My Stressful Wedding Registry Experience

To the "Silly arguments in wedding planning" theme, I will share my rather miserable experience in what should have been a fun evening of zapping things to our hearts content.

The back story is my husbands grandfather was in school to become a chef when he was drafted in WW2. He lucked out being able to be a cook in the Navy and there he built his cooking skills as well as kitchen management skills. When the war ended he became a restaurant supply manager and restaurant manager. This means he KNEW ABOUT KITCHENS... he knew about kitchen gear, and he raised his daughter, my mother-in-law, to be very knowledgeable. She passed this knowledge on to my husband. I affectionately call them "kitchen snobs."

So while most women have pretty broad freedom to registry for anything they want because more women cook then men, or because some men just don't care even if they DO cook, I thought, naively, this would be a fun time registering for "stuff." It wasn't.

My husband and I have grown together, as all couples do, but one way that we were very different was in spontaneity. Like, hey this widget is only $5, I'm going to get it! My husband doesn't care how cheap or expensive something is. He's a very thoughtful person and automatically thinks through purchases to the point he rarely buys anything unnecessary on a whim. You can probably see where this is heading....

The myth out there is you go to a department store and have fun with the zapping gun, finding stuff you want, you need and then some fun stuff that your guests may enjoy buying for you. But if you are lucky enough to marry someone like my husband, there will be NO unnecessary zapping! He had excel spreadsheets for every room of the house, he researched, talked with his mom, we spend time thinking through our desired future lifestyle. We talked about our families and who might buy what. My family is not a Fine China family and his is - so if I had married someone differently I don't think I'd own fine china.

My husband never controlled my opinions and in fact by educating me I had more choices then I knew existed. Those fancy pans we got have two main brands. One brand is way heavier than another so he had me lift both to determine if I liked one over the other because there was a price difference. He didn't care which ones we got and wanted me to be part of the decision. (By the way, COPPER is the best pan but few people, especially my husband and me, want to maintain the metal!)

I remember asking him at one point whether it was FOOLISH to be registering for all this nice stuff since we didn't even use our crappy stuff! He said yes, that weddings are the one time you get this stuff and that we WILL use it all some day. (He was right.)

But let me tell you, trying to convince my mom we need some $50 roasting pan when her $10 worked just fine was not easy. My mom grew up on a farm and is very practical. She (nor I) know much about kitchen equipment nor do we generally put much thought into it. So there I was trying to remember why this stuff was worth the money to my mom who spent HER entire life cooking for big and small dinner parties, and never needed nor used half the stuff we were registered for.

I have a dear friend whose husband is the same way as mine so I know I'm not alone! I did get a few Registry items by fighting to zap them. One of them we didn't end up getting but the other is now the worlds greatest popcorn maker - a Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper. We absolutely love it and will never go back to our air popcorn maker. (Hint: use a LOT less salt and seasoning on the oil popcorn because it sticks much better. We had quite the salty first round of popcorn!)

But lest you think my husband was a killjoy, we never use the napkin rings I insisted on getting, rarely use the place mats I wanted, and I have now adopted his philosophy of extreme thoughtfulness before getting even the silliest of things. Anytime I veer off it's rarely a successful purchase. I can now go to a store, "feel" myself getting pulled into some fabulous deal, 75% off! 90% off! And still say "no". Perhaps it's only because I can see my husband rolls his eyes at what I could bring home, but I think it's because I never regret nor miss any of those amazing deals I've passed up over the years.

I had no idea even the wedding registry could teach you about marriage. What felt like the most consumerist aspect of a wedding turns out to be great conversation fodder for your married life.

Check out our book, or website: www.thefirstdance.com for more musings on wedding planning and relationships!

Bride and Groom, Parents - Wedding Planning Fights

Few if any of us get through wedding planning without a SILLY FIGHT. There are real discussions and negotiations to have, but then there are just plain silly fights.

I was remembering the other day one of ours. My husband and I were working through the logistical side of marriage, combining bank accounts, all that "fun stuff". He wanted to keep his bank account with a different bank company and I wanted my bank and my account. Mind you, this had nothing to do with "my money vs his money." We both believe that marriage means everything is "ours", not his or mine. That is at least a viable argument and discussion to have since some couples do feel like it's best to have his, hers, and ours. Nope, that wasn't why we were fighting.

