How I prepared for my own wedding day

I have recently been asked quite a bit about how Matt and I planned our wedding in such a short 4 (and a half) months and what advice I would give to those engaged. Even though I could chat for hours about this or that wedding trend idea, I am always compelled to speak a little deeper about how we “prepared” for marriage. A part of me feels a little silly for writing about any topic of marriage (being a newbie and all) and especially because there is so much more we have to figure out in the days ahead. Our marriage is a work in progress but we had learned so much during our engagment that I thought it’d be fun to share a few of our experiences.

One truth I learned is that it’s not about that one special day but about your life after it. And while every bride knows that, I think it can be hard to stay focused on what you are preparing for during those months of dress shopping, venue searching, bachelorette celebrating, and yes even photographer finding. It was for me anyways. However, even though Matt and I had a short period of time to get the details of our day together, we tried our best to really discuss and plan for our life after the day would come and go.  After all, we had a lot of changes happening for us.

Here is a brief list of some of the planning we did:

• We dug deep into our finances and set up a budget prior to saying “I do”. Having a budget sounds so restrictive but in reality it gives us freedom with our finances that we really need.
•  We were counseled (and counseled again).  We had the opportunity to do pre-marital counseling with our local pastor who married us. We also did outside counseling that dug even further into the dynamic of our relationship. Both were super helpful to get us talking.
• We learned from others.  Prior to our engagement we came across the Real Marriage series by Mark Driscoll. Over the course of our engagement we would listen and/or watch his messages. We loved how open he and his wife were about their marriage.
• We read. Well, I must admit… Matt read a lot more than me. The books we liked: Love & Respect  by Emerson Eggerichs, Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey, and yes even a few books on intimacy.
• We communicated and were brutally honest with each other. It was hard at first but eventually we weren’t afraid to chat about our concerns, desires, & hopes for our future life together. For those of us that knew us when we first met, it was obvious we had a lot to work thru and communicate about.

If you are engaged, do you feel like you know what your life will look like after you tie the knot? It gave me such a peace to know how we were going to do life after the honeymoon and each of the things above has made the transition into marriage run more smoothly than I thought for us.  By no means do we have it all together (at ALL), but I do believe we have really settled into life as husband and wife in such an amazing way. We are only two months in- but we love the journey so far. 🙂

Photography by the one and only Cheyenne Schultz.

You can see our entire engagement session here:

 http://www.lovetheschultzes.com/blog/2012/10/melissa-and-matt.html