Comments on: 9 ways to get your groom involved

By: Ang

Ang — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:38:38 +0000

My fiance and I have just started our wedding planning this week, and it's already lead to a lot of fighting- something we never do! He has been very involved, and came up with some really creative, fun ideas. We live in NY and really love winter sports, so we wanted to plan a fun wedding weekend in our favorite part of VT (Woodstock/Killington area). However, his ideas of venues there require us to limit the guest list by a lot more than I want (mostly because my family is a lot bigger than his and I feel more obligated to invite not-so-close relatives whereas he does not). They also involve potentially excluding children to keep things small. That really breaks my heart, especially when I think about my friends who are new moms. With "destination" weddings, it seems likely not everyone will show up…but there are lots of people I'd like to cater to because I want them to be there. I'm not sure how to get him to agree!

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:26:03 +0000

My FI is pretty content with letting me run the show (as he likes to say, he's just paying for it!), but it's kind of a lot sometimes because our parents aren't involved and it's very much a DIY wedding. I have though, made sure to run ideas past him first (making the colors turquoise, venue ideas, etc), and in fact, he inspired the food. He said all he really wanted was steak, so I ran with it. We are doing a backyard barbecue, and FI enlisted his brother in law, who is a chef, to run the grills with a few buddies. I'm keeping the dress and decor very formal but the more I plan our backyard barbecue, the more excited I get. It's the perfect way to express "us" and since his family is really large, it's going to feel very comfortable and relaxed, and I probably wouldn't have thought of it without his help!

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:40:17 +0000

I'm on exactly the same page you are! At the moment I'm confused about why he asked to get married – he seems violently opposed to the idea! Wondering about giving the ring back until he decides he really wants to be married – am I going too far? We've been engaged six weeks…

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:32:43 +0000

Here are some ways I got my partner/groom involved.
First of all, I didn't decide on any venues without his consent. I found the venues, he chose the ones he wanted, and I happen to like them. We said we found an agreement, but after he saw the venues, and I saw how happy he was about certain ones, I realized I loved them too.

There were certain things I made completely his responsibility, like the invitations. He chose the invitations, designed them, found the vendor, everything. He just showed me the final product and I put my two cents in. I was "legal", he simply had to pass his ideas through "legal" but I made few changes, he did a great job and I was so over boggled with everything I didn't care bout these details and was glad he was in control over something.

Cake tasting was the best thing to get him involved!
One day I simply called as many bakers as possible, and set up a day where we went cake tasting.
After he got home from work, I had goggle maps and we drove to several bakeries where I treated us to tastings.
We had lots of fun eating cake together! He thought is was a pretty special treat. All that cake was so good, I told him he could pick out whatever flavors he wanted, as long as I was in control of how the cake was decorated. He picked two delicacies flavors that our guests loved! He let me pick the third flavor because he couldn't decide (three flavors of cake, on for each tier).

Of course he was in control of what he and his groomsmen wore. He didn't chose my dress for me, there's not way I'm choosing his suit, though I did offer my advice when he asked for it. And if there was something I couldn't live with, I let him know. But honestly there's so much work involved in planning a wedding, these details get lost.

It's one thing to talk about the wedding, it's another thing to take your groom to the venue, to eat the cake, to look at real paper invitations. Attitudes may change once he actually sees his options.

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:50:16 +0000

I agree with getting the groom involved and having a project. My fiance' found and worked with the designer who made my engagement ring and will do our wedding bands. When we first started talking about getting engaged he wanted me to just tell him what I wanted so he could go buy it. But he ended up getting very invested in the design and it's obvious he's very proud of the way it turned out. Here's what else I have to say about the ring. http://www.conservationminnesota.org/news/?subsec...

By: frustrated

frustrated — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:15:42 +0000

I've got the problem where my partner doesn't have any suggestions about what they want for the wedding, but continuously shoots my ideas down… So far, out of about fifty gazillion suggestions, we've agreed to ONE. Not a whole lot of wedding's gonna get planned this way! Discussions about it all seem to lead to arguments or to me feeling miserable and discouraged about all of my ideas getting rejected all the time. when I say, 'well what do YOU see happening at our wedding' I get shrugs… and I'm not the one who proposed!

By: offbeat_megan

offbeat_megan — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:44:06 +0000

That's an awesome idea! I wanna see the invites when they're done!!!

By: Ice Pizza

Ice Pizza — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:00:54 +0000

Thanks for this info. I do want my fiance to also take part in the planning process..it's a little challenging though, because we're currently living in different continents, but when I read this post, I immediately thought of asking my fiance to design our wedding invitations, since he is an artist, not good on the computer though, but he can just send me his design and I'll CAD it. I'll be so proud to have invites designed by him.

By: Jes

Jes — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:21:14 +0000

Hey, Jess here. My husband Sean, who is pictured above with the guitar was 50/50 the whole way, to the point where sometimes I thought 'gee, this would be a whole lot easier if i had one of those fiances who didn't really care! Then I could just do what i want! Anyway, it was great that he was so into the details, but let's face it, we fought A LOT! So for those of you who's partners don't really care that much about that stuff, lucky you, all they really care about is that they get to marry YOU, and you get to choose the colors!

Also, my husband has a strong beef against rockers who 'take over' the wedding and turn it into a rock show. He was really careful about not doing that, and just playing 1 song as a gift to me because he knew I secretly wanted him to do so. We've both been to weddings where the rocker friends take over, especially when the groom is one of them (or the bride), and we have felt that it takes away from the spirit of the event. Just wanted to put that out there, since his photo might make it seem like he was playing all night.

By: Stevie

Stevie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:33:48 +0000

This is a wonderful post!
I was having a bit of an issue with how to work out traditional aspects that were meaningful to my family- my brother died a few years ago and my mother said something in passing about missing out on the mother-son dance. My FH came up with the idea to incorporate this for her without boring our guests with multiple family dances. After our first dance, I will dance with my dad while he dances with his mom and then I will dance with his dad while he dances with my mom. Brilliant! I definitely wouldn't have thought of that.