This can be as complicated or as simple as you want – but there will be after-effects that might last longer than your decision-making window. So take time, right at the start on HOW you are going to go about making decisions.
Trying to navigate everyone’s opinions, suggestions, and expectations can be a total headache. Someone somewhere won’t get what they want and you need to decide if what they want means more to you than what you want yourself. I hated being engaged, for this very reason.
Words like ‘tolerance’ and ‘compromise’ seem to be what every conversation comes down to when talking logistics or even taste! I have couples get themselves in such a pickle over this. I have brides in tears because they just want to keep everyone happy. I have had the best man call me to ask for advice on how to approach certain things so as not to upset anyone. Family politics, taste, duty, and assumptions can be the demise of what should be such a joyful and hopeful time.
This is where I think the words you use hold such power.
Compromise – swap it for ‘Balance’.
Tolerance – swap it for ‘Acceptance’
Compromise. Is it give and take? Is it suck and see? Is it to give up and just hope for the best? Is it to wash your hands of it and pass it over to your spouse for them to deal with? Or is it to ignore it because it’s not their day, it’s yours? There are phrases like ‘your day your way’ and ‘you do you’ and I’m all for it, unless it causes upset. That’s the sticky part. No one wants to upset anyone, and no one wants to be upset. But ‘compromising’ on your own wedding plans is never going to work out well for you. It might be the choice of venue, it might even be the wedding date itself; it might be the dress, the wedding breakfast menu, or your choice of friends or family in the bridal party. It could be the time of the ceremony, or who you choose for readers or speech givers, or sometimes it comes down to the details like linen! You are never going to please everyone. Honestly. Someone somewhere ‘would have done it differently’ . Always.
When you try to ‘compromise’, someone (usually one half of the couple) has had to give up, or surrender, or ‘compromise’ on what they have wanted; and that’s not right.
If you change the lens, you look through it and see it as ‘striking a balance’ then, and I promise you this, it will sit better in your soul, in your heart and in your mind. It comes down to intention. If you mean well, and you are trying to keep a balance, then it WILL work out. Whatever you decide, it would have come from a good place. A place of kindness and thoughtfulness, and a quest for balance. It will all work out in the end.
Same with ‘Tolerance’. Tolerance, I think, is not something to aim for. If you tolerate someone it means that at some point, your tolerance level will be hit, and you can no longer stand it, and then that balance you have strived so hard to make will go. So, for the sake of your wedding day, those lifetime memories from ‘the happiest day of your life’ , really try and change the lens. If you can’t tolerate someone or someone’s decision, try and find out what’s really bugging you about them. If it’s something you can change, then go for it! If it isn’t then you have to let go and accept they are who they are, you are who you are, and really, if both of you don’t really want to send the message that it’s okay to tolerate someone forever, then choose which bed you are going to make, and lie in it.
Your wedding is celebrating your marriage. A union between two people. Marriage is between just the two of you. To have a wedding is a celebration. So the bottom line you really need to answer is…
Who do you want to Celebrate with, and how do you want to Celebrate?
Accept and find balance as you make that dream a reality. Do not ‘tolerate’ or ‘Compromise’ because, at the end of the day, it IS your day, and it IS your marriage and YOU are the hosts. It’s the freedom of choice that I’m all about and want to help you celebrate.