He grocery shopped at a place that housed his bank which was one of his big arguments AND he also didn't mind paying an ATM fee to get cash. The gas station I always went to housed MY bank and I refuse to pay money to get my own money out of my bank account. Ah, the joys of marriage. :-)

So, not gaining any ground, I went down a bad path... a bad argument that I knew was bad, but I entered it anyway. I tried a trump card that is downright silly. "But, I feel like I'm already losing my identity changing my name, I deserve to at LEAST keep my bank account that I've had since I was 10!"

This was silly because I was adamant about changing my name. He was even open to changing his last name (but is the last male with the name and didn't want to end the family tree.) I wanted family unity with a shared name. So my name change had NOTHING to do with whose bank we use.

It's also silly to say getting married somehow makes me lose my identity and any internal turmoil I was having should translate into getting what I want - even if what I wanted had no rational basis.

In the end we stayed with my bank but not because I made threats or claimed using his bank would be bad for my personal identity. Those arguments really detracted from the real discussion and took us for an extra "joy ride" of fighting.

Ultimately we are both ATM cash-users, we both get gas at the same gas station company that gets us free ATM use, and we were moving into a house where we wouldn't be shopping at the grocery store that housed his bank. In the end, knowing that my bank was REALLY important to me, knowing we would save money not paying ATM fees, it was a fairly easy decision... it just wasn't as important to him and there was no reason to spend more for something less valued.

But there we go. One of many fights. I'll blog next time about our HORRENDOUS wedding registry experience. It was miserable and a great example of everything we talk about at The First Dance - managing the couple dynamics of wedding planning, of our families, our expectations, and how we view our new lives and the wedding itself.

Share your stories with us of silly wedding fights on our website.

Top ways to increase your wedding planning stress

Wondering how to make wedding planning more stressful? There is plenty (including on our wedding relationships website) on how to REDUCE the stress but there isn't a lot on how to INCREASE it! Send this snarky blog to your friends in wedding land.

Here is a short sampling of ways you can ensure more wedding stress, fights, and strained relationships throughout your wedding planning adventures.

#10 - Make all major wedding planning decisions without consulting anyone - not your spouse-to-be, not your parents, or anyone else involved, until AFTER you've signed the papers and made the deposits

#9 - When you ask your spouse-to-be to do a particular wedding related task, be sure not to clarify what the task is supposed to accomplish, don't give a timeline, don't give an explaination of why the task and timeline is important...make sure they're left in the dark to ensure maximum fight potential

#8 - Assume everyone knows what is on your mind and why you are doing what you're doing. It's best to keep people in the dark to ensure maximum wedding stress

#7 - Pick your wedding party really quickly, without any thought to their personality, to their life phase right now, or to their financial and job situation. It's also a great idea to not ask what your in-laws expect out of family being in the wedding party to maximum full family drama and stress

#6 - If a loved one disagrees with you, complain loudly that this is YOUR day and then complain loudly and frequently to everyone who will listen. It's best to give maximum mental and emotional energy to every tiny disagreement, even if it really doesn't matter to you if the other person wants something more than you

#5 - Be sure to hold back all your stress until you finally go on a date night with your spouse-to-be. Wait til the dinner is served and then rip into your family, your future-inlaws, and make the entire date turn into a huge wedding stress vent

#4 - Make sure you don't talk with your spouse-to-be before meeting with vendors to clarify what your values, wants and needs are so you get pulled into their sales pitch and agree to the most expensive package they offer. Who needs a wedding budget??

#3 - Use "I" statements with difficult people. They'll love being called a brat, impossible, insensitive, or rude, as long as you say "I feel you are a brat"

#2 - Be sure, brides, to encourage your fiance to share his wedding opinions but then be sure to shut him down or complain about how incompetent he is, or how much he's procrastinating, or how he just "doesn't understand weddings"

#1 - Make sure this wedding is ALL ABOUT YOU, even if it means creating family cut-offs, screaming at your in-laws, ruining your relationship with your spouse-to-be, or threatening your parents or in-laws that they will never get to see their future grandchildren

Wedding Readings - Share and win our wedding relationship book!

