Q & A: Matt's Wedding Planning Advice

Dear 2000 Dollar Wedding Community,

Hello! This is Matt Bradford, Sara's partner. A reader asked the other day if both Sara and I could respond to how to continue nurturing our relationship during the wedding planning process, though one may lose focus on the beauty of the relationship.

Having lost focus on the beauty of the relationship during the wedding planning process, I would like to state for y'all that I am not immune to the occasional blow-up. But, it is the rebound afterward and the changes in approach that you and your partner make to those moments of
conflict that measure how successful you are in surviving, growing and maintaining your relationship throughout the wedding planning process and life post-wedding planning process.

Once the luster and excitement of the engagement wear-off, the engaged couple has to journey through the muck and the beauty. Planning a wedding can be like navigating a minefield: there's an enormous amount of value and meaning that is attached to everything from the rings to
napkins; it's the meshing of two peoples' ideas; it can be lo-o-o-o-o-ong; and, not to mention friends, family, magazines and television all have their own sets of values and expectations.

In order for both parties to survive, remain cordial, dare-I-say, "Love each other", it's important for you and your partner to recognize your respective strengths and weaknesses, e.g. Matt:
Strengths: patient in the short-term, good at using Photoshop, people person; Weaknesses: frustrated in the long-term, not great at breaking big projects into manageable pieces, does not respond well when Sara uses logic. Sara: Strengths: great planner, logical, creative,
thorough; Weaknesses: impatient with Matt's creative process, stubborn, thorough.

When Sara and I understand our positive and negative traits we are better-equipped to anticipate the moments when conflict has the greatest chance to arise in our relationship, e.g. Sara and I are designing a web page for our wedding: Matt can use Photoshop to edit
the pictures and adjust the layout of the site. In this example, knowing that I will be excited and sensitive about what I have created, and that there is a high-probability of Sara suggesting an
alternative look and feel, we can prepare ourselves: we can be more open to alternative ideas, we can be patient, we can take a step back from the situation if we need time.

So, this wedding planning process is a veritable minefield but we can have our radars out to better-help us maneuver around the trouble zones.

Have a great day,

Matt Bradford

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