Your Most Important Choice When You're Planning Your Wedding
This choice is more important than the date, venue, officiant, guest list, food or music.
Choose to communicate with your partner in a loving way throughout the planning of your wedding.
Your marriage is more important than your wedding. That means your biggest focus belongs on the quality of the interactions with your partner as you plan your wedding over weeks or months. Those weeks and months matter as much as that one day.
Conflict will come up.
Wedding planning is an opportunity to practice some varsity level communication skills. If you get stuck in a particular conflict about an aspect of the wedding, it’s not a bad sign about the health of your relationship. It means you’re both invested. If each of you is stuck in different positions, it means there’s an important value that each of you is concerned with protecting. You’re so driven by this value that you’re digging in your heels.
When you’re in gridlocked conflict, it’s part of your job to find out more about your partner’s values. Those values will come up in your relationship forever, so this is good practice for the long haul.
Here’s a common example: If one of you wants a small guest list and the other wants a big guest list, you can choose to learn more about each of your values. Rather than arguing your point, find out why the guest list matters to each of you. For the person who wants the smaller list, maybe the values are intimacy, closeness with friends, peacefulness, or privacy. For the person who wants the larger list, maybe the values are generosity, community, and openness. A couple in that situation can look for ways to honor all of those values, not just during the wedding, but during the planning and after the wedding is over.
If you find it difficult to change the conversation from a back and forth into a deeper conversation about values, the key is to assume that you CAN find a solution that honors both of you and then ask curious questions. Here are some curious questions to start with:
What makes this issue important to you?
What are your values or dreams around this issue?
What is your biggest fear about not having your wishes honored around this issue?
Remember, when you choose to have thoughtful and compassionate communications throughout the stressful moments in relationships, you are building a strong future together.