OK I've assembled unique wedding readings and others have shared theirs. Share some wedding readings you have stumbled up and really like and I'll give a few random people our book, Take Back Your Wedding, free! No strings attached, no entering a mad spam-world with email.

check out my wedding readings page and let me know what you think. :)

Wedding Readings

Bachelorette season finale

I can't often watch TV, read a magazine article or website article about wedding planning without groaning.

Take the Bachelorette season finale... spoiler alert:

Did you notice she said both "I have a huge family that I want at my wedding" and pretty quickly when asked about a wedding said a date AND location (in the Bahamas.)

We have a few wedding principles here that she broke. Honestly you could see her dad in a state of shock! His parents laughed nervously and said, "we'll be there!"

Principle: Make decisions tentatively until you know the reaction from that idea. This doesn't mean you always listen to others opinions, but it's certaintly easier for you AND your parents if you say, "we are thinking of getting married in the Bahamas, maybe in May... do you think that will work for everyone?" Rather than "announce it." This leaves parents no room to disagree or bring up "yeah, but" comments without putting you on the defensive or making you upset.

Principle: It's your day, but it's not only your day! Seriously, you'd think the world revolved around her and yet she *talks* about how important family is. Has she given any thought, in her engagement bliss, about the reality of the entire family having to fly to the Bahamas? The expense? The date? What if people are graduating, or have finals (May 9th) or just can't afford such an expensive trip? Again, this doesn't mean everyone else gets to dictate your wedding, but it's certaintly a big deal to have a destination wedding, especially with a large family. It's a much smarter idea to figure out of this will be more painful than pleasurable to everyone involved. You can go there for your honeymoon or anniversary. Do you REALLY need to invite everyone on an expensive flight, expensive hotel, to somewhere special only to the two of you?

And I know the Bachelorette is weird and secretive, but it was a bad idea for her to announce any wedding plans when their families had *just* learned they were engaged. Talk about no time to get to know the other family. It can make parents and siblings really nervous when such a monumental shift in the family is happening, live, on national TV with rapid fire speed and a wedding date and location already set.

________________________
- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty. The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning. Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

So much untapped talent in wedding land

I'm starting the arduous task of building advertising on our website so we can continue to build our wedding relationship website. I am an internet bride and I know what I like and don't like. I am thrilled to be finding very unique businesses that get hidden away in "special category" pages in some random city or state page. The reality is advertising is prohibitively expensive for many in the wedding industry. This is really bad news for you, trying to have as many wedding planning choices at your disposal. One tiny ad on theknot.com can be $120-$150 per month. And that gives you one little listing in one little category in one city of one state. As a knottie I know many of us do not visit those vendor listings! But they bill themselves as 3 million visitors a month (nevermind only 2.1 million weddings happen a YEAR).

But the reality is there are more options than you realize. It's a question of where to find these unique people or websites or products? Like us - we were boosted by winning a Modern Bride Magazine Trendsetter award, and getting some great publicity, but ultimately where do we break from being "yet another wedding directory website."

Well, I'm proud to say we're the only purely wedding relationship website out there. I'm proud that our advice is the only one that comes from a deep understanding of couples and families and the ugly reality of "family life." All the communication skills in the world won't help with crazy Uncle Bob. You can't tell him he's crazy and therefor not invited to the wedding. He doesn't think he's crazy, he'll go to his sibling (your mom or dad), and grandparents, and create world war 3 in your family. So what do you do? There are options - we help you sort through that sort of thing on our website and in our wedding relationship book. Visit our website often - there is so, so much more to share.

Most advice out there is the same old, same old. It just doesn't come from a grounded reality, from a sense that your wedding is the beginning of your *marriage*, and in MARRIAGE, life is yucky, your relationship isn't just a private affair, and sometimes it's better to let things go than create more drama in the name of "this is my day, my way!"

