Chicago Wedding and Bridal Blog

What kind of cake should you get for the wedding? Why not get both favorites chocolate and vanilla swirl?

I have heard that most grooms just rent a tux, buy the rings and show up on the wedding day to get married. Everything else in the wedding planning has been traditionally been left to the bride. I think initially that made sense years ago when there wasn’t much to plan and weddings were simpler. Now weddings are a much more complicated affair and there is far more work coordinating a hotel or country club wedding than the old fashioned kind that would simply happen in someones yard or a VFW hall.

I understand that grooms are not unlike regular men who dislike or at least don’t care about table linen colors or flower choices. You will put your groom to sleep discussing the intricate details about how you can’t use Peonies in a bouquet because they wilt without water in about an hour. Same deal for all the wedding dress styles. You can’t blame them really, I am not sure I would care either if I wasn’t a bride.

I do think that more men are getting involved in the planning of their weddings now. My fiance is too. So far he has only zoned out on the flower discussion which I totally expected. He has been very involved in going to see reception halls and getting a guest list together. In fact he is the one hosting this site too. I think other grooms enjoy planning (and tasting) the food and cake for the event and some really like the idea of planning the honeymoon so they can pick all kinds of cool things to do. I have also heard that Grooms are more particular about the music so they want to pick the DJ and make sure that is taken care of. All these things are a lot of fun if you make sure to ask your bride if she is ok with the decisions like she asks you when she orders flowers. She may not care a lot, but it is important for her to be informed before money is spent.

Planning a wedding isn’t unlike planning or doing things together in life really. Is planning a wedding together a good test of your relationship? It takes good clear communication to plan a wedding especially if you divide and conquer tasks and are not working on the same projects together. Informing the other one about what you have researched and decided is imperative for them to stay in the loop and not feel like it isn’t a fair say in how things turn out. In real marriage making decisions together is imperative too so one or the other doesn’t feel like they don’t have a say in things or feel like they have no control over their situation. I do feel like couples get certain expert subject areas for the bride and groom and they probably have final say there but the discussion is open for all to take part.

Planning a wedding together also takes a lot of patience because few things will work out as you thought they would. Life is also full of surprises. Planning your wedding also takes a budget and money conversations are important in staying financially secure and managing your relationship. Remember how many divorces happen because of money issues? (I don’t know that statistic, but it’s a large percentage) It makes sense now to write out a budget (or do it in Excel like we did) and estimate what things will cost and how much you can afford. Discussing options along the way and their costs is important too. And don’t forget to log everything you spend on a list or spreadsheet. This is a great starter lesson for learning how to manage money in a relationship.

Also planning a wedding is a lot like compromising in real life. My brother recently said that compromise is a lose lose situation because nobody gets what they want. (He is so wrong… and a dork) Compromise is really about both people getting certain aspects of what they want, usually the most important parts. You really realize what is most important to you when you have to make choices especially when the bride and groom work together on that. 

So, whatever you do to plan your wedding, try and plan things together and manage the costs together too. It is really a great training ground for your marriage and hopefully things will get done a lot faster with the groom helping too. Although you may have to work around football game times to do the planning unless you have a DVR.