The Pre-Planning Chat: When Everyone Has an Opinion
When you get engaged, you are immediately initiated into the world of unsolicited wedding advice. People you didn’t even know had opinions on weddings will come out of the woodwork to offer their perspective on any and every topic. It. Is. Wild. We love and appreciate these humans because what they are offering most likely comes from a good place. However, it’s easy for the influx of advice to become overwhelming.
EVERYONE HAS AN OPINION ABOUT YOUR WEDDING.
Most advice is offered from a “Here’s what I know” place in the hopes that it helps save you time, money, or energy in your own experience. What great intention!
But something to consider is that the advice that is the most helpful to you and your process will be advice that comes from a “How can I help you?” place. A place that listens to your ideas and values and starts to build a celebration from that foundation. Sure, it’s helpful to learn about what has been built by couples and celebrations that have come before yours, but those stories are most helpful when they are specifically solicited for a challenge you come up against in the planning process. Building the foundation of your celebration around someone else’s values system, experiences, and “what they know” is a surefire method to get pulled away from what centers you and your partner in your own experience.
Humans aren’t so great at distinguishing between the “Here’s what I know” and “How can I help?” in their enthusiasm for being a part of your journey. You may end up receiving too much “Here’s what I know” and not enough “How can I help you?” After a few, “Congrats, you’re engaged! Let me tell you everything I know about weddings,” conversations you may find that you’re left with a plate full of advice from a bunch of disparate perspectives that feels like it made the planning load just that much heavier to carry.
Not only that, but you may also quickly find that all anyone can talk to you about is your wedding. Forget the fact that you have a job, or a pet, or hobbies, or travel plans -- you are now a wedding planning machine. It’s the first thing some people will associate with your life, and sometimes the only thing they will ask about, until the day you get married. Again, this most often comes from a genuinely good place. People want to ask you about what they deem the most exciting event in your life and see how you’re doing (we won’t get into smashing the patriarchy here, but know that we see it). But doesn’t that cast a pall over the energy of wedding planning from the moment that question leaves someone’s lips? And does being engaged mean that you have to drop all the beautiful complexity and dimension in your life and in relation to others until you finally say “I do”? Nah, honey. You’re so much more than that.
Let’s start here: You aren’t alone. This is the experience of many engaged couples. But just because it’s a common experience doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth addressing. Imagine if, in a generation, we could wipe out the habit of unsolicited advice-giving and swap it for meaningful sharing and participation in our celebration for our family and friends. Bring on the heavy lift, because we’re about to give you some tools to help make that shift!
WAYS TO CREATE BOUNDARIES AROUND YOUR WEDDING PLANNING PROCESS.
Put a moratorium on wedding planning talk after you get engaged.
There is so much excitement after you get engaged that it’s easy to dive into wedding planning machine mode with your friends and family. We are advising you to not get wrapped up in that whirlwind right off the bat. Set up a boundary with anyone who asks about your wedding and let them know you’re pausing on the planning process for a few months to enjoy being newly engaged together. Counterintuitive? Maybe. The best thing you can do to preserve your identity inside of your relationships? Absolutely yes.
Even if you dabble in some planning here and there, setting up this boundary with friends and family trains them to treat you like a whole human with hobbies and interests and other facets to life outside of wedding planning. Slowing down at the start also gives you the gift of experiencing your engagement period with your partner without forcing yourself into a planning/productivity box that can quickly turn your emotional bliss into a year-long transactional relationship. Use this time to mindfully co-create the wedding planning boundaries you want to uphold in concert with your partner before getting other characters involved. When you’re ready to invite wedding planning into your relationships, you get to dictate the terms of the conversation and invite your loved ones into the experience in the way you want them involved.
Be specific with your invitations
Weddings carry a lot of energy in their wake. Friends or family members will get wrapped up in that energy in different ways. Those closest to you or most eager to get involved will often probe to see where they can contribute. It’s important to be specific about how you want friends and family involved in your experience, otherwise their enthusiasm may cause them to run right over your boundaries and add to the whirlwind. And it’s important to come to that decision together. Have a conversation with your partner where you talk about the kind of support you want to invite in your wedding planning process. A template for that conversation might look like:
“Before we dive into planning, I want to sit down and talk about where we want to seek support for our celebration. I want us to decide as a team who it feels good to invite in and how we want people involved. I also want us to decide what we want to tackle as a couple.
What subjects and topics do we want to keep sacred between the two of us? In what areas do we want to call upon professional support and vendors? In what areas does it feel good to call upon support from our families? Our friends?
What are some hard conversational boundaries we want to draw? What tough conversations do we anticipate having, and how are we going to respond in an aligned way? How are we going to support each other when challenging conversations arise?”
Be ready for the pivot conversation.
Even after you’ve mindfully tee’d up your planning experience and invited friends and family into the conversation with intention, things may still go awry from time to time. Loved ones may start to overrun your boundaries. Guess what? It’s up to you to uphold them. Having a few conversational pivots in your back pocket and practicing them with your partner is the best way to kindly and clearly communicate your boundaries. Here are a few to get you started.
When the wedding planning talk has outlived its welcome: “I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from all of your observations and experiences. Thank you for taking the time to share. I’d love to catch up with you about what is going on at work/in our hobbies/in regards to your travel plans/etc.”
When wedding planning talk crosses over an undeclared boundary: “I appreciate your willingness to share on this subject. I want to let you know that my partner and I have decided to tackle this topic as a team/hire a professional to help us in this area/have decided that this subject is not something we want to discuss outside of our partnership. We appreciate you respecting that boundary.”
When wedding planning talk crosses over a clearly defined boundary: “I want to remind you that we have created a boundary around this topic of discussion. I know that you are showing love by trying to help, but we need to maintain a boundary around this particular topic. (If this applies) Would you like to hear about the ways we are open to being helped in this process?”
Photos courtesy of Beginning and End Photo.
We hope that our advice helps you invite meaningful and helpful participation in your celebration from your loved ones. We hope these conversational shifts keep your beautiful, multi-dimensional personality intact through the seasons of engagement, marriage, and beyond.