Lesson: Don’t Forget the Groom

Somewhere between the Wedgwood polka dot cake plate and the Vera Wang water jug, I remembered him. The groom, that is. You know, the person that this whole day we’re planning is really about.

It wasn’t like I intended to forget him in fact, on reflection I had thought that we’d discussed the wedding registry appointment…

Did men even really want to go to those things? Hadn’t they got better things to do, like pretend they don’t really have to do anything at all to get a wedding underway?

Just kidding.

And I am actually glad it happened because until that moment last Saturday I had honestly started to feel like this wedding thing was actually just one long to-do list with a whole lot of diplomacy and “family management” shoved in between.

Since then, I have made two promises to myself.

The first: I will deliberately seek out wedding planning tasks to share with the groom and make sure I keep him regularly updated.

The second: I will start treating this wedding as it should be treated, an important day in the life of our relationship, that should be about what “we want”.

Because when you think about it (fingers crossed) you only get one of them, right?

The second promise is pretty much a done deal as it just requires a bit of changing in my thinking and a more positive approach to the organisation of all those pesky little wedding details.

I have a wedding journal and I’ve decided to include a paragraph a week about how I’m feeling. Who will actually read it aside from me is anyone’s guess, but I suppose the whole point is that it becomes “therapeutic”

But the first promise is a bit tricky. Just how do you make sure the groom stays involved? Particularly as my betrothed works awkward hours and is a stickler for budgets (oops, as well as possessing a huge number of wonderful qualities) and by and large I think he’s happy for me to research and plan and check in with him later. I think.

Actually, he is annoyingly much better at fine detail than me and he tends to get a lot less emotional (read: peeved) when things don’t go his way.

Hmm. Maybe I’ll just ask him how he’d like to stay involved?