“I know everyone gets stressed before the wedding,” said Sarah. “But we’re arguing so much that I can’t help wonder, Are we really right for each other? How can I know if this is just the stress of wedding planning or a glimpse of life to come?”

No bride wants to be having these thoughts as her wedding draws near. But even though they don’t always talk about it, sooner or later most brides do ask themselves THE BIG QUESTION: Am I doing the right thing?

Whoever comes up with a foolproof method for knowing whether you’re marrying the right person will make a mint! It’s such an important decision and it can be so confusing when the doubts arise. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules. No one can give you the answer. But I can give you some guidance on how to look for the answer. Here are some ideas to try if you’re wondering you have cold feet or wedding jitters.

First of all, you’ve got to get quiet. The buildup to a wedding can be one of the ‘noisiest’ times of life, one of the hardest times to sit quietly and listen to our inner wisdom. The psychological momentum of a wedding is very powerful. You may feel like you’re on a freight train going full speed ahead and that you’re powerless to jump off. But you’ve absolutely got to carve out some time just to think—and even more importantly—to feel.

Many divorced women—and unhappily married women–will say, “There was a little voice inside telling me I was making a mistake. But I was too caught up with the dress and everything else to really listen to it.”

Don’t be one of them. Far better that your menu or your favors aren’t perfect than that you find yourself a year from now—or 5 or 10—saying, “I think I married the wrong man.” Make a commitment to spend regular periods of time alone.

Choose a time when you’ve got at least 30 minutes of time to yourself. Imagine it’s month after you’ve come back from your honeymoon. You and your fiancé are sitting alone together in your living room. There is no more wedding planning frenzy. There is no one to make a fuss over the two of you. There are no more fittings. No more presents. No more events. Just the two of you, in the quiet of your home. How does that feel?

Wonderful or disappointing? Comforting or scary? Intimate or boring?

I’m not suggesting you have to be homebodies for the rest of your lives. Just that the essence of your relationship is the two of you alone. If that picture makes you uncomfortable in any way, you need to be very honest with yourself and explore why.

Now that you’ve imagined being alone with your fiancé, really do it! Go to a park, take a walk, do something with minimal distractions. Strange as it may seem, at some point in the wedding planning process, some couples feel like they’ve got to get reacquainted. This is particularly true if you have different perspectives on the wedding. You may feel like you’ve started to live in different worlds. (See the May 2003 article, Your Wedding, His Wedding, for a discussion of this issue.)

You need to really experience each other away from the hubbub to know how you feel.

Ask yourself if you really, truly, honestly accept your fiancé as he is right now. Many brides are unconsciously (or consciously!) on a campaign to change their fiancés. THIS DOES NOT WORK. I REPEAT, THIS DOES NOT WORK. Yes, you will adjust to each other as time goes on. You’ll get more skilled at compromising. You’ll learn how to resolve arguments more quickly and with less pain. But there are two truths that anyone embarking on marriage must understand: 1) People don’t change very much or very fast. 2) People only change if THEY want to.

Janet had been a sports aficionado since she was in her teens. Team sports, water sports, you name it, she loved it. She especially loved tennis. Her idea of the ideal vacation was—no surprise here—going to a resort with a tennis program. She ran up against reality when she started planning her honeymoon with her fiancé Gil. Gil did not want to play tennis on his honeymoon. Gil did not want to play very much tennis anytime. Gil wanted to go lie on a beach in Mexico.

Janet was crushed. She finally had to face the fact that life with Gil was not going to be filled with sports. He was just a very sweet laid back guy who was not into exercise. Looking back over their dating life, it was clear that while he was sometimes in the mood for an active weekend and she sometimes felt like just hanging out, their pictures of the ideal weekend rarely coincided. Janet needs to stop trying to turn Gil into a jock and ask herself: Can I live with this? Do all his other wonderful qualities, of which there are many, offset this one? Can I be happy doing sports with my friends? Can I sincerely let go of my drive to change him? No one can answer these questions but Janet. And she can answer them only if she takes some time and gets quiet and is very honest with herself.

