Keeping the Romance Alive while Wedding Planning

We have a romance expert to share some of her thoughts on romance, particularly during wedding planning season. It's such a tough balance, between jobs, errands, life, trying to still date, and then spending many hours getting details in order for the big day.

One thing that often surprises couples is how the wedding starts to take a toil on their relationship. Before being engaged, a date was just about the two of you. After being engaged, the date may come with sticky conversations about difficult parents, or jealous siblings, or a mismatch in expectations for the wedding. The relationship is in the adolescent phase. You're not married yet, but you're not just single. It's a tricky situation to be in, no matter how long you've been together.

I can say, a few years into marriage with two kids, those dates you have will stick in your memory, even if you have less time to do them. There were many times my husband and I would walk around the local lakes, only for my low blood pressure to cause me problems and we'd have to find a bench. Annoying at the time, but pretty funny how we could never quite manage to walk all the way around a lake without a pause. It became part of the expectation of those dates, which were sometimes quite stressful as we tried to talk through the Stuff of Married Life. But they were important conversations and we moved forward in our relationship because of them. (For more conversations, we have an amazing self-guided premarital counseling book designed for date/conversations. Check it out.)

Those little moments of life are always grander than the big plans. Hopefully your wedding is amazing, but it is just one day of many, many romantic days you should plan for! If you haven't yet set your honeymoon plans, check out our interactive guide to get the two of you on the same page for what exactly you want from the honeymoon (and we don't just mean THAT....)

Enjoy our great questions and answers on romance during wedding planning from a romance expert! May her wisdom instill the passion in you to keep your love alive.

Wedding Invitations, the Stress, Fun, and Keepsake

Wedding invitations. You go into your wedding plans either knowing what you want, not having a clue, or thinking you know what you want and end up somewhere totally different.

I went into my wedding not wanting to waste money on invitations. It wasn't a high priority, and we were just fine printing them off ourselves, thank you very much. But, as always seems to happen, while flipping through a wedding magazine I happened upon a full page ad for wedding invites. I don't think I gasped, but I almost did. I stared. And stared. And became entranced. These were nothing like I'd seen before! I loved the color! I loved the font! I loved the extremely simple yet very, very classy design. I went to the website of the designer, found two retail stores in my entire state, and decided to make a trip to visit them "in person."

I was so innocent as the sales lady gave me the price. I can't remember the exact number, but I believe it would have been about $4,000 for 150 invitations. This was almost half of my ENTIRE BUDGET! I asked if it anything could make them cheaper. Nope. The entire invite was a designer who trademarked the whole thing. It was that or nothing.

But the seed had been planted. I could no longer go from that invitation to plain white invites printed off the computer. I asked the sales lady for other unique invitations and she gave me a few books. Nope, nope, nope, nope, flipping page after page after page. But then I stumbled upon a FABULOUS invitation! Yes, this was it. Unique, funky, but not too weird. Just the right balance of zip and class.

My husband came with me another time and he agreed they were fabulous, especially after looking at the same books and seeing what was out there. We proceeded to "stalk" our invitations, stopping by several times on date nights, just to see how pretty they were.

They were more expensive than we had originally planned, but we came to see how vital they were to setting the tone and mood of the wedding. In fact we got a TON of compliments and we even had guests of his mom call HER to say how great the invitations were.

I've asked some great, unique wedding invitation questions of a wedding invitation designer. Check it out and I hope you get inspired!

Wedding Tuxedos

Women often race to the wedding dress shops as soon as they get engaged. Men on the other hand? The tuxedo shopping may be exciting or it may be one of the most dreary tasks since it not only involves him but his bestman, groomsmen, and trying on clothes.

We asked a tuxedo rental company for some advice and got some great answers! They mentioned the tuxedo shop being the meeting place before the rehearsal dinner and that is exactly right! It was wild to go to my local mall and run into our wedding party (the men, anyway), as they were walking to and out of, the tux rental shop. They were all out of towners, so it was an extra stress that they had been fitted properly, planes were on time, and they could get to the shop before it closed.

I remember not having many opinions at all and being glad I wasn't a man. I knew I wanted my groom in a tux and fortunately he wanted one as well. All those details of a suit were lost on me, but I was lucky that he cared. In fact it was a bit of a role reversal - not really wanting to be there for long, bored, wishing I could be anywhere else.

Hope the Q&A on wedding tuxedo rentals on our website is as interesting to you as it was to me. Enjoy!

How weddings are like jeans

I am down to one last pair of jeans. I've either worn them out, my husband got paint all over one pair, and somehow, here I am. The jean shopping experience is again in my future. Fortunately I have a few months of summer left.

Jeans are a great analogy to weddings because of all the diversity, viewpoints, and pressures, both social and financial, to chose one type or another.

On the one hand, jean shopping, like weddings, should be very rational. Find your budget, figure out your requirements, match your budget and requirements, and out come the right jeans, or the "wedding you should have."

But we know it's never that simple. Sometimes the options you first see are either priced wrong, or don't "excite you". You know there must be more! Then often you find something gasp inducing in its glory. Maybe it's The Jean With All Your Requirements. Or it's the exact wedding invites you've been looking for, down to the type font, exact shade of paper color and size.

At this point either the price tag makes you gasp again and rethink your original requirements, or you mention your discovery to a friend who has an instant opinion. "Ooh, you have GOT to check out this!" Or I found the best deal here (regardless of whether that place has what you're actually looking for.)

You are often educated on all the options you didn't know exist and the benefits thereof (sure the jeans are crazy expensive but not only will they look amazing on you but they'll last so much longer!) Or instead of one flavor of cake, go with three separate tiers with a flavor each (thereby tripling the discussions, confusion and potential cost, though adding the ever-desired ability to make everyone happy.) You hadn't thought about three flavors before! You didn't really think about the long lasting wear of a high quality jean.

The next stage is usually over saturation of options, prices, requirement questioning, and sometimes, as is often the case for me, the desire to wax poetic about "the old fashioned days" where you could go to the store and just buy A PAIR OF JEANS. You didn't have 120 choices of cut, style, waist fit, zipper or button, shade, pocket placement.

When you're at this stage there is nowhere to turn. Your best bud is not over saturated and is quick to give you her opinion. The sales person just wants to make a sale and has all the ways to talk you out of competing opinions. Your fiance or spouse has never cared that much, or at this point only cares that you SHUT UP already and make a decision. That of courses ticks you off and now you've just notched up your stress.

Some of us will then grab the first thing we have time to get, whether it fits our requirements or price. Others of us will just stop altogether and return to the task some time in the future when we're not so uncertain. And others of us will do what we always do - focus on price (whether that is the frugal price or the highest price because we believe price always reflects quality.) And still others of us will let the sales person convince us and with exhaustion, hand over the credit card because we just don't care anymore.