When most people think of weddings, they think of cakes and flowers, ceremonies and dresses, food and dancing. However, unless someone has actively participated in the planning of such an event, he or she often does not realize the amount of effort that planning a wedding can require. A wedding might be the beginning for a couple, but it is also the end of something—the planning phase. Planning a wedding can bring you closer to your fiancé, test the strength of your friendships, and teach you valuable skills related to budgeting and time management.
Many women grow up with a vision in their heads about what constitutes the perfect wedding. They are so focused on this particular vision that they fail to realize something very important: this is not just a day about the bride, it is also the groom’s day. While many men do not grow up thinking about the perfect wedding, that does not mean that they do not want to be involved in the planning process. In fact, planning a wedding together can actually strengthen a relationship as the couple learns how to work together, compromise with one another, and see the strengths and weaknesses of each partner.
However, because most women do not realize the benefits of co-planning their weddings, the common complaint is that women cannot get the men to participate in wedding planning. But the secret is a simple one. Usually at the outset, he tossed out an idea or two, and those ideas were shot down. The man simply decided it was not worth the rejection, and to let the woman plan the event alone. If the woman can overcome this instinct, she will discover that not only does her fiancé have some good ideas, but the wedding planning process can actually bring them closer as a couple. How? They work together. Before we started planning our wedding, my fiancé asked if I would mind if he wore a kilt. It was something he had always envisioned doing. My response to him set the tone for our wedding planning process. I told him that it was just as much his day as it was mine, and if he wanted to wear a kilt, then he was more than welcome to wear one. His choice of apparel actually set the theme for the wedding – Celtic. Because I didn’t reject his idea, my fiancé actively participated in the planning of our wedding.
While many people might view compromise as a bad thing, it can actually be a very strong and positive thing. Compromise can be give and take, no one getting exactly what he or she wants. But compromise can also be a way where the ideas are blended. Our wedding planning has been an extremely smooth process. There are many elements where I came up with an idea, and my fiancé offered a suggestion regarding that idea. I offered a counter suggestion. By the time we were finished, we had built something neither of us would have devised on our own—through compromise and being willing to listen to one another’s ideas.
The willingness to listen to one another’s ideas also taught us to see one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing our strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as a couple is actually very beneficial. My strength is in budgeting time. That is a weakness with him. However, he is strong at detail work, and I am weak in that area. As a result, we have a lot of wonderful details that were done in plenty of time for the wedding. The last week before the wedding, for most brides, is pretty stressful, with the finalization of many different things. But for me, my to do list the week before is comprised only of items that cannot be accomplished ahead. Another weakness of mine is control, but because I know my fiancé’s ability to mind the details, I am willing to trust him with one of the most important details of the reception – set up on the wedding day.
Because we were able to work together to plan this event, we are both invested in it being a success. My fiancé wants more than when, where, and what to wear. I believe that wedding planning has brought us closer together.
Not only can planning a wedding strengthen your relationship with your fiancé, it can also test your relationship with friends and family. There are many factors which cause that test: attitude of the bride (or groom), security of the friends in the friendship or in their own relationships, and the true feeling of families towards the future spouse.
The bride’s attitude sets the tone for the wedding day itself. A lot of brides focus on the following statement: “it’s my day.” They fail to remember another truism. “No one cares as much about your wedding as you do.” It is the bride’s day, but it is not her year, month, or week. Many brides expect total dedication from their bridesmaids, which causes the bridesmaids to resent their brides. A fairly laid back and respectful bride can show her friends how valuable they are to her. For my wedding, I asked my bridesmaids to pick a little black dress that they loved. The only requirement was that it not be longer than tea length. I asked them to find black shoes that were comfortable to them. Each of them is going through a different financial situation right now. I wanted them to spend money on a dress that they would wear again...not one I thought they’d wear again. However, I also had a bridesmaid tell me the following: “It’s your day. If you ask me to wear a potato sack, I wear a potato sack with no complaints.” I don’t feel that is true. We ask our friends to be a part of the wedding because of how important they are to us. Why should we treat them as if their opinions, feelings, and comfort are unimportant? These are supposed to be some of the people who are most important to us. We should treat them as such.
