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Part One | Part Two | Part Three

You've just become engaged and nothing could be more wonderful and exciting. You're walking on air, imagining the perfect wedding, a celebration of love with your fiance's family and friends beside you, a day unfolding exactly as you have always fantasized. What bride (and groom) doesn't begin with grand visions for this special day?

And then comes the planning. Now you have to design this perfection. So you study the magazines, write the lists, talk with your partner about what kind of wedding day you two will share. The possibilities are endlessly thrilling. And endlessly detailed. And at some point, it hits you: Planning your perfect wedding is more complicated and confusing than it seems.

Sound familiar?

As many brides and grooms quickly discover, planning your wedding is seldom a piece of cake. Just listening to all the well-meaning suggestions can overwhelm. Family, friends, wedding industry professionals — everyone has just the right idea, something you must consider. Unspoken preferences, hidden expectations and small differences of opinion suddenly surface. Will the cake be chocolate, the invitations embossed, the tables round? Who to invite and how many? What sort of food, music, post-wedding plans will there be? Few engaged couples realize beforehand that planning a wedding will be their first big relationship challenge.

Ava and Shane are getting married next summer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She's a web designer and he's a project manager for a tech company. They both have strong organizational skills, so they chose to plan their wedding together. This, they expected would be a straightforward process. But, like most couples who decide to share the planning, they soon discovered some surprises.

Ava told us "I had always thought that all engaged couples should plan their wedding together. But as I discovered, a fair amount of process takes place between two people planning a wedding. Even though Shane and I had lived together, I never realized how differently we made decisions. The first clash we had was over the photographer. At one point, it got so bad that I felt like saying  "OK honey, just fork over the cash and I'll see you at the alter".

And Ava is hardly the exception.

Need more?See Growthtrac's Pre-married
Resource page.

Copyright © 2004 by Drs. Patrick and Michelle Gannon.

Read more at www.growthtrac.com