BEST WEDDING PLANNING BOOKS – #1 more to come!

Sometimes books that help you plan your wedding aren’t about weddings at all- but about relationships. Keeping in emotional touch with your partner during this stressful time is incredibly important.

“Men are from Mars Women are from Venus” sounded like the kind of self help drivel I normally wouldn’t touch, but a trusted friend told me there was some wisdom in there worth checking out. Boy was she right! Learning how men and women have different needs when it comes to lasting love strengthens my husband and my relationship to this day. I highly recommend checking this book out before you get married, to make sure you’re both ready for interplanetary travel.

More book recs to come – sign up for blog updates in the upper right hand corner to get them delivered to you!

Be well and love well.

-Dinah

How to survive planning your wedding

Planning a wedding is exciting, but overwhelming. It’s easy to let the big event overtake your whole life- but there are ways to stay calm and take it one step at a time.  Let’s learn some successful strategies for making wedding planning manageable.

  • Have perspective:  Any large undertaking can seem insurmountable.  It’s important to put things in perspective.  Planning a wedding is akin to eating a life size chocolate elephant.  You need to do it in pieces, and a little at a time or you’ll feel very uneasy in your stomach.

    Liz & Kathleen_Ceremony 173
    A well planned wedding: Liz & Kathleen
    photo by Max & Friends
  • Know where your strengths are:  There are going to be parts of the process that appeal to you more than others.   Are you a foodie? Focus on the menu.  Fashionista? Designing the event will be oodles of fun.  For the places you’re dreading, don’t force yourself to slog through – recruit help, professional or friends and family.
  • Don’t rush it: We get it.  You’re in love, and don’t want to wait around.  But Rome wasn’t built in a day! Rushing through details will cause details to be overlooked, details that properly looked after, could be the moments that mean the most to you and your intended.

Being engaged is a joyous time – make sure you breathe and savor the interlude!  Once the streamers are tossed and the  DJ has packed up her records, chances are you’ll remember the process as much as the day itself.  Enjoy the journey.

Be well, and love well.

Dinah

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When wedding planning, assume nothing.

Planning your wedding? Or any special event? Good rule of thumb: Assume Nothing.

Really! Nothing. Always specify (in writing if possible) what you’ve planned for, asked for, paid for, hoped for and wished for.

Especially when it comes to hopes and wishes, please please please don’t expect partners, fiancées and vendors to read your minds. Much to my disappointment (what I wouldn’t give to see inside the minds of the Mother In Laws..) people do not acquire psychic powers during the wedding planning process. Here are some examples of assuming gone awry:

Don’t say to an honor attendant going to your wedding rehearsal: “I’ll see you there” and assume you actually will. In her mind (she’s the rowdy one) you’ll see her there…perhaps after the wedding, hung over from a night out clubbing.

Don’t say to your caterer: “I love beef, so just be creative”  and assume you’ll get a lovely beef entreé, just like you imagined. Your caterer really is creative, and has always harbored a wedding planning fantasy: a reproduction of the Venus De Milo made out of steak tartare.

Have a particular image in mind for your wedding? Let your vendors know.
Have a particular image in mind for your wedding? Let your vendors know.

Don’t say to your brother, “Yes! Make a toast! Funny childhood stories and such” and then be surprised when he tells the guests about you stuffing your bra, or pretending to be ringmaster of the circus. At nineteen.

So you catch my drift. Assume nothing! Make it all very clear, and then enjoy the result of your very-well-communicated labors: just the wedding you wanted.

Be well and love well.

Dinah

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