It’s Not About the Wedding – Chapter 1
This is the first in a series of 16 chapters from a new manuscript I am working on called It’s Not About the Wedding: A Common Sense Guide to Getting it Right the First Time, or Any Time. I would love to receive any and all positive or negative feedback on this topic, particularly from those of you who are perhaps currently engaged to be married! Stay tuned for subsequent chapters to follow…
Introduction
There is nothing wrong with wanting, or even having the biggest, most beautiful, most elaborate wedding in the world, as long as you can pull it off without losing sight of the reason why it’s happening. That is the challenge so many couples, and marriages, fail to meet. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much time, effort, and money you put into creating the perfect wedding, on the day after your wedding, the wedding will be over. The marriage, however, will have just begun.
Chapter 1 – It’s Not About The Wedding
Behold the wedding. What a glorious event – The culmination of hours, weeks, and months of work (mostly by the bride), all in an attempt to create that elusive “Fairy Tale Wedding”. But what is the point, really? Why do we spend tens of thousands of dollars on this one day with no guaranteed return on our investment? The real question is this: What are we investing in?
For many of us, it’s status. Our friends are having large and elaborate weddings, so why shouldn’t we? Even the parents of the bride and groom are guilty. Their friends’ children are having big, expensive weddings and we all want to keep up with the Jones’s, right? To make matters worse, we see and hear about our favorite celebrities living out every “common” bride’s dreams. They hold weddings in large, centuries-old castles in Ireland. They have dresses made exclusively for them by world-famous designers. They have hundreds of guests packing the house to witness this historic event.
Of course, we all know the sad reality. Not many of these dreamy weddings actually result in a marriage that lasts. Some last for all of a few weeks.
So, what can be done before the wedding to help ensure a loving, lasting union after the wedding? It’s all about focusing on the things that really matter. More to come in Chapter 2…
Little Drops of Nectar 
this looks like a book i will actually read. Well put
Excellent points already! Certainly a lot to think about before walking down the aisle. This may be a good book for local (and out of state) ministers, as well as marriage and family therapists, to purchase and offer to their clients, since so many of them go through pre-marriage counseling.