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WHAT THIS BOOK CAN DO FOR YOU

We want this book to help you make planning your wedding a satisfying journey rather than an obstacle course, a path with challenges to be mastered rather than a mine field.  We will teach you about five key steps to deal with each other as a couple and with other people involved in the wedding: 

 

• Clarify expectations
• Negotiate differences up front
• Look deeper, when necessary, into what is behind disagreements
• Make a decision that has integrity
• Then do the work and enjoy the wedding 

 

Some of the help we offer will be practical.  For example, we will show you a process for getting everyone’s expectations out on the table as soon as possible, because the first decisions you make affect later decisions.  When expectations line up, or when minor differences are easily handled, so much the better.  The hard work begins when expectations differ more strongly and people dig in or won’t communicate.  We will help you get below the surface of what is going on with your family, in-laws, wedding party, and friends when they (or you) seem stubborn, selfish, or controlling.  People who care about you become obstacles to the wedding when personal feelings and relationships are on the line.  It’s important to understand when the paper the invitations are printed on is not the real issue in the argument, but when something else is going on.    To repeat:  clarifying what everyone wants and needs from their own perspective is the crucial first step in planning a wedding.  It’s not the logistics that make or break the wedding; it’s the people.

The book will help you negotiate and make decisions in good faith and for the common good of all involved.  We will give you principles that cut across different areas of negotiation, such as the principle that the blood relative should do the heavy lifting with his or her own family.  Easy to say, but what if your fiancé(e) hates conflict and does not sign up for the job? We have ideas for you!   

Then there are the really dicey situations that many couples face.  If one or both of you come from a family of divorce, we will offer a roadmap for avoiding predictable obstacles and managing the ones you cannot avoid.  Sometimes you have to be the only adult in the situation when your parents can’t handle their own feelings.   We will show you how to do this with integrity and respect. 

You may find that a relative (or friend) is just impossible to deal with constructively after you have used all of your own resources of understanding and negotiating in good faith.  Most relatives can overcome their own insecurities and self-absorption and rise to the occasion for a family wedding.  But others cannot.  We will discuss strategies to prevent these people from hijacking your wedding either by controlling a key part of the wedding or rendering you emotionally preoccupied with them rather than with each other and your wedding.

WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK

We are an unusual writing team.  Elizabeth Doherty Thomas and Michael Thomas were married on October 4, 2003 at ages 27 and 26, respectively.  They had the normal worries and hassles in planning their wedding but relished the process and now want to pass on what they learned to other couples.  Mike was involved as an active partner at every stage, in contrast to the traditional groom role.  He particularly dislikes the “groom as furniture” stereotype.  Elizabeth stayed in touch with many other brides through conversations and Internet chat rooms, which gave her insight into the challenges faced by contemporary engaged couples.  As a newlywed now, but close enough to the wedding experience, she has a unique perspective on what is most important about planning a wedding.

The mother of the bride, Leah Doherty, is a nurse by profession and an experienced event planner with loads of practical wisdom about the logistics and interpersonal parts of wedding planning.   Everyone said she brought a combination of organizational skill and gracefulness to the wedding process.   Bill Doherty relished being the father of the bride.  He brings his experience as academic family social scientist, marriage and family therapist, and author of others books for families.  Having experienced and witnessed what his family learned from putting on a wedding, he proposed this book project to Leah, Elizabeth, and Mike, who jumped at the idea of writing a different kind of wedding book that focused on the people part rather than the task part.  We very much valued Mike’s parents’ contributions to the wedding and to our learning (two families from different parts of the country came together beautifully for the Thomas/Doherty wedding), but we decided that four authors were enough for one book!

This book is a collective work.  We combined our ideas for each chapter, Bill wrote the first drafts, and then we massaged them until we were all satisfied.  None of us could have written it alone.  We decided to focus on weddings we know best—a bride and groom planning a “community” wedding and starting a first marriage—while acknowledging that there are many different kinds of couples, many with kids already, and other more private weddings.  Couples in other situations, however, may benefit from the central ideas in the books. 

If the first bit of bad advice for engaged couples is to do your own thing and not worry about what others want, a second kind of unwise advice can come from experienced married couples:  don’t worry so much about the wedding because it’s the marriage itself that counts.   Our view is different:  planning your wedding is the beginning of your marriage relationship.  To be clear, we are unabashedly in favor of premarital education or counseling aimed at preparing you for the future years of your marriage.  We will give you resources to find this kind of premarital help; in fact, the issues we raise in this book would be ideal fodder for trying out the knowledge and communications skills you can learn in a good premarital education program. 

Although we all know that marriage is a life long project, for now you are building your marriage mostly by planning your wedding together.  How you communicate now will stay with you, as will how you deal with your differences.  How you support each other now with the stresses of the wedding will lay down the template for your future, as will how you deal with your families.  You are preparing for the biggest event of your lives, the birth of your marriage in the embrace of your community.  We are thrilled that you have taken our book on your journey.  If you have stories to pass on, or feedback about our book, we would love to hear from you.

 

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Paperback Version $12.99

E-Book download version $12.99  

 

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