How to Plan with Your Man
Sandra Mardenfeld
No one tells you this, but planning your nuptials is the first big test of marriage. The goal of wedded bliss, after all, is to be equal cohorts who work well together–and this includes organizing the big day. “It’s important that the bride avoids taking on the attitude that it’s “her” wedding and that she needs to “delegate” tasks to her fiancé,” says Susanne Alexander, a relationship and marriage coach and author of Pure Gold: Encouraging Character Qualities in Marriage. “Wedding planning is best done as a team.”
The best way to start off planning together is to really talk about both of your expectations and desires. “Ask the groom how involved he wishes to be, and make sure he knows he’s safe in giving you the real answers,” says Sharon Naylor, author of The Groom’s Guide. “By this, I mean asking ‘How much do you feel like taking on?’ rather than ‘You’re going to help me with everything, riiiiiiight?’” It’s important to know your fiancé’s true feelings on how involved he wishes to be and which areas interest him the most. But the conversation shouldn’t end there. Once you open yourself up to your beloved’s point of view, you should really listen to his ideas—even if he doesn’t know a rose from a carnation. Allow your mate to offer suggestions (whether you take them all or not) early on. Remember, many events, such as the engagement and co-ed bachelor/bachelorette parties, lead up to the big day—if the groom helps organize these events he probably will be more interested in the details of the actual wedding.
His involvement shouldn’t take the form of a “laundry list” of duties you construct for him, either. You should ask if there’s an area he wants to handle. If he’s unsure what a wedding entails, fill him in on the details, and give him a choice among the possibilities. If you want your groom to be involved in a certain area, you have to let him know. “A wedding is made up of thousands of decisions. If a groom has to stop and think about this for too long, he might panic or shutdown,” says Craig Michaels, author of Thirty to Wife: The Tell-All Groom’s Guide to Weddings. “The bride should carve out a niche for him to worry about just a few details, not the whole wedding.”
What are some of the best things to delegate to your spouse-to-be? Try to appeal to his strengths like his spreadsheet abilities (a terrific asset for balancing your budget), love of food (he can select the menu items and the wine list), and Internet obsession (let him build the wedding website). This becomes a win-win situation. If, for example, he likes creating web pages, he’s going to ask more questions about the wedding in order to make the site more in-depth. So capitalize on what he loves. If he’s a travel bug, let him search the web for the best honeymoon deals. If he loves his iPod, he can pick out the entertainment. Sometimes it helps to put things on paper, too. If you list the tasks to be done and the choices to be made, you both can decide on who will do what. This is not about merely giving your fiancé a job to do. He’s a partner here, so adopt this attitude when defining who is responsible for each task.
Adopting this approach, of course, means that you trust him to do his jobs. You can check in, but don’t make him feel like you’re the boss. After all, you are doing this together. Maybe you can plan to check-in with him during a standing Thursday night date where you promise to talk about the wedding for just an hour and then do something fun. Have a pact that at these sessions, you or your fiancé can switch jobs if something becomes difficult or uninteresting to the other. You can also use computer software that helps keep you organized and reminds you of important tasks and dates. Also check out the planning tools on www.longislandbrideandgroom.com. If you’re technophobes, a calendar on the refrigerator with a checklist of deadlines can work well, too.
So, what do you do if you’ve tried all this and your groom still isn’t responding? Then, according to Alexander, the couple should explore why. Ask yourself the following questions: Does a different type of ceremony and celebration work better? Are you being negative about the planning yourself – telling him how stressed out you are? Or are there doubts about getting married? “Having both of you fully involved in the wedding planning is one way to ensure that you are making a great decision and that both the wedding and the marriage will be perfect,” says Alexander.
If you know your priorities from the get-go, it’s much easier to plan together. In the beginning, you both should write down your top five priorities for the wedding, and compare them. If you don’t see eye to eye on something, and it’s one of his top priorities, let him have his way. Most of these issues are small anyway – if he loves those little pigs-in-the-blanket and you think they’re tacky, what’s the harm in having them passed around during the cocktail hour? These details will not make or break your wedding. “Use your priority lists as a tool to help you compromise, and make sure there’s lots of communication,” says Naylor. As a general rule, if one of you feels strongly against something, it’s out. If it’s a top priority item, you’ll need to compromise. Use this planning time to practice the skills you’ll need for the rest of your lives. Learn now that you’ll never agree on everything all the time–just strive for most of the time.