Ladies, today you might want to — oops! — leave The Wedding Yentas up on your fiance’s Internet browser. This day is dedicated to him. Well, and you, too. Special Guest Blogger and Mr. Yenta himself, Bryan, is here to share a little inside information from the groom’s point of view. In short, he wants you to know that your wedding day should be about you both… as a couple. It’s easy to get caught up in a different frame of mind, but maybe this will give you two a little reminder of what the day is celebrating in the first place!
Unlike my wife, I did not grow up planning my wedding or picturing what it would look like. In fact, I used to think that once I bought the ring and popped the question, my job was pretty much done until I was told where to show up and at what time. It didn’t take me long after the proposal to find out just how wrong I was, but it wasn’t until after I was the groom that I fully understood just how important my role was in planning the big day.
If you’re a groom who thinks like I did, you probably pretty much figure the wedding day is all about the bride. It’s understandable. I mean as men, we are practically taught to believe that. Think about it – nobody stands when the groom comes down the aisle; the song isn’t “Here Comes The Groom”; the groom isn’t who people stare at when the photographer is taking portraits in public areas. It’s all of these kinds of things that make it so we grooms have it engrained in our heads that we are merely an accessory – a “monkey in a suit” so to speak.
And while I’m sure many brides will cringe at the thought of reducing their poor man into nothing but arm-candy, the one making the magic happen for the wedding day is the bride because she is usually the one perusing the wedding blogs and scouring the Internet for photos to get ideas for color schemes, dresses, flowers, hairstyles, centerpieces, chair covers, and you know the list goes on and on. For the most part, the groom doesn’t particularly care too much about these kinds of details. I know I didn’t really have an opinion one way or another when it came to that stuff.
But wedding planning isn’t all just colors and flowers. There are hundreds of decisions to be made, and they’re not all totally bride-focused. Even though the groom probably isn’t too concerned about whether or not there are roses in the bouquet or if there should be candles on the tables, there are plenty of things for him to be interested in, even if he doesn’t know it at first. For me, it took some time, but I did find myself becoming very interested in things like the order of day’s events, who was going to be giving a speech, what music the band should be playing, and who was sitting at what table. It sounds like a headache at first but table seating was my personal favorite part of the entire planning process. I guess I just had fun putting everybody into categories of 8-12 people. It’s like Google+ but for weddings.
Anyway, with all the decisions along the way, I guess planning a wedding is like making a movie. And while the bride may indeed be the director, the groom is the director’s right hand man — maybe the cinematographer, maybe the assistant director, maybe the creative consultant — but he’s right up there and he deserves equal billing. After all, the groom probably gets the best part of the whole day: he steps on the glass and prompts all the “Mazel Tov” declarations! The point is that the wedding day is actually about the bride and the groom. It’s about you celebrating each other with close family and friends, and about starting your life together as a married couple.
So if you’re a bride with a groom who seems disinterested, find something he can take part in and I bet he jumps in willingly. And if you’re a groom who’s sitting in the corner watching your bride stalk wedding blogs and change her color scheme ideas daily, maybe offer to take control of something you care about that you can handle, like the entertainment or the table seatings (for your own family at least). I think the most important thing is that you make your wedding day about both of you and do what you want to do as a couple, not just as a bride or as a groom. It’s one of the very first steps on your new long journey of doing everything together. So make wedding planning a fun process that you can share with each other. If you do, I promise your wedding day will be one of the best days of the groom’s life as well as the bride’s.
Pingback: A Groom With A View: Directing A Wedding | The Wedding Yentas™ | A Guide for the Jewish Bride!™