There is a lot of passion out there of people wanting to offer their talents, products, or services to engaged couples. And the wedding industry is set up in such a way that it's nearly impossible for start-ups to get in the door. (Especially of web-based, national small businesses.) That leaves us with the same old, same old vendors in the same websites, same magazines and same print directories. Those vendors are probably awesome - but at some point there is only 52 weekends a year and only so many weddings you can book. The "free listings" for wedding vendors is a bit of a rouse - those want to get the traffic going so they can sell expensive ads around the free ads. This of course leads to a cluttery mess and information overload.

Nobody is trying to screw over anyone. It's just the nature of it. When aunts and uncles and moms and dads stopped having the backyard wedding, with homemade wedding cake, near potluck quality food, flowers from the garden and simple wedding invitations - things got more fun, more expensive and more intense! Too bad there are a lot of losers in the equation.

Georgia Brides - Free wedding coordinator help!

Register to win a FREE GIFT CERTIFICATE to wedding event planner extraordinaire.

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Wedding Readings | Wedding Reading Ideas

If you are not getting wedding readings through your officiant or place of worship then you are in the unlucky situation of trying to find wedding readings. This can be very tricky, especially if you have a low threshhold for sparmy poetry or your views of romance do not involve waxing poetic in a 19th century voice. You may also have a unique wedding and feel stuck with very UNunique wedding reading options.

My brother pointed out when he got married that most wedding readings fall into two categories:

Wedding Readings about How Single Life Sucks
or
Wedding Readings about How You Can Not Understand Marriage Until You've Been Married 40 Years

When he said this, I had to laugh! Indeed, the readings are about the horrible storms of life and how it's so miserable to be alone...a solitary soul in this vast, miserable world. Or the readings talk about the stupid, naive, innocent, fresh young love of a newlywed and only those older, wiser married couples can truly understand what love is.

So here's your homework... help me find wedding readings that you like!

If this is too smarmy for you:

HOW DO I LOVE THEE~ By Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

and this is too overused:

1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-8a


Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Then email us and let us know what you like. We'll share it with others on our wedding readings page.


- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty. The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning. Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

Bad wedding advice...

Just wanted to say I knew advice was bad, having been a knottie through my wedding planning. But I recently ran into someone who, a few years ago, when theknot.com gave personalized answers to wedding problems, was hired, as a 22 year old, never married, no experience at all dealing with weddings, to answer the questions. Yes, she would basically repeat over and over to brides, "it's your day, do what you want."

AH!

You deserve better treatment. And that answer rarely actually helps people and more often hurts them because it reinforces a very wrong notion - a notion that you are able to invite about 175 of your closet friends and family, have the day exclusively about you, but then hope they enjoy themselves and are happy for you.... which means THEY have to be happy which means YOU have to think about THEM. :-) I was listening to a wedding podcast cracking up at the wedding coordinators going on and on with their pet peeves being in the industry. They are at the whim of "your day, your way" even if they know your idea is awful, disgusting (chocolate fountains where sick guests double dip), or is not very hospitable to guests (not feeding or hydrating them properly.)

So as our name goes, getting to The First Dance takes a lot of juggling of values, people, relationships, wallets, and details!

The myth of cohabitation: living together before marriage

I just heard on a radio show something you hear often, from everyone... from parents of adult kids, from friends, coworkers, movies, TV. It's so common you'd never know it's dead wrong! It is an argument that "just makes sense." It's so grounded in reality you would actually question NOT doing it... I heard it a lot when I was engaged and made a certain choice about not moving in with my fiance.

One crucial note about this blog: I'm mostly talking to the NON-ENGAGED couples.. those who haven't yet committed and had the serious conversations about finalizing their decision on spending the rest of their lvies together by becoming engaged.

Living together before marriage. Specifically while dating someone, moving in together with one main purpose of "testing" your relationship. The logic goes that it is important to make sure you are compatible before you commit the rest of your life with this person. After all, what if they snore, or are messy and you're a neat freak? And really, how can you really know someone unless you are living with them?

Now, if you're wondering where I'm going with this blog, I want to give a shout out to the liberal, non-religious people by saying I do not take a religious stance or a more "conservative" view of this topic. But I come to the same conclusions, just for very different reasons. It's too bad the only voice against living together is strickly the religious voice. Most young people don't go to church and it's actually the non-churched who are as likely, or more likely, to think it's a good idea and have social support.

