A Guide For Grooms: Wedding Planning

Throughout this entire wedding process, I have told anyone who would listen that, “I have been dreaming of this day since I was a wee little boy.” I will also randomly warn people that they better not ruin my special day. Sometimes people take me seriously, and that is awesome. In all reality, I only care about the following three things:

1. My bride.
2. My friends having a good time.
3. Food.

I know I should include family on there somewhere, but the place could burn down in the middle of the reception, and my Mom would still say it was one of the best parties she’s ever been to. She’s an incredibly positive person. Everybody else will fall in line.

Now you are going to have to put in some work on this thing, but there are ways to survive this process with minimal effort. Take easy jobs or things that you are interested in. Since I care about food, I told my lady that I would make the decision on that. I just made my decisions clear at the tasting, and boom, I figured out food, which is incredibly easy but still a really big part of the day.

Next, I care about my friends, so I made the decision on what we would wear. We got suits instead of tuxes, because they were just as cheap as a tux, and now they have a gray suit. My friends are happy with this arrangement, so that means we are good to go.

Other things that I helped on were transportation, music, and the honeymoon. Transportation and music, easy as shit. I highly recommend taking over those things, because you can knock them out in no time. On the honeymoon, don’t make the same mistake I did. We are traveling to five (six, if you count a 14 hour layover in Turkey) countries in Europe. That means a ton of travel, and a ton of different hotels. It was a lot of work, and that was a bad idea on my part. If you want to do something complicated, come up with the outline, and then help her plan it. What is probably easier is keep control of the honeymoon and just go one place. Finding one place to fly to and stay is a piece of cake, so do that instead.

After that, every decision is basically hers to make. The only problem with this is that she is still going to want your opinion. The key is to give her the right opinion.

One thing that has helped me is listening to my lady’s tone of voice to decide how I should respond to her. “What do you think of this?” seems like just one question, but she can ask it in a variety of ways, and I am forced to interpret what type of response she wants. In all reality, all she wants is for me to agree with her. It's almost always positive, so just responding with, "Looks great." is pretty safe. If she tricks you into liking something bad, just go, "Aww, geez, honey, you know me, I'm just a sloppy fella who don't know nothing about your high society ways." She'll call you an idiot, and you can move on.

What about when she gives you multiple options? This is one that I really pride myself on, because she wants an opinion. You can’t just say I don’t know and move on. You also can’t just say that they all look great. The reason she is asking is because she likes all of them. She has a favorite, but she is just using you to confirm her thoughts. So here’s what I do: I hem and haw as I look through the options, occasionally asking to see things multiple times. Finally, I pick out what I like with the caveat, “but I don’t have strong feelings one way or another; I think they all look great.” That way, I gave my opinion, but she can still feel good about ignoring it to do what she wants. Since I really don’t give a shit about any of it, this arrangement works perfect for both of us.

That’s really all there is to it. Take the easy stuff, and never offer a strong opinion on anything else. She'll be happy that you're involved, and since you're barely doing anything, you'll still have plenty of time to watch sports. Win-win.