Get Your Groom Involved - Part Two

Let's face it. Men and women look at the wedding process differently and that makes it difficult to get your groom involved with the wedding planning process. We discussed this at length last week.

Where planning the wedding day for the bride can be an exciting fulfillment of a lifelong dream, the groom often finds himself feeling lost in a sea of details. Likewise, since he is not a female he does not understand why certain things are so important to his bride.

As a result, the strategy for getting a groom involved planning the wedding is to continue to look for aspects of the wedding planning process that will entice him into the process. That is to say, find tasks that he is comfortable enough taking on that will give him an opportunity to feel comfortable with the wedding planning process over all.

If he becomes comfortable with the process, his bride will have won an ally as she prepares for the big day and into the marriage beyond. If not... at least she will not have wasted time doing things that he feels comfortable taking care of.

• Secure Transportation: Let's face it. As a general rule guys love cars and everything that goes along with it. Give him the responsibility of arranging transportation to and from the wedding as well as making sure that all of your bridal party has transportation ( you wouldn't want one of your bridesmaids to find herself stuck at the reception hall after everyone else goes home).
  
• Honeymoon: Most guys love to plan travel, and planning a superb get away for himself and his new bride plays right into his interests.
  
• Registry: Surprised? This won't work if all the bride wants to register for is floral pattern china, but give him a chance to register for a leather reading chair for the study or a masculine grill for the deck and you might be surprised how interested he is in taking part in the rest of the registry process.
  
• Tasting: What guy doesn't like to eat? Bring him along for his opinion on the flavors of the samples you get from perspective caterers and pastry chefs. Once there and involved with the flavors of the event he might just come alive with ideas for your wedding reception.
  
• Create Playlist: A lot of guys today are very much into music and they love their high tech toys. Use that fact. Give them the responsibility of compiling a play list in whatever form you want the music in your wedding to be. It will make the music in the wedding personal whether your idea of music is a string quartet, a DJ, or your own iPod plugged into a sound system.

True, in many cases the groom is never going to be as involved in the wedding planning process as his bride would like him to be but that is all a part of learning the communication and cooperative skills that it takes to build a good marriage - and that is ultimately what the wedding is for, to celebrate the creation of a good marriage.