So now you’re engaged!  Time to plan! Where are we going to have the reception?  Ceremony in a church or justice of the peace?  Wait…he’s Jewish, I’m Catholic how do we figure this out?  And what about the centerpieces, the seating arrangement, finding the best Boston Wedding Band???

(Queue that guy from Scanners head exploding)

Wait…is that too obscure?  Do people get that?  You Tube it…it’s worth it…

In my experience there’s several constants in most any couples wedding planning:

• You will at some point get stressed out and cry

• You will seriously contemplate blowing the whole thing off and jumping a flight to Vegas to just get on with it!

• Your ownership of the most anticipated day of your life will be challenged by a third party – most likely a future in-law.

In today’s post, let’s focus on “The Third Party Challenge”.

Maybe you’re already familiar at this point.  It generally goes something like this:

“But, I’ve always imagined a Purple wedding,” says your future Mother-In-Law.

Oh, that’s nice…you hate Purple.

And then perhaps HER mother chimes in with “make sure you have the band play some Dean Martin – he’s my favorite.”

You know what?  Dean Martin sucks.  There, I said it…and it’s exactly what you’re thinking.

And so maybe this goes on for months and months, through every different phase of the planning.  No matter what you put out, it seems the conversation is always about what THEY want or what THEY did, until finally you’re pushed to the point that you’re left with no other choice that to pull a Scanners and/or tell your future in-laws that they best resemble Mimi from the Drew Carey Show…on a good day!

Ok…don’t do that.  (Felt good just thinking about it though, didn’t it?)

Here’s my point:
YOU’RE THE BOSS!  This is YOUR day and it should be about what you want!

Your future Father-In-Law wants a tuxed-out, “Celebrate Good Times” wedding band instead of one that will drop some Kanye West and G Love?  TOUGH!

Your future Sister-In-Law thinks the bridesmaid dress she picked out makes her “look fat”?  TOO BAD!  Plus…it’s the Ben & Jerrys, not the dress.

This is YOUR DAY.  Never lose site of that.  Chances are that most who are coming at you with the “do this and do thats” have in fact been there and done that…but that was theirs and as Black Sheep so eloquently put it:

THE CHOICE IS YOURS!

So just remember that taking direction can also be helpful, of course but at the end of the day, that’s you standing in front of one and all, dancing with your new husband/wife and should be exactly as you’ve always dreamed.