Getting engaged, planning a wedding, and preparing for life with your favorite person is one of the most exciting and joyful times of your life, but it can also be rife with familial conflicts, disagreements over the budget, and the need for a lot of compromises. Still, every challenge you face while planning your wedding is an opportunity to improve your relationship, strengthen your bond, and deepen your communication skills as a couple.
“Defining your shared values, navigating conflict, getting on the same page in terms of finances, deciding how we spend time in relationships outside of our primary relationships—any number of topics that come up during wedding planning need to get negotiated on an ongoing basis,” says Jennifer Uhrlass, licensed marriage and family therapist at Modern MFT in New York City. “It has to be an ongoing, open dialogue, which is really training for the ongoing negotiations that are going that are going to take place along the course of the relationship.”
