In order to plan properly and increase youth’s awareness of right marital criteria, it is necessary to know their viewpoints. Therefore, this study was designed to determine the criteria of married couples about to get married referred to the Marriage Counseling Center of Tuyserkan City in 2015.

Methods: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study that was conducted on 204 couples referred to the marriage counseling center, who were selected by the available sampling method, in 2015. The research instrument was a questionnaire including demographic characteristics and preference criteria of spouse selection inventory (PCSS). The data were analyzed by using the chi-square and Spearman correlation test, using SPSS version 17 at the level of error of less than 0.05.

Results: The results showed that among married criteria, 183 persons (89.5%), 179 persons (87.7%) and 177 persons (86.8%) chose love, chastity and mental health. Couples in urban areas married at higher ages. Also, there was a significant relationship between income and occupation and the gender of the couples (P<0.05).

Conclusion: It is essential to hold marriage preparation courses targeting and identifying desire educational needs of the target group in the appropriate time to create right attitude in mate selection criteria..