Lots of Changes!

Greetings blog readers. I've been very neglectful as I spent the rest of November working on a website redesign. December was unproductive being a full time mom, followed by unexpected arm surgery and an annoying recovery. But finally, the new design is live! I've still got some glitches, but do you ever get so tired of a project you just release it with errors rather than keep holding it back?

New too, are fantastic wedding vendors who believe in strengthening your marriage. They get free advertising in exchange for giving WEDDING DISCOUNTS to engaged couples who may qualifying purchases on our website. Even if couples do their own marriage prep, two unique offerings still apply: Take Back Your Wedding, our book, for $12.99, and the Money Attitudes game, $25, used by the Army and thousands of financial planners, educators, non-profits to help people get underneath their values around money. Basically for $10 or more, depending on what you do, we can literally save you hundreds of dollars!

I'm glad to be back to blogging. Watch for more soon. I promise.

What is your wedding theme?

What is the theme of your wedding? And I don't mean colors or style. I mean, is your wedding planning going well? Are you and your fiance getting along well? Are your parents thrilled for your marriage? Are they stressed about how to pay for the wedding? Are they bickering at every little idea you float about the wedding?

Unfortunately, I've seen time and again in both the weddings I've been involved with and the weddings I hear talked about that I didn't attend, the REAL wedding theme may have nothing to do with the wedding. "His parents weren't able to attend because they insisted on having a destination wedding." "Her mom went wacko and the bride and her barely spoke the entire twelve month engagement." "Sure, it was a pretty wedding but you didn't hear how the parents fought nonstop, causing enormous stress on their daughter the entire time?"

It is easy, I know, to brush off all that wedding stress as "normal". It's easy to say that events are going to make people crazy, but at the end of the day what matters is you have a beautiful wedding (and marriage.)

But just remember, the wedding itself is going to be roughly six hours. Your engagement is likely to be about a year. And the REAL theme of your wedding is going to last your entire marriage. The beginning of your marriage does not begin at the alter but at the proposal. All those interactions you have today may haunt you for years to come.

Always stop and consider whether someone's grand wishes may just be more important for your current sanity and for your long term marriage than your need to have a "my day, my way" wedding.

Learn more at The First Dance. And if you need to, talk with a premarital counselor who will be able to help you navigate the complex family stuff happening in your wedding plans. Or at the VERY least take a powerful online premarital inventory that may help you figure out why you're so stressed as you build your new marriage and enter a new family (your in-laws.)

What is premarital counseling?

I just ran across a website with a fascinating view of premarital counseling and marriage preparation courses.

Waste of money, why would you pay someone to ask you both “what your dreams are?” If you don’t know by now why you are getting married. Don’t get married!

After I stop being shocked I did laugh a little. It is a frustration for many couples who are excellent communicators and in rock solid relationships to sit with a third person who asks questions that are just downright insulting. Um, you think we haven't talked about whether we want kids? "Yay, communication came out as our key strength. We could have told you that for FREE!"

But here's where the comment shows its ignorance. Marriage is NOT about your dreams. Marriage is about how you manage your money, your job, your stress, your notions of responsibility, fairness, equity. Marriage is about how you navigate your loyalties to your parents, spouse, kids, and your in-laws. Marriage is a nonstop relationship always in balance with all the other demands put on you as a person.

Marriage is about having SKILLS and abilities. It has little to do with dreams! Afterall, you can marry someone with the identical dream and still end up in a miserable marriage. Or you can marry someone whose dreams change after five years of marriage, but it doesn't matter because you still have a bond, a loyalty, and the skills to work through life changes.

So if you don't want to talk to anyone else, we have some fun at home options.

1 - The Ultimate Premarital Test - research based, over 2 million couples have taken this premarital inventory. It assesses 20 aspects of your relationship and gives you an excellent "view" of your relationship as it compares and contrasts to each of your own views of marriage and of how you grew up. It's online, you both take the test, and you get a huge personalized report.

2 - A new MONEY game. It's actually super easy and fun. It has a sort of Myers-Briggs feel to it, like are you THIS way or THAT way... you want to "win" but you realize it isn't about winning, it's about learning how your own mind and emotions work around money. It will also give you some "aha" moments as you plan your wedding with someone who may have very different beliefs about money.

3 - A 12 hour self-guided premarital counseling book designed and used by a paster for many years. He doesn't believe that HIS role as a pastor is to "tell couples" things. He believes that he can give couples an amazing, in depth experience where they share their own beliefs, values, visions and that in sharing in a deep way, their bond and understanding grow. It's worth checking out! You can make one date out of each "conversation" in the book! It has pages you rip out for each hour-long conversation. Minnesota couples can also do this in a group setting and get $70 off their Minnesota marriage license fee.

4 - If you're experiencing any wedding stress, Take Back Your Wedding is a great way to have a marriage counselor perspective of marriage and family life in book form. You will definitely learn new skills and ways to think about all the complex relationships in wedding planning (and married life.)

5 - And meeting with an experienced marriage counselor in person is always a useful thing. We have a list by state on our premarital counseling page.

A good book on love and fairness is:

Fun Money Quiz

This is a completely unscientifc quiz not about your wedding but your relationship! Whether you're living together or not, you know your fiance well. Let's see how you do. Each of you should answer these questions independently then see how well your answers match! You may not have had all the conversations about the questions below, but this is a great time to play a game and learn. Sometimes the questions are more interesting than the answers and can send you off into other conversations...hopefully not arguments!

I phrased these questions in a unique way to get you to get into your partners head rather than talk about your own views. I also designed this so if your fiance has NO time or interest in taking the test, you can still do YOUR side and see if they agree with you. :-) Just copy and paste this into an email, or book mark this site and talk out loud with each other answering the questions.

1. My fiance expects a conversation if one of us wants to spend more than _____ dollars (ex: $50, $100, $200, $500, $1,000.... etc) or put another way, my fiance would be super shocked and upset if I spent $_____ without talking with him/her first.

2. One thing my fiance would love for me to not spend money on but knows it's probably a lost cause is _____ (ex: expensive make up or lotions, computer games, high end clothing, upgrading electronics often, etc)

3. My fiance would say my parents have the following beliefs about money _______ (what they value, how they spend/save, etc)

4. My fiance was __________(ex: happy, surprised, upset, annoyed) to learn of my financial situation the first time we had a frank conversation about how much we made, our debt, our savings.

5. My fiance feels ____________ (great, ok, stressed, frustrated) about how our wedding is being paid for.