I could bore you with the research. The following up of couples who lived together and what their future marriages holds is a grim reality. Those couples fare much worse than their counterparts who do not live together. But not just divorce is grim, even those who stayed married their happiness about their marriages is lower than their counterparts!!

WHAT GIVES, then? How on earth can you commit the rest of your life with someone who you have never lived with, hip to hip, day in, day out, sweaty armpits and all?

Obviously we are all special and unique. Or so the logic goes, right? YOU of course are marrying the love of your life. YOU are never getting divorced. YOU don't fit "statistics". YOU are an outlier in a scattogram of research data pointing towards clear trends of divorce and unhappiness.

And let's not even go into the harassment, the eye rolls, the "you are just SO STUPID and NAIVE" looks you get from friends, coworkers and others when you announce you are not shacking up. It takes strength, courage, and a lot of patience to deal with all that community baggage.

Here is my take on marriage and why this "living together before marriage is smart" stuff is totally bogus.

One, marriage is about having similar values and views of your future. You can fall in love with someone completely opposite from you in almost EVERY WAY, but if you have similar values and goals for your future, you should fare well. After all, the real stresses of life aren't about being a neat freak, cleaning up the beard shavings, or who does the laundry. The real stresses are about how you earn money, how you spend money, whether and when you want children, how you raise them, how much you save for retirement, how you relate to your families, how well you balance your sex life and parenthood roles with some level of independence and self-growth.

Two, marriage is about being committed. Through it all, you are committed to the marriage. Commitment is not something you 'test'. It is a choice you hold and then a choice you let go of because there is no alternative except perhaps in horrendous situations - your spouse murders someone, is violent, abusive, etc. But if you are in a committed relationship you will survive because while the rest of your world (physical or emotional world) falls apart, the one rock in your life is your commitment. It is the one constant, the one unwavering, unchanging element in a crazy, unpredictable world. Commitment doesn't care if you experience tremendous growth in your life while your partner is the same old person, change careers (for more or less money), gain or lose a lot of weight, develop a dibilitating illness, disability, or emotional problem.

Values, trust, admiration, respect, commitment. These are not things you build just living with someone. If that were the case we'd want to marry our roommates in college or when we enter the real world. You can hold those things dear for a best friend you have never lived, right? The difference is you aren't marrying your best friend. You are marrying someone you want to commit your entire life to. You work around the quirks of daily life because you are holding onto something much stronger and deeper than the petty annoyances that invariably happen when two people live under the same roof.

On a bit lighter note, if you have the confidence in your dating relationship, there is no need to "hurry it along" by living together. You are more likely to have those intense conversations while dating than while being hip-to-hip, falling asleep to the television. Why? Because you stop dating! And dating is where we get out of our daily routine and truly spend time, alone, having those conversations we don't have at breakfast about our values and deep seated notions of our future.

So hats off to those who chose to have fun dating and when the time is right, the wedding date is set, and commitments are made, still consider waiting til the wedding. Have fun spreading out, alone in your bed. Have fun doing anything you want in your own space. Enjoy the alone time. For when you get married, those times will quickly pass.

_____________________________________

For full disclosure my husband and I were engaged for 15 months. 5 months before the wedding my husbands apartment lease was up and we needed to get a house before the weather got cold. We couldn't afford my apartment rent and a house so we planned for me to move in with my parents (after 9 years living away) until the wedding. We both got a ton of crap for what others perceived as a foolish, naive, dumb choice. We bought a house and everything changed. Those who own property know how much that shifts your world. I had no idea and there was no way I could co-own a home and stay at my parents. So for 5 months we lived together, after being engaged for 10 months, dating for a year prior to that. And I still hold firm - living apart as long as you can before the wedding is something you'll never regret and if you're purposeful about it, will build your strength and character to withstand more social pressures coming your way post-wedding.