All couples have “landmines,” those disagreements that are particularly intense and difficult to resolve. They often feel like they have the same argument over and over without getting ahead. Ask yourself if any of your landmines are in critical areas: money, sex, in-laws, children, or career. If so, this doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t get married. What it does mean is that you need to address the issue head-on and start making a plan for dealing with it. Some pre-marital counseling is probably in order.

When you find yourself asking THE BIG QUESTION, very likely your first impulse will be to push it out of your mind. Do yourself a favor and face it head on. If there are good reasons for your doubts, you really will be glad you knew sooner rather than later. And even if, like most brides, you’re just feeling normal wedding jitters, the best gift you can give yourself is to explore them thoroughly. Then you’ll feel sure, you’ll feel calm, and you can put your jitters aside and give yourself over to having a wonderful engagement and wedding.

Overheard at the Seattle Wedding Show…

One groom to another: “This place is wall to wall flowers, and she says she can’t find what she wants! What is she looking for? To me, they’re just flowers. To her, they mean something—what, I have no idea.”

Are there times when your fiancé sounds like this gentleman? Times when he can’t quite seem to get with the program? Times when he just doesn’t understand how important it is to have everything just right? At these times, do you feel like he doesn’t really care?

If you feel this way, you are not alone. To us, the wedding is a symbol of our love and our future. Of course, we want everything about it to be beautiful and special. We also want our fiancés to feel the same way. But the reality is that very often they don’t. Men and women are different. If you are upset with your fiancé because he doesn’t care enough about the wedding details, it’s time to take a step back and ask yourself what his attitude means to you.

The groom at the Wedding Show put his finger on a very important fact–weddings mean something different to men than they do to us. For many men, the wedding and the marriage are two completely different realities. Your fiancé may like the idea of a party. He wants his friends to be there for him and wish him well. He wants to celebrate your marriage. But his enthusiasm for marriage may or may not translate into a passion for wedding logistics. He may not see the need for symbolism in all the details the way you do. He probably doesn’t feel like his taste and skills as a host are on display in the same way you do. And frankly, he just doesn’t know what all this stuff is for, the way you do.

If your fiancé has a deep interest in evening gowns and decorating, that’s great and you can have a ball together coming up with your color scheme. But if he wasn’t interested in these things before you got engaged, why would he be interested in them now? Do you really think this means he doesn’t care about you? When you buy a house, you may or may not suddenly develop a fascination for home repairs. Does this have anything to do with how much you love your husband?

In a sense, you are lucky if this conflict has come up. Why? Because dealing with each other’s differences is one of the big challenges of marriage. You will be facing it in different forms again and again. Learning to handle your differences well is essential for a happy marriage. If you start now, you’ll find it much easier later on when you have to make decisions about work, money, and children.

Here’s a crash course in marital differences. Very often, the qualities that attract you to your partner are the very ones that later start to drive you crazy. We are often attracted to people with qualities we don’t have, so that we can have more balance in our lives.

For example, take the classic emotional differences between men and women. Women tend to have wider mood swings. They can learn from men to take things more in stride and not suffer so much from their down moods. Men, on the other hand, can learn to enjoy a richer emotional experience by being with women. Men can learn that sometimes you need to talk about your feelings. Women can learn that you don’t always have to talk about your feelings. Sometimes a movie or a game of tennis is a better idea.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? It is—until for a variety of reasons we start to want the other person to be more like us. Instead of appreciating the other person for their differences, we start to criticize them and try to change them. A wedding is often one of those times. You will have a much happier wedding, not to mention marriage, if you stop wanting to change your fiancé start focusing on how his perspective enriches your life.

Here are some ideas to try:

1. Sit down with your fiancé and ask him how he views your wedding. What is important to him? What is he enjoying? What is a burden for him? If he could have the wedding exactly as he wanted it, what would it look like?

When he talks, don’t interrupt him or disagree with him, even if he pushes some hot buttons for you. Your job is just to listen and understand his perspective. You may be surprised at how much he appreciates this and how much you learn.

Then switch places and tell him your perspective. If you have been feeling distant from him because of your disagreements, this exercise will likely bring you closer.

2. In the exercise above, your fiancé may have said some things that bother you or hurt your feelings. To begin with, don’t look at this as a problem to solve as much as an issue to explore. Try this technique from cognitive psychology to learn more about your own feelings.

