Planning a wedding can be stressful, which means arguments may be inevitable. Find out how our real bride solved her planning problems.
Whether it’s the guest list, an annoying mother-in-law or the rehearsal dinner, bickering is a very realistic part of planning a wedding. Dulal and I have had our share of WWF moments, but here are the top three things that made us pull on our boxing gloves.
Issue #1: The wedding budget.
I reluctantly admit that I am a stereotypical bride-to-be. I want our wedding to be exactly how I’d been planning it for years. It also doesn’t help that I keep comparing my wedding to my friends’ weddings, and that I want everything to be much more extravagant. So when my fiancé and I started tallying up our wedding costs, he flat out told me that I would have to give up a lot.
His exacts words were, "This is a wedding, not a blockbuster movie.”
I whined and complained that everything I wanted was necessary and our arguments got to the point where we considered breaking up, several times.
Our Solution: Dulal and I had different ideas about where we should splurge and where we should save, so we each created separate budgets and compared them together. It turned out that we wanted a lot of the same things, but were too busy fighting to hear each other out. In the end, we combined our ideas together to design a more rational and satisfying financial plan.
Issue #2: We bickered over which traditional events we wanted to include.
There are four events in a Bangladeshi Muslim wedding; Bride’s Gayer Holud, Groom’s Gayer Holud, Biye (wedding day) and Bhoubaath (reception). Many couples choose to combine both of the Gayer Holuds into one day as well as the wedding and reception into one day. But, we couldn’t agree on which events to discard and which to keep. I was adamant about having separate Gayer Holuds and he was determined to have a separate reception in Atlanta (apart from our elaborate NYC wedding).
Our Solution: We asked our families for their advice. After all, they were the ones that would be helping us organize all these events, and we needed to make sure everyone we loved could make it to all four without any major problems. At the end, Dulal gave up his separate reception. The families agreed that flying to Atlanta would be too expensive and time-consuming for everyone since both of our families live in New York. Not having an expensive reception meant that we could have separate Gayer Holuds as well as a nicer honeymoon!
Issue #3: His meddling cousin.
Dulal and his cousin, Prima, are extremely close so it was only natural that she wanted to help plan our wedding. But, Prima tends to be overbearing and bossy so I really did not want her to have any part in the planning—after all it is my wedding! But, Dulal convinced me that she only wanted to help, so I let her. Boy, was that a wrong move! She tried to take control of everything, including choosing my outfits for each of the ceremonies, coordinating the entertainment (without my approval) and putting her own friends on the guest list! But the last straw was when she convinced Dulal to let her do most of my wedding shopping in Bangladesh, without me there to choose my own things. Prima convinced my fiancé that it was a lot cheaper in Bangladesh and that I loved her taste, so Dulal forked over a wad of cash, without my approval. When she came back, Dulal and I both saw that she had bought all the wrong things and completely disregarded the instructions that Dulal had given her.
Our Solution: This problem solved itself because Dulal saw how pushy Prima had become. He told her to back off and I got my wedding back!
Arguing is okay as long as you find a reasonable way to solve it. The most part important part of being engaged is that it stays memorable and that you have fun planning your wedding together!
Next up...my wedding trousseau! Read all about the elaborate saris, jewelry and gifts that make up my wedding look in the next installment of My Big Fat Indian Wedding.
To find out more about Jennifer's wedding plans, click here.