Fighting, communication and assessment of your couplehood

I got an interesting comment from my last post. In case there is any doubt, my husband and I are "good" fighters - never raise our voice, very sincere, listen well to the other side, and generally are "good communicators" as demonstrated by The First Dance Couple Checkup, an online, inexpensive, research-based premarital inventory on our website. The point is that with all those skills you will STILL disagree, still have "fights" as a couple, and the question is how you handle the problem. In todays society it is easy to feel if you can keep at it, eventually you'll convince the other person they're wrong. Or worse, you start to reassess whether you married the right person because they aren't Mr. or Mrs. Perfect, afterall. It's called a consumer marriage and it's a disasterous mindset to have if you take it to an extreme.

If there is one thing I've learned over the years, "right and wrong" aren't words that should be used in a marriage (excluding obvious cases of physical or emotional violence.) The reality is would you rather be "right" or happy? For most couples who have been together a long time, being happy is better than being "right". Of course this all depends on the area you are disagreeing about. Generally those problems I talked about that are perpetual - you always procrastinate, you married a pack rat, your job makes you put in long hours but you love your career and don't want to leave... all those stressors will always be there and sometimes it's better to avoid the unending fights, or to at least TRY to see the other persons side. Your spouse doesn't want to be a pack rat but finds it extremely challenging to throw things away, or you were born late and have never been on time for anything in the 30 years you've been alive... you don't like it about yourself, but having a spouse yelling at you for it won't make it better!

It is often said money, sex, and children are the three biggest areas of struggle for couples. I have seen so many couples who are so mismatched in their values about money that I urge anyone reading this who is like that, to get a financial planner - someone who is "Free" and can help set the groundwork for your financial future. Or if that isn't likely, I was extremely impressed with the small part of a money game I played called Money Habitudes at a marriage conference. This is an easy card game but it is really surprisingly cool in helping you see how you view money without taking some boring quiz or having to think "too hard." I want to get this sold through my website or somehow help couples more on this vital topic.

The reality is there is no "one" right way to handle money. My husband and I both worked high paying corporate jobs, went out to eat almost every night, traveled and had a great time! We could not have predicted we would make major career changes (stay at home life then small business life and he's going into low paying counseling.) The reality is we're savers and have no debt even with 2 years of him making no money. We bought a small house that we love to give us more flexibility, we own smaller cars, we don't buy a lot of new clothes, etc. We could have never gone out to eat, never traveled and had a LOT more money saved up... but for us we couldn't imagine ruining our fun times, the memories we have, just so we had a bigger bank account. It is the delicate line between having fun and saving, between living for today and living for tomorrow. And every person and therefor every couple is going to have their own UNIQUE balance.... my hope is that you have balance as a couple in however that translates for you.

And an obvious first place to start is WEDDING PLANNING! Do you hold the view that this is the one day worth splurging on? Or the wedding is "only a day" and isn't worth going into debt for? Or the wedding is a massive family reunion and worth the time and money to bring everyone in your life together, even if it's expensive, because there will never be an opportunity to do it again? Or is a wedding a sacred family event and you don't feel a need to invite a lot of extra guests so you CAN have an elegant wedding and still not spend a lot?

What if your parents are paying? Does this have an impact on how you plan, how you spend, and where you place your values? My wedding was paid by my parents and was lower than the average for our state. My husband and I couldn't imagine doing more even though my parents "could have afforded more." We struck a balance between having nice wedding invitations, really nice music, a really good photographer and medicore food, the wedding cake tasted OK but looked pathetic (oh well...) and the table decorations weren't what we wanted but we gave free reign to others and again, oh well. We got OUR wish which was a certain "feel" to the reception... the artwork in the church basement, the lighting, the live jazz band, the great host job of my dad to bring all our guests into the reception with some unique moments (like getting the wisdom from married couples that they have learned but did not know on their wedding day.)

Fighting sucks...

My husband and I just had a big fight the other day. We're not yellers and we're respectful of each other when we fight, but it still sucks. I find fighting often leads to the shocking realization that the other person has very complex emotions and views of things, just like you do. It is easy to take people at face value and not realize there is a LOT that goes unsaid - especially men who may want to be conflict avoiders or feel like it's better to be quiet then get attacked by their fiancee's or wives.

My husband and I don't fit a lot of the gender stereotypes and yet we find we get in some stereotypical fights! It's frustrating to realize that "roles" we play have an impact on our perspective about things, our experiences and how views.

