Tip of the week - Get your groom involved

He asked, you said yes.  You're engaged and getting ready to start planning the wedding of your dreams, and, traditionally, the bride has done most of the planning, but you'd really like your fiancee to be involved.  Here are some simple ideas on how to get him involved, keep him involved, and enjoy the time you will get to spend together while planning for your celebration.




1. Have dinner or lunch together, regularly, to discuss wedding plans.  Have a lot of one-on-one discussions with your notes, pictures and thoughts all readily available.

2. He's a guy, so you will have to make the planning fun and boost his self confidence.  Take him to tastings.  How can you go wrong with food and drink?  Go on fun gift registration trips.  Sporting stores (Scheels), outdoor party ideas, items needed for fun entertaining are all decisions that he'd most likely want to be involved in.  And, always make sure to compliment him on his creativity and ideas.

3. On one of the first one-on-one discussions you have, ask him what he would like to be in charge of. Even though you would still like input on these decisions, you can let him take charge of these things.
Some fun ones for the guys are:

• drink selections
• writing his vows
• music for the reception
• cake flavors
• tuxedo or suit options 
• wedding day transportation
• planning the honeymoon
• make room blocks for out-of-town guests at local hotels

4. Delegate simple tasks to your fiancee.  He can run over to pick up the invitations.  He will have to check them over to make sure everything is correct, so this is a great thing for him to do to make sure he is involved.  He can also work with you to call all of your vendors the week before your wedding to verify all important information.  Give him half of the list and the date that this should be done by.  When this is done, have some dinner and verify everything with each other.

5. AVOID fighting over wedding planning and wedding budgets. Finances is the number one topic married couples fight over. Start your marriage on the healthy path by having loving, mature, productive discussions about your wedding finances.  To make sure you don't have finance issues before you're even married, make a budget for your wedding and stick to it.  Make the budget one of those one-on-one discussions...you'll be happy you did!

6. Please don't be a BRIDEZILLA!  Your groom will give up on trying to help, and neither of you will be happy.  A BRIDEZILLA is defined by the following behaviors:

• controlling behavior
• irritability
• yelling
• making all of the decisions
• hard to please
• being critical of the groom and everyone else that is trying to help 

Planning your wedding together should be a fun and creative way for the two of you to start your new life together.  This is a great time to learn how to work together.  Planning a wedding is stressful and time-consuming, but if you work together, make sure to communicate, don't sweat the small stuff and have fun with each other, you are off to a great start.

Tip of the week - Fun wedding vows

When you decide to write your own wedding vows you've already decided to make your wedding more personal and memorable. Most couples decide to go with the traditional vows (minus the "obey" part - thank you very much!), however, there are some that decide to put a unique twist and stray a little from the norm.

Wedding vows can be serious, romantic, sentimental, or poetic, but we are going to focus on the funny vows and how to incorporate them into your wedding ceremony without going overboard.

Funny isn't enough
One of the most important tips I can give you for writing your funny wedding vows is to make sure your vows are also meaningful. When you look back at the moment you both promised yourself to each other, you want to be able to smile with love, not just humour. Vows that come straight from the heart will have this desired effect. You want your vows to be memorable and sentimental.


Please, no inside jokes
Funny wedding vows should be able to be appreciated by the majority of your guests. The use of inside jokes can tend to make some feel uncomfortable, and why would you want to exclude people that took time out of their day to celebrate with you?


No surprises
Before you get to the altar and proclaiming your love for one another, you should discuss your vows. You don't need to share word for word what you want to say, but you should discuss the nature of them. If you'd really like to have some humour as part of your vows, talk about what sort of humour is okay. You should make sure there will be nothing (and I really really mean nothing) in the vows that will make either of you uncomfortable or embarrassed in any way, shape or form! Because, again, you want to look back at this celebration with a fun, happy, light heart.


Be appropriate
And, at last, please take into consideration the guests that will be celebrating with you. Your vows should NEVER include sexual innuendos or any sort of vulgar language.


Oh yeah, and always always always write your vows down! It will not matter how often you practice (though you definately should), there is a good chance that you will forget something. Besides, that piece of paper is a sweet little momento to add to your scrapbook.

Have fun and happy writing!!