Write what bothers you. Then ask yourself these questions:
What’s the evidence for this?
Is there any other way to look at this?
Am I taking something personally that really is not personal to me?

3. Choose one or two things that you would like him to be involved in that are really important to you. Tell him how you feel about them. Offer him some specific ways to help and leave it up to him to choose between them.

“I feel like I’m on an emotional roller coaster,” said Julie, four months before her wedding. “I’ve never been so happy, but then suddenly I’ll find myself in tears. Sometimes it feels like I’m about to go away and say goodbye to everyone. But we’re not going anywhere!”

What’s going on with Julie? The most natural reaction in the world. In the excitement of the wedding, we often lose track of one simple fact. A wedding is a major life transition, like going to college or having a baby. The essence of a life transition is saying goodbye to the old and hello to the new. It is inevitable that you will have feelings of sadness and loss along with the joy and excitement. This is the bride’s “emotional cocktail.” Too often brides compare their ups and downs to the pictures of pure ecstasy they see in the magazines and conclude there’s something wrong with them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The emotional cocktail can be confusing, even though you have probably experienced it many times before. If you ever have moved or changed jobs, you are familiar with the wide range of feelings that accompany any major transition. This is because all transitions create gains and losses.

Think back to how you felt when you went off to college or left home. What an adventure! You were going to live on your own, meet new people, step into a whole new world of choices and experiences! At the same time you were saying goodbye to childhood and the protection of your family. You also may have loosened ties with friends who were going in different directions. There’s no way around it—we can’t move ahead without leaving something behind.

” I felt so done with being single,” said Jan. “I was tired of the dating game and wanted a deeper relationship. I was ready for the next stage of my life, creating a family of my own. So when Max proposed, it felt absolutely right. But a few weeks later, I found myself daydreaming about the freedoms of being single, like it was some unattainable life I could never have. It was like the grass was greener on the other side of the fence, except that I had already been on the other side of the fence!”

What it comes down to is that we want change and at the same time we don’t want it. We know what we have to give up, but we can’t know exactly what we are getting in return. We are torn between embracing growth and adventure and holding onto the familiar.

All of this is perfectly natural, but it doesn’t seem natural when you’re a bride and getting the message that you’re supposed to be blissed out 24 hours a day. Natural feelings can start to feel like “forbidden feelings.”

Linda always has been a very independent woman. “As the wedding drew closer, I started to feel guarded and grouchy, not like a happy bride at all! I started to worry about how much control John was going to have over my life. How much free time would I have? Privacy? What if I couldn’t spend my money the way I liked? Can I even call it my money?”

Chances are you are looking forward to the acceptance and growth that you find only in a permanent commitment. And yet at the same time you feel nervous about losing privacy, sole control over your money, being one of the (single) gang, or freedom to travel whenever you want. If you refuse to acknowledge these “forbidden feelings,” you will be a candidate for “bridal meltdown.”

What you need most right now is to open yourself up to your contradictory feelings and accept them. It is not having feelings such as sadness that causes pain; it is fighting with yourself and your natural impulses. When you accept your feelings, you find out they are not so terrible or frightening. It’s really the taboo about having mixed feelings that is frightening. When you accept your feelings, they become part of the richness of life’s major turning points.

Right now you’re probably thinking: How can I accept feeling angry? I’m supposed to be deliriously happy! I’ve got 18 days (or 30 or 120) to get to that pinnacle of joy I’m supposed to be on! You don’t have to work so hard to make yourself feel joy. The joy will come naturally—as long as you’re not fighting yourself. If you are clamping down on your forbidden feelings, you will find yourself clamping down on your joy as well. The more you accept ALL your feelings, the more happiness you will feel—naturally.

Tips for Dealing with the emotional cocktail:

1. Name your feelings. Do you feel sad, nostalgic, scared, guilty, curious, or excited? Or all of them put together?

2. Connect with your feelings in a physical way. Sit quietly by yourself. Take a few deep breaths. What feeling comes up? Resist the urge to push it away.

Where in your body does this feeling exist? If the feeling is so big that you feel like you’re inside it, realize that your feelings are always inside you. They are a part of you, not all of you. How much space does it take up? How does it feel, physically? Breathe into that feeling.

Say: “I feel _____________ and I accept it.”