If you weren't aware, John Gottman did some research and has really categorized two types of fighting that all couples go through. One kind CAN be ended... either with the right skills, or the scenario around the fight never happens again, or through therapy. The other kind of fighting is perpetual. There is NO answer, no end result, no way to "end" the fight. These are often where personalities clash - you're always early, your fiance(e) is always late... or you're a neat freak and you're marrying a total pack rat. Since we can't easily change our personalities there is going to be lifelong friction. But the fascinating thing is those fights do not have to mean you are not meant to be together. It's actually a question of HOW you go about fighting that bodes well or poorly for your marital happiness and longevity.

This last fight was about parenting (we have two small children.) Nothing got resolved, but we are able to sit on what was said, recognizing there are some inherent limitations we each hold and there is probably no real solution. So we'll do the marriage dance - give and take a little more now that some dirty laundry was aired, we'll try to be more patient with the other, try to change our own behaviors slightly, and ride the wave of what is possible.

Speaking of my husband, I'm going to try to get him involved in The First Dance more. He's very skitish about being involved in a "family business" but he has so much to say and has taught me SO MUCH about the male perspective! We shall see... :-)

What is premarital counseling?

There are so many questions around premarital counseling we get on our wedding relationship website. I think it's great!

Questions like:

• What do you do in premarital counseling?
• How much does premarital counseling cost?
• What is involved in a premarital counseling session?
• Who does premarital counseling - religious or non religous people?

While I am just like you - a normal person who got married and wondered the same things, here is what I've been learning.

Premarital counseling is done by 44% of all engaged couples. Catholics require it so that is about 37% of all engaged couples. The rest are couples who are strongly encouraged by their church, officiant, or friends to get premarital counseling, or couples like my husband and me who felt it was something we should do. A good portion are also into their second marriages and see the value of not ignoring their relationship strengths and weaknesses.

I think of premarital counseling like getting a car or a house - you'd do some preparation and research before jumping in to an important decision. Premarital counseling can give you the preparation and research on WHAT IT TAKES TO HAVE A GOOD MARRIAGE! It is honestly not very personal, often, because it's done in group formats, or it's more about educating you on what we know about relationships.

Many of us cringe at the idea of taking a marriage compatibility test. What if we "fail?" We already feel we know what we need to work on and just don't want to address it again if we don't have to! But I can tell you, having a third party premarital inventory, or marriage counselor, draw out some areas of growth opportunity can be a good thing. It can basically put on the table things you already know and instead of those things sitting in your head, they are released. Those things can then be talked about separate from your own ego or self esteem. They can be talked about as, "hey, everyone has stuff! This is your stuff and this is how others with the same stuff have worked through it."

Premarital counseling can then be a wide variety of options because it's under the umbrella of marriage education. Lay leaders, groups, individual mentoring, therapy. Our website offers many options and frankly our book, Take Back Your Wedding: Managing the People Stress of Wedding Planning is absolutely the most powerful premarital, and marital work I've experienced in my own four years of marriage. It talks about the wedding in a way that gets you thinking about your relationship.

So because it varies the costs vary wildly. The more individual the more expensive. Sometimes marriage counselors have a set agenda on what they cover with engaged couples and sometimes they don't. Some couples find it's not so much premarital counseling as actual couples counseling they need. Some couples have real issues that go beyond basic skill building and require therapy. This is a wonderful time, while engaged, to start working on building your relationship as you plan for your wedding. Couples can find they get much closer, emotionally, to their partners through therapy and why not do the work before the big wedding ceremony!

I will continue to talk about premarital counseling and all that is involved. But for now I need a nap!

Happy wedding planning,

Elizabeth

Wedding planning choices deplete....

An experimental psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Vohs is lead author of a new study in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which she argues that making decisions -- something most of us are forced to do countless times each day -- lessens our ability to control our impulses.
In Vohs' view, choosing one option over another is a uniquely depleting experience, one that makes us more likely to indulge in bad habits.

I think we can all vouch for this in some form or other. Whether you've purged your closet down to only the clothes you really like and then find each morning a little easier when you open the closet. Or if you know exactly what you want, go to the store, find it, and leave. It's a great feeling.