But it is not only the bride’s attitude that plays a part in the test. A fairly laid back and congenial bride can have bad experiences with her wedding party because of how insecure one of the bridesmaids is in the friendship, or even worse, her own relationships. Many a bride has suffered through the antics of a cross bridesmaid because the wedding brought out issues with the bridesmaid. The bridesmaid might be happy for her friend, but is also worried about how their relationship will change. She might also be extremely jealous because she is either not in a relationship and is losing hope of finding her true love, or she has been dating someone for a long time, and he has not proposed yet.
Frequently, either situation—a “bridezilla” or a jealous bridesmaid – can end an important friendship.
It does not end with bridesmaids. Relationships with family members change. Dynamics in the future family change. There is a good reason for this: a wedding is a life-changing event. A daughter is no longer single; there is now a son-in-law to be considered. For a mother whose son is getting married, it means that she is being supplanted by another woman. Never mind that this has already happened, the wedding seals it. If the family has had issues with the prospective spouse when the couple was just dating, those issues will magnify as they believe they now have the right to ask all sorts of questions. All of the relationships surrounding the couple are about to change as they go from single to married. A wedding doesn’t test just the couple’s relationship; it tests their relationships with everyone.
A wedding also teaches couples the valuable skills of budgeting money and time management. Couples learn to set fiscal priorities regarding the wedding and how to apportion their time so that the tasks get done.
Setting fiscal priorities for the wedding is part of planning. Couples have to determine what style of wedding is more important to them, based on what is affordable. If the budget is small, but the couple wants an extremely formal affair, then the couple will likely have a very small guest list. But if the couple wants a larger guest list, then other items will have to be changed – buffet versus sit down, live music versus recorded, weeknight versus weekend. It’s a matter of deciding what is most important to you and setting a budget where that was possible. Flowers were very important to me, because I have a designer friend who does amazing work. I really wanted to use him, if at all possible. That also meant that I had to choose between flowers for just the wedding party, or flowers for the wedding party and for decoration. My fiancé is diabetic, and it was extremely important to me that he be able to enjoy the wedding cake. This meant that budget shopping for our wedding cake was not possible. We’d have a limited number of vendors who could meet our need. And we decided together to splurge on live musicians for the ceremony. This was a joint splurge that we talked about many times before deciding we would regret it more if we opted not to do it than if we did. That was the priority. What is more important to us? What will we regret not doing? We eliminated things that were not important to us, like a Unity Candle, in order to make sure that we had what was important to us. We also saved a lot of money by making many things ourselves.
Time management is also very important in planning a wedding. There are a lot of things that must be done when planning a wedding, even more so when you are doing a lot of it yourself. Doing any form of craft takes time, and a wedding offers a definitive delivery date. Some crafts actually take time to learn before you can begin producing the final product. But since you do not want your entire relationship to be wedding planning, you also have to budget time for your relationship too. The ultimate test of time management comes in the final week, when the items that were on hold until this time frame suddenly start to become due.
Planning a wedding can bring you closer to your fiancé, test the strength of your friendships, and teach you valuable skills related to budgeting and time management. However, it does more than that. Done properly, planning a wedding can actually help you plan your marriage as you learn to navigate trials and upheavals together. Unforeseen things happen during wedding planning that can bring you closer to your fiancé and test your friendships. These things also show you how well you’ve actually planned your event. But there is one important truth about wedding planning that every couple should know as they go through the process. It is a phrase that will help them when everything seems so frustrating. At the end of the day, the cake may fall, the flower girl may trip, or the best man may forget the rings. But as long as you two commit to one another, the event was a total success.
