For a long time I’ve been looking forward to planning my wedding. My ideas and opinions have changed over the years so I’m still having to start from the beginning (the Pinterest boards I made at 15 and 16 were pretty outdated and went on for pages with a bunch of conflicting ideas).

It’s stressful at times, but at least at this point where the wedding is pretty far away and we’re still deciding on how we want things to look and what music we want to play and, everyone’s favorite, what cake flavors we’d like to have.

And I’ve gotten a lot of advice from a lot of different people. Some is appreciated. Some … not so much.

For example, one of the first pieces of advice was to not spend all of our time together focused on the wedding. Either schedule specific times to talk about the wedding or to set a timer on our conversation and when it’s done, move on to something else. Because the wedding is just the event. The purpose of it is to start the marriage, and that’s what matters the most. If all of our time during our engagement is focused on that one night, where does that leave us once it’s over?

Wedding advice

However, an example of not-so-great advice was to make sure the wedding of MY dreams happened. For a few reasons this isn’t the best. One, because it isn’t just about me. This is a partnership effort. And for me to put my needs above someone else’s, even for just this one thing, doesn’t start the marriage off in the right direction. Two, it also doesn’t take into account the needs/feelings of family who are working to help put this event on.

The best advice I’ve received was to attend pre-marital counseling. And to find someone you both trust. We decided to meet with someone neither of us knew so we went in on an even playing field, instead of choosing one of the pastors that work with my dad and who I’ve known for 15 years. But, I’ve seen friends meet with the pastor that one of them grew up with and they thought it went really well. The important thing is just to make sure it’s done, and to make sure it’s either done with a Christian counselor or a pastor.

Focus on the marriage

I am someone who likes to be as prepared as possible for something like this, so we even found a book to go through before we made our first counseling appointment and went over several of the topics. Now as we’re going through counseling, a lot of the topics we’re discussing were things we had already gone over privately by reading the first book, but there are new things being brought up. All that to say, if you do want to do an extra book, you can, but it definitely isn’t necessary because you should be able to talk about all that you need in your meetings together.

It’s a lot going through all of these things to get ready for a wedding but as long as we are keeping our focus on the marriage as a whole, it’s a lot more enjoyable and gives us much more to look forward to.