I know that I don't get out as much with two small children but when I do I am CONSTANTLY having to maintain self control over even the smallest things. It's like this entire universe of stuff I don't need just calls my name when it's in front of my eyes. This is one area being married has helped me. I now do not do impulse buys and if I do buy something unplanned I strongly justify it in my head before buying it, take it home and almost already prepare to return it if my "justification" doesn't pass the "husband test." It has greatly reduced the junk I bring in the house!

Weddings have a million choices. Even just picking a wedding vendor isn't simple. You have to CHOSE where to even begin your search - magazines, asking people, websites. Then you have to narrow down who you will call, then you have to set up interviews (chosing times on that and whether you'll bring your mom or fiance), then listen to the vendor and chose whether you will sign the deal or keep looking. Even if you do sign a contract there are a million choices within the vendors options.

I was lucky that we found most wedding vendors through word of mouth. This meant I never interviewed more than one vendor and signed right away, taking out a huge burden initially. And because we had a certain mentality about our wedding - it's about the mood and our friends, NOT about spending a lot of money, it made it easier. Our wedding food was "Just fine", nothing special, our flowers were just fine (my bridal bouquet was very lovely), our reception spot was just fine - the church basement. We had a wonderful wedding because it was about the people we love. And while we didn't spend as much as the national average, we also didn't feel cheated! That is one of the reasons I hate wedding budget talk - the implication is that you either have to spend hundreds of hours "doing-it-yourself" to save money (but what about your TIME?!), or you have to cut important corners by having a morning wedding with punch when everyone has an evening wedding. For some people that's just great but for many of us I think we want our cake and eat it too! :) We have to stand up for what we believe in and what we value and let all the comparisons and wedding magazine photos go by the wayside. They show a reality most of us don't participate in and even worse, the don't show the reality of what is really going on - strained parent relationships, fighting, stress and bitterness that may develop when you plan a high stakes wedding.

I don't have the magic answer to having a wedding on a budget, but I do know that if more of us built a community of support, it would be much easier to make all those wedding decisions and not feel cheated or stressed. Unfortunately those wedding communities by their very nature can't be on the major national wedding websites whose primary revenue comes from the high end advertisers who want us to spend a ton of money on our wedding. If all the brides were frugal the advertisers would not support the website and in turn the website would go away...

So just how do we TAKE BACK OUR WEDDING?!

A White House wedding or simple wedding?

What would YOU do if you could have a glamorous, high profile White House Wedding? It shows the power of Jenna Bush and what a wedding means to her to chose to not be married there. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24253691/

When she and her fiancé, Henry Hager, started to make plans for their May 10 wedding, the option of the glamorous White House wedding was available to them. And, perhaps to the surprise of many, they rejected it in favor of a private ceremony with a guest list of just 200.
“I guess it maybe says we’re crazy,” Jenna said with a laugh as she explained the decision. “I wanted to be at home, and I wanted it to feel natural and I wanted it to be a private thing. It’s the one day of my life — it happens once — that I want to have a private time with Henry and my family. Plus, I’m not that glamorous. I’m more an outdoor type.”

It makes me think about the wedding magazines I have laying around the house. My husband will take one while he's in the bathroom and admits even he gets sucked into those glamorous ads for wedding locations. You fantasize about what your wedding would be like and then you have to stop yourself. What if you are absolutely NOT a glamorous person and it all makes you nervous? What if your family is very down-to-earth and would feel really uncomfortable in a swank place? Or what if you have an upper crust family and want to get married in a less glamorous place?

Ultimately many of us get a surprise when the "perfect wedding" myth hits home. Our families don't like champagne, or they don't own a tux or can't afford one for a black tie event, or they're afraid to drive in a big city, or they won't travel if it's not in their city. Heck, the fact that everyone doesn't stand and salut to every demand or wish we have is surprising enough! Isn't this OUR DAY? The day to be a princess?

It is funny, this notion of being a princess for a day. If you know about Princess Diana's wedding which arguably changed the wedding culture in the early 80's, she had almost no control or choice! Tradition and legacy dictated every aspect to her big day. So what happened that we now think we deserve to be "all about us"? That's for another post! :)