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In this video, we talk about how important it is for you and your fiance to show a united front when planning your wedding. Our checklists will help you find a joint vision, but that will not stop family and friends from telling you all kinds of things—some helpful, and some not. So we give some great tips on how to deal with troublesome family members, and ideas on how to lighten the wedding planning load by getting family and friends involved.
The following article is an EXAMPLE of the content we have in our online wedding planning membership site HappyWeddings.ca under the heading of Let’s Get Organized. To learn more and get useful wedding planning tools for FREE, click here!
You might be thinking this is a weird topic, and you are right. This is not usually covered in typical wedding planning books, but since we are a coaching membership site, we are also concerned with the relationships between you and your family.
Let’s start with your soon-to-be spouse. The two of you need to be partners in the wedding planning process, and more importantly, you need to present a unified front to your family and friends. You may have disagreements in the vision of your wedding, but once you are through the next module, you will have agreed to a common vision for your wedding. It is important that you support each other throughout the wedding planning process. Everyone will give you lots of advice—much of it bad advice—and although well-meaning, a lot of it will just add to your stress.
When you are beginning to feel overwhelmed by all the advice and wedding chatter, just take a deep breath, smile, and end the conversation. Take time for yourself, and take time for both you and your partner.
Then, there are your family relationships. These can be VERY complicated—but there are some basic guidelines to keep things moving forward smoothly.
Keep your family members ‘in the loop’ so to speak. Share with them your plans, and where feasible ask for their help. They will be glad to be a part of your wedding planning. Some parents and friends might feel like they are losing you, so be considerate of their feelings.
What are the three most important words in your whole wedding? They are “I am sorry.” Weddings are stressful and egos get bruised, and tempers might flare, and it’s not your fault. People are people. Family are family. Be calm. Be mature. Don’t react to what other people are doing. And wherever you can, smooth things over with “I am sorry, I didn’t realize you felt that way” OR “I am sorry, I didn’t know that you weren’t aware that we planned something completely different”.
Planning a wedding is a lot of work —enjoyable, yes, but the average 250 hours it takes to plan a wedding starts to get tiring at some point. You need to delegate. Hopefully you have family and friends who have offered their help, so take them up on it. When you do the wedding vision module, which comes next, you will identify the most important things in your wedding plan. Delegate the less important to someone else.
For example, if you are really into the décor and theme, and don’t really care about invitations so much, why not delegate it to one of your family or bridal party members. Explain your vision to them, and ask them to find 3 invitations that they think fits your criteria. Then, together with your fiancé you can choose one of the three. You just saved yourself about 10 hours of research.
Treat people with consideration, communicate well, and compromise when necessary. When you look back years later, you will be glad you did.