3. Write your feelings. Cover one or two pages with your feelings. Do not think of this as “journaling.” That is far too formal. Think of this as free associating on the page. This is what Natalie Goldberg means by “writing down the bones” or Julia Cameron means by “morning pages.” Just write. You will feel relief and new clarity.

4. Devote 5 minutes each day to accepting your feelings. You may do either exercise above, talk to a friend, or anything else you choose. Even this much quiet time with yourself will calm you.

The more you accept—even embrace—the emotional cocktail, the more you will enjoy this rich time in your life.

In my counseling practice, I work with couples in all stages of life. I see engaged couples and married couples who are struggling with their relationships. Very often these men and women want very different things out of life. I see men who are driven to create brilliant careers married to women who just want them home with the family. I see women bent on building their dream houses married to men who want to take it easy on the weekends. I see social butterflies married to homebodies. They are disappointed that their dreams are not coming true, and they have fallen into the habit of criticizing the dreams of their spouses.

How many of these couples do you think talked about their life goals before they got married? How many devoted time to envisioning their future? If you guessed, “Not many,” you’d be exactly right.

With 20/20 hindsight, they can see that this was a big mistake. Inevitably they say they wish they had talked openly about what they wanted and how they would get it at the beginning.

You don’t have to wait for 20/20 hindsight. You can benefit from the experience of couples who have gone before you. You can start talking with your fiancé right away about what you want out of life.

You can, but you may not. I’m well aware that once the wedding momentum takes off, it can be hard to focus on life after the wedding, even though you know how important it is. I’m also aware that you’ve probably already heard the advice I’m giving you—from books, your parents, perhaps your pastor. Rather than tell you what you should be doing—again—I’m going to help you understand the reasons why you may be putting off those crucial discussions. I’m also going to give you some tips for getting around those reasons. With more awareness of what’s stopping you and some ideas for getting started, it will be easier for you to have the necessary conversations about your future.

Reason #1: “I can barely keep up with everything I have to do now.”

Remedy: Enlist the help of your fiancé, your mother, or a trusted friend—anyone who’s good at keeping things in perspective. Ask him/her to help you do a reality check on your wedding to-do list. First, divide your list into critical tasks, such as reserving a hall, and optional tasks, such as making your own favors. If you’re like many brides, many optional tasks have started to seem like absolutely essential tasks. That’s why you need another pair of eyes to help you see the difference. Tell your helper to be tough! Most likely, you can eliminate 20% of the items on your to-do list; no one will know the difference, and you still will have a beautiful wedding.

Make a timetable for the critical tasks. Then get them out of your head and into your calendar, just as you do at work. One excellent way of getting them out of your head is to delegate. Most likely you have friends or family that would be honored to be in charge of part of your wedding.

While you’ve got your calendar out, schedule some down time. This could be a date with your fiancé, a walk, a pedicure—the only rule is there is no wedding talk allowed. You may find it hard at first, but stick with it. A break from wedding planning will slow your mind down and make you feel more ready to talk about emotional topics.

Reason #2: “I’m afraid we might find out that our goals are incompatible.”

Remedy: Realize that compatibility isn’t usually a question of black and white. Most couples have some important goals that they disagree on. The success of your marriage doesn’t depend on agreeing on everything. It depends on learning to communicate respectfully about your differences and committing to approaching your differences with creativity and an open mind. The earlier you start talking, the sooner you will learn these skills.

Of course, there are some issues of compatibility that are black and white. For example, if you want children and your fiancé doesn’t, all the creativity in the world will not satisfy both of your needs. If you find you have such a conflict, it will take courage to face the truth. Realize that you do have that courage inside you. Your courage actually will grow stronger if you seriously commit yourself to accepting the truth.

Reason #3: “I believe love will conquer all. Things will fall into place as time goes on.”

Remedy: At a conscious level, we all know this is not true. But somewhere deep inside, we may be hanging on to this belief. Get through to your inner self by doing some field research. Talk to older married couples you know. Ask them about the ups and downs of their marriages and how they got through the challenging times. Hearing about their struggles and successes first-hand will help you grasp in a deeper way what it really takes to make marriage work from day to day.

Reason #4: “When we talk about goals, we get into an argument.”

