A Guide For Grooms: Dealing with Bridezilla

Okay, was my bride a Bridezilla? No, not really at all. She only got mad at me twice throughout the whole week, and considering how big of an idiot I am, especially with my idiot friends around, that’s a hell of an accomplishment. We did really well throughout the entire week. I asked her what she wanted me to do, and I did it without any complaints. I am a giant pussy when it comes to heights, but my lady said that she wanted me to repeatedly climb a ladder and hang things from the ceiling, and I said okay while only thinking about falling and breaking my arm from the moment I took my first step on the ladder until both feet had finally gotten back to the ground. Still, I did it, and even if I fell, I would have been fine, as I have seen dozens of WWE ladder matches.

The first thing you need to do is pay attention to your bride. That seems simple enough, but I managed to forget it. Whoops. She gave me the simple task of getting all of my groomsmen on our bus to go to the hotel to get ready for pictures. I did this with no issues, but I made the mistake of not thinking about anything else. We were drinking on the bus and having a great old time. Unfortunately, I forgot that she was probably going to need help hauling some things on the bus. I see her carrying a ton of bags right after she got her hair done while trying to keep an umbrella over her head since it was raining. She was not pleased, so I gave her a little space and finished my beer quietly in the back of the bus. That was my bad.

You know all those sayings about how communication is key. Yeah, it’s true. And for the wedding weekend, you definitely want to overcommunicate. I thought I did a pretty good job of communicating with my wife and doing the rounds with her so I could meet a bunch of people that I would immediately forget. Once I got done with those rounds, I figured I was good to go. If I would have just asked her about things, she would have told me that there were a few other pictures she wanted, but I didn’t do that. I disappeared from my own wedding. Once was completely justified, because I took a monster dump in a bathroom. When I exited the stall, I saw a groomsman and a husband of a bridesmaid. We laughed and high-fived about the damage I did. This is a situation where it is fine to not check in with your bride. However, shortly after that, I decided to smoke cigars that my uncle brought with all of my groomsmen which meant that I left the reception hall to go outside. She of course wanted to find me for a picture with a group of approximately 50 people and had no clue where I was. She finally found me, and brought me up to the picture where everyone was already waiting. The combination of me disappearing and reeking of cigar smoke was not a combination that put a smile on my lady’s face. This was also my bad.

But both times, she let me know that she was displeased, I apologized, and she let it go in about 15 minutes. So learn from my mistakes and make sure that you pay attention to your bride and communicate with her. Life will be much happier for the both of you.

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.