Dilemmas all around

I know my husband didn’t realize how far out things needed to be planned. He didn’t know how any of the wedding planning worked until we had a conversation about it.
Have a talk with him and let him know that things book up and it takes time to plan and coordinate everything. Hopefully that will help. Good luck

If I were you, I would slowly start coming to him with options. Men often don’t know what they want until the see it. So maybe start browsing venues online and see what style he likes. I think your date is the most important thing to start with. Start asking him what season he envisions and go from there. Things do book up, especially now, so have some talks with him when you can

I had kinda the same problem where he would put off making decisions or doing things as "we have plenty of time" I found sitting him down and explaining if we get this taken care of now we don't have to figure it out later when we will have more on our plates. Also showing him the whole To-Do list/timeline for planning really opened his eyes. Men don't know that planning a wedding is a lot more involved than say doing a dinner party with friends. Most are not part of planning large events like Thanksgiving.

Seeing that you have to figure out EVERYTHING from who, where, when, to the color of the napkins, how many forks will be needed, etc. puts things into perspective.

I have two planner timeline lists I am using. One is the simple one on WW, the other has subcategory to-do lists for each item to break down what all needs to be done to be able to check off the main item. That way if I want to do a quick glance at progress but not feel overwhelmed I look at the WW one, if I am actually doing the task or handing a task off to someone else (like FH) I know everything needed is listed. When he saw the first one he was really surprised how early some things were set to be done, but when he saw the detailed one he was shocked how much was involved in each "simple" task. Got his butt in gear really quick. His way of doing things is to wait until the deadline to get them done, now he understands that will only make it hard to do anything else.

Another thing I did was ask him ahead of time for us to sit down and talk about a topic for planning. An example was asking him if we could sit down after dinner next Tuesday and look over the catering company options I had found. That way he has a few days to think over the topic on what he wants but has a deadline. Made him feel less blindsided on needing to make decisions. But I am not allowed to bring up a different topic while I have his attention unless he brings it up. Once the decision is made together I pull out the to-do list and mark the item as done and show him what is next. Sometimes he would see the next item and say he was ready to talk about it right then and we would move to that topic right away. Other times he would not and I would ask to go over it at X date and time. This makes it so he does not have to fear getting stuck for hours making, to him, off-topic decisions whenever we do wedding planning talk.

View Quoted Comment Thanks for your input. We have had several conversations about how much effort needs to go into wedding planning/details etc. even though our wedding is small, we have no bridal party, and we have 28 guests. Also we have had the conversation that vendors are booking up fast especially since October has become a popular wedding month. A lot of vendors i have reached out to are booked. And whenever I start to freak out about it, he has this positive attitude that everything will work out in the end. 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Does your FH have a huge opinion on everything? Mine just kind of signs the papers he needs to sign and accepts my Venmo request when payments are due LOL. Which is somewhat frustrating in itself, because I have to decide a lot on my own. He did have one real preference with the dinner caterer, and his and mine didn't really match. But since it was his only request, I gave in and let him have it.

I would be kind of impressed that your FH had such a preference with things, honestly, though I know it has to be annoying when his preferences are clashing with yours! I would try to find a happy middle ground with him when you can, while telling him how time sensitive everything is.

View Quoted Comment Thanks for your input. We have a date and a venue and was that difficult to do!!!! We even have our wedding attire for the most part. I come to him with all of my ideas and options and research. But still isn't sure what he wants. Sometimes i just feel like it would be easy for me to just nake all

@Rachel:
* Sometimes I just feel like it would be easier for me to make all of the decisions but its our day and our money so i want him to make decisions too.

View Quoted Comment Thanks for all the great suggestions!
He has his own WW app and can look at the timeline. And we have set aside time for wedding discussions but i feel like they haven't been very successful because no decisions are made.

The irony of this all is the my FH use to work for a company as an event coordinator where he lead a small team and did events for highend companies like, APPLE. Then covid happened. So that's why I'm frustrated too because its like, "Dude, you're a pro at this!!" I thought it would be easier planning with a partner that has the inside scoop and knows deadlines etc.
I'm starting to realize that maybe he is developing an averaion to the wedding planning because it reminds him of work that was high paced and stressful. I think I need a new approach...and more patience.

I have had the same issue with mine! In the end what I did was gather maybe 5 choices of each vendor to choose from and slowly narrow down with him wavh week which he liked until he got down to 1. It was very hard to get him to focus and decide on one but that seemed to work the best.

I think you have 2 ways to go about this:

1. Have a serious heart-to-heart conversation with him about how his indecisiveness is stressing you out and driving you nuts. Due to Covid, this year is going to be extremely busy for weddings and unless he starts making some decisions you'll be making do without a lot of things. This is a great time to start your pre-marital counseling if you haven't already.

2. Narrow things down to your top 2 choices and then ask for his input. Only do this for things you know he'll have a strong opinion on. Everything else, just have someone else give you input when needed and choose yourself.

My FH has been great with wedding planning but like others are saying, I found it went better if I narrowed down the choices and then we would move forward with the ones he was interested in (like, I would list out several caterers and he would identify 2-3 that looked good to him, then we would work on narrowing down to one together). We also didn't do a lot of comparing either. With catering, baker, etc, we contacted our top choice and if we liked it, we didn't continue to contact more vendors. There were also things I didn't care about at all and I gave him the decision. I think it can get overwhelming with a million decisions so it helps to narrow the field. Also, it has been helpful to engage him in a way that plays to his strengths. He is great with spreadsheets and organizing information and uploading contracts and such on a Google drive so he has taken that and run with it which has been amazing.

I had the exact same issue with my FH! After a few disheartening arguments, I finally decided to approach everything with: “I have to do X by this date. Is that something you would like to be involved in? If so, I need you to (...) before (date) and let me know your thoughts.” Most of the time he asks me to narrow down some options and he’ll give his opinion on those. I find that doing things this way narrows his focus down to the date for the specific task rather than the date of the wedding. I have also accepted that I will be making all the relevant decisions. If my FH is not on board with the timeline, then he cannot complain later when all the decisions have been made.

So I think all of this just depends on your guy. I'm going to be in a wedding this September and the bride wants to include the groom in every single decision but he doesn't really want to be included in planning and it's stressing both of them out like crazy. For me, my fiancé really cares about a few things - venue, caterer, tuxes (especially his because regular clothes don't fit him without tailoring, so him feeling good on our day is important)... so I've actively requested help from him with those things and not with the stuff he could care less about. It's made things significantly less stressful and it makes him more likely to give an honest opinion on like flowers of DJ when I've decided 90% of what we need and just need his help making small final decisions. To him, even though I don't always see it this way, as long as we can make work what he truly wants with whatever else we need, he sees it as "our day" even if I make 80% of the decisions.

If you can do it on your own and neither of you mind, just make most of those decisions yourself and only ask him about smaller details that aren't super pressing. If he truly wants to be involved in all of it, then now is a great time to really sit and talk about each other's expectations of who will do what is left.

View Quoted Comment Thanks for your perspective!

View Quoted Comment Thanks for your reply. I think i need to be more patient with him and stop making everything a big deal. I just want this day to be fun and stop swesting the small stuff.

View Quoted Comment My FH does have his own opinions and ideas especially when it comes to the food/bar, music and his attire.

I completely understand. I am a planner by nature and I didn't want to just "take over". I had a talk with my FH and he didn't really have an opinion but didn't want look like he didn't care. We decided I would ask and he would say whether it was important. I get a little frustrated sometimes because sometimes he's hard to even nail down to talk too but for the most part the system has worked. Good luck. Sure does test the communication skills.