Remedy: Get some communication skills training ASAP. Begin by reading Communication in One Lesson, in the archives of this column. Then pick up the phone and make an appointment for pre-marital counseling. This is a problem you need to nip in the bud.

Don’t make envisioning your future the last item on your to-do list. Figure out the reasons why you’re not making it a priority; then use these remedies to sit down and start creating a marriage that will make you both happy.

PDF download

“I feel like I have a split personality,” said Carla. “Marrying Jack is a dream come true. But it’s not a dream for Kim and Dan at all. I’m torn between being blissfully happy and wracked with guilt. Carla is not alone. Brides with kids often feel torn between their wedding dreams and the complicated realities of being a mom.

One reason for this is that our images of weddings have not kept pace with reality. A wedding in which one or both partners have children is still often referred to as “non-traditional.” Yet, in “The Enlightened Stepmother,” Perdita Kirkness Norwood points out that about 40% of all marriages are now remarriages for one of the adults. Most of these men and women have children. Brides with kids are our new tradition, but our wedding culture still clings to the image of the young, innocent bride, being given away by her parents.

According to Carla, “Getting married the second time is an entirely different experience. You still want to be the bride, you want it to be all about you. But when you’re a mom, it’s always about the kids, right? Otherwise, what kind of mom are you?”

With a wedding in their future, Carla’s children needed some extra attention. Yours probably will, too. Expect them to a wide range of feelings, from excitement to fear to despondence. It is always a huge adjustment for children to see their parents with a new partner.

Here are some suggestions I gave Carla for keeping her balance and making the most of being a bride with kids.

Give It Time
The first thing Carla needed to do was accept that each person in her family would experience the transition differently. She needed to give her fiancé and her kids the freedom to move through it in their own way and at their own pace.

As a bride, your transition is relatively simple and sweet. You love your fiancé, you love your children, and you really love the idea of all of you being a family.

Your children’s transition is tougher, because did not choose it. Most likely, the idea of sharing you is daunting. For many kids, a parent’s remarriage puts an end to their fantasy that their parents will reconcile. This means that they will be facing your divorce again, in a sense. They will be afraid that your new husband will make changes in the household that they do not like. At the same time, they may like your fiancé and have positive feelings about your marriage. This adds up to a lot of different feelings for a child. They need time to sort them all out.

Carla found out that she was making one of the most common mistakes: putting her fiancé in the role of disciplinarian before he really had a relationship with her kids. For a parent who’s been doing it all alone, it can seem like a godsend to have help! However, it caused resentment in the children and actually got in the way of their developing a close relationship with Jack. They got along much better when Carla took charge again.

Developing routines, trust, and affection takes time and the timeline is different for each family. Carla tried to make some of the household changes before the wedding, to avoid making her fiancé look like the bad guy. For example, she planned to have Kim and Dan go to bed earlier, so she and Jack can have some couple time in the evenings. She decided to move the bedtimes up a couple months before the wedding.

Get informed
Forming a stepfamily is a greater challenge than forming a first-time family. Couples routinely tend to underestimate the difficulties and then feel blindsided by problems later on. The importance of preparation cannot be stressed enough. This can take the form of reading, going to classes, or seeing a counselor.

At first, this was the last thing Carla wanted to do. She wanted to just enjoy her engagement and let the serious stuff wait until after the wedding. But her kids wouldn’t let her wait! They were “acting out,” which made it hard for her to enjoy anything and so she did her homework.

” It’s a good thing I did. Now that I know what to expect and we’ve made a few adjustments, the kids have settled down and we’re all getting along better. I know we’ll have challenges but we’re getting off to a good start. No more split personality—I can be a good mom AND a happy bride.”

Resources for Brides with Kids

• Weddings, a Family Affair: The New Etiquette for Second Marriages and Couples with Divorced Parents, by Marjorie Engel, Wilshire Publications, 1998.
• The Enlightened Stepmother, by Perdita Kirkness Norwood, Avon Books, 1999. (Great advice for all parents in a stepfamily.)
• Making Your Second Marriage a First-Class Success, by Doug and Naomi Moseley, Prima Publishing, 1998.
• Stepfamily Association of America, Inc., 800 735-0329 – email: stepfamFS@aol.com – website: http://www.stepfam.org/.