1) Voice your expectations. I’ve heard that success in marriage (and many other relationships) comes from knowing and understanding each other’s expectations, and that couldn’t be more true. I’m prone to avoid conflict, and I’m also prone to think Shadi and I are on the same page all the time (because obviously we’re getting cream colored roses!) but that’s just not true. Unless I explain the things I’ve dreamt of for our wedding day, there will never be an opportunity for him to reciprocate his opinions or support mine.

2) Evaluate what you value most. For us, it came out of a perspective of longevity. I obviously valued photography, but we also valued what would strengthen our relationship later on after our wedding day would be long gone. We want to be able to look at pictures and watch a video of our wedding that brings us back to those moments, back to when we first became a married couple. We also value having our friends and family celebrate us, be involved in the process, and get to feel like they are apart of not just an event, but the beginning of our marriage.

3) Schedule time for rest. I read a couple weeks ago that “you can’t hustle without the rest, and you can’t rest without the hustle.” This applies to so many things for me personally- building a business, