If you are getting married this year (or committing to a serious, long term relationship) you really need to think about your expectations for this new stage of your relationship. And you need to ask your partner to do the same.

What one person anticipates will happen after the wedding, may not necessarily be what the other person expects. Because of that, it is best to have the necessary discussions and make sure you are on the same page as your partner when you join your lives. As a start, try sitting down with your mate and discussing these questions:

• How do you think you your lives will change after you get married? Make a list and consider the positives and the negatives.
• Do you expect your marriage to be easy or challenging?
• What are your expectations for your domestic life? Who will do the cooking? The cleaning?
• What do you expect your social life will be like after you get married?

Want more questions? Try out CouplesQuestions On-line Marriage Preparation Program. It provides questions in 18 Key topic areas that absolutely should be discussed before committing your life to another person. It’s risk free with a 60 money back guarantee, so why not give it a go? If you are planning a wedding, don’t you think you should spend a bit of time planning your marriage?

Expect to have a fabulous life together and take action to make it happen.

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

Tying the knot this year? You might consider reading “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding” (Penguin Press) by Rebecca Mead when it comes out in May before you go too crazy-loco with the wedding plans. It is a work that takes a close look at some of “the absurdities inherent in our own behavior” as we plan, orchestrate and execute the North American Wedding.

Be warned though, read this book and you will want to elope, or so says columnist Holly Brubach of the New York Times in her article published yesterday.

Among other interesting points and (rather unflattering) observations, Brubach writes:

“Unmoored from tradition and religion, the wedding has become a vehicle for the couple’s solipsistic fascination with their own image, their urge to mythologize the story of their love.”

And she wonders:

“What prompts couples — women, in particular, since they’re the ones on whom the burden of reply cards and chair covers and seating charts ordinarily falls — to sign up for what several brides characterize as a steady diet of stress? Mead ascribes this willingness, even eagerness, to play along with the most arcane aspects of staging a celebration to couples (again, one imagines, brides in particular) hedging their bets, hoping that a lavish wedding will provide the solid start of a lasting marriage.”

It used to be believed that the longer the brides dress, the greater the chance the couple had at success in their life together. At least that’s what the Bridal magazines in the 50s and 60s told us. Though ridiculous (faulty logic can easily be found by citing numerous examples), it seems much simpler and sweeter somehow than some of the chaos that goes on nowadays. In Mead’s book, the images are even less flattering.

Did you know that for the average (average, mind you!) North American wedding requires 43 vendors? 43! Did you know that the cost of such a wedding is now, on average, well over $27,000? And when did it become all about the bride? When did we become such egomaniacs? Why is it that people are willing to go in to huge debt for their weddings?

Check out Brubach’s article if you haven’t already. And I will definitely be reading Rebecca Mead’s book. I am hoping it will remind people that it is not the wedding that makes the couple, it’s the MARRIAGE that makes the couple!

And the couple that makes the marriage!
Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

It’s expanding again… soon we are going to have to put a better navigation system in.

The new articles include a book excerpt from Deepak Chopra, reprinted with permission.

There’s also a piece on family of origin issues, those things that you do that you do because you were raised that way.

We are interested in short articles on subjects related to coupledom. If you’ve got an idea or a draft, please get in touch. We can’t guarantee we’ll use your submission, but you won’t know until you try!

Basically, we are looking for reasonably well written submissions of at least 250 words and probably under a thousand. They don’t need to be written by experts — we are just as interested in people’s personal experiences.

A fuller explanation on article submission is on the library page of CouplesQuestions.

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

Or premarriage course or marriage preparation?

A good rule of thumb is to start six months before the big day. Earlier is even better, of course, but you can also get benefits from a marriage course even shortly after you get married.

The beauty of the six month rule is that you have time to sort things out, without the pressure of the impending wedding. Weddings tend to grow, they tend to become all-consuming, and they can easily push the marriage education right into the background.

Doing your premarriage education early also means that you can cancel the wedding in the unlikely event that you find you have irreconcileable differences. Perhaps in an ideal world, all of us would do some form of marriage preparation and we would actively look for reasons not to get married to each other. Now, you don’t need us to tell you that that doesn’t sound fun. And you don’t really need to worry much about that happening.

It’s safe to say that most courses, counselors and programs don’t actively search out reasons that you shouldn’t marry. Like you, they are generally hopeful, believe that you can learn to improve your marriage, and want you to succeed. They aren’t looking for deal breakers. The good ones, though, do help you find where you might have problems.

Then, you can either sort them out right away or you can be aware of them so that they can be handled when the time comes.

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

No doubt about it, weddings are big business.

The average wedding in the US is over $22,000. In Canada, it is over $18,000, in the UK over 17,000 pounds and in Australia over $28,000! Our own wedding cost us about $6,000 or $7,000. As relatively cheap as that is, we were amazed at how fast the price tag grew beyond our original budget.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways to save money on your Big Day.

So we approached a couple of ‘frugality and wedding experts’ for some tips.

The result is the third article in our budding library of marriage articles on CouplesQuestions (the site, that is, rather than the blog).

Saving Money on Your Wedding was written by Darsi at Frugal Bride. The site is one of Canada’s best-known wedding websites, so we are pleased to have their expert contribution.

The figures for cost-of-wedding come from another great site, the Bargain Queen blog from downunder.

We get a fair amount of interest in how to save on wedding costs, so more on this topic soon. We promise!

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!

So we sent him a note and the result is the second article in our budding library: Tom’s Top Ten Toasting Tips.

Both of us have done our share of public speaking in our time and we can tell you, these are good. (We still think it is worthwhile buying his bundle of books though! And, no, we still don’t get paid for promoting them.)

Happy Couples, Happy Planet!