Room for the Groom

Is There Room for the Groom?

Most weddings suppliers are ‘bride-centric’ meaning they focus on and market to brides. At Say Anything Design, over 90% of our guest book trees and other unique wedding accessoriesare purchased by brides. Most of the wedding planning process (traditionally) falls to the bride and it’s easy for the groom to be unintentionally cut out of the wedding planning process.

 Common reasons include:

1. Many brides have been dreaming of their wedding for years and are anxious to implement the plan that will make their ‘perfect day’ dreams come true.

2. Offers support and assistance from female friends and family members who are excited and want to ‘connect’ with the bride (and the difficulty of not accepting such offers) creates a ‘female inertia’ that tends to feed on its own momentum.

3. Brides often don’t know what their groom is thinking, how much he wants to be involved, or how to ask for help. In the same way, grooms are often unsure what their bride desires, how much she wants him to be involved (if at all), or how to offer help.

Let’s tackle #3 first. Once we figure out how (and what) our special someone is thinking, #1 and #2 become conversations instead of mysteries.

Connections or Compartments?

There are exceptions to every rule (for couples and individuals) but most women process thoughts in terms of connections – a ‘contextual thinking style in which one thought connects to the other and all thoughts are related. In contrast, most men use a focused, linear thinking style to process thoughts one at a time, moving from one compartment to the next and dealing fully with each thought on its own.

If brides (women) are from Venus and grooms (men) are from Mars, perhaps a food analogy for thinking styles is in order. Brides (women) tend to think like spaghetti - a messy and tangled web of related connections) while grooms (men) think like waffles – an orderly series of separate and distinct compartments.

This is why when a bride says, ‘So what do you think, babe?’ her groom will often answer, ‘Are we talking about the cost of the DJ, the length of the ceremony, or the color of the napkins?’

Make Room for Your Groom

Attention Brides! Don’t sell your groom short. He has preferences and opinions that will be meaningful to both of you. He may not understand the high degree of tension and pressure you feel and might need an introduction to the strange and unfamiliar world of ‘wedding customs and etiquette.’

He is excited to marry you but probably hasn’t been dreaming and planning for this day since he was young. (Unlike you), he probably didn’t play ‘wedding’ very often as a child – unless he was forced by his older sisters.

Here are Five Rules (for engaging your groom in your wedding planning process)

1. Don’t assume that ‘I don’t know.’ means ‘I don’t care.’ If your groom says he has no opinion on the color of the invitations or doesn’t care how the napkins are folded, he is just answering a question. It doesn’t mean anything else (except perhaps that he trusts your good taste in wedding décor). Remember the compartments.

2. Don't ask for his opinion unless you really want it. If you’re having trouble with a decision and want his opinion, ask him to weigh in on the issue. But if you’ve already decided and are looking for reinforcement, don’t act like you want his input. Simply say, ‘I’m thinking about… Are you OK with that?

3. Ask specific questions. Asking your groom, ‘How do you like this one?’ is likely to make his eyes glaze over. On the other hand, ‘Which flower arrangement do you like better?’ will elicit the direct response you are looking for.

4. Tell him (specifically) what you’d like his help with. He can’t read your mind and may not know what a groom is traditionally responsible for – so give him a list. And no hinting. Hints don’t work (because he’s not trying to connect everything you say to something that happened in the past).

5. Let him know you want his help. He may perceive you don’t need or want it and may be worried about crossing your mother or BFF. If it appears that you (and your female friends and family members) have it all together, he will assume you really do have it all together and not risk creating additional pressure for you by ‘pushing’ his preferences and opinions on you.

Hope will help you make room for your groom!

See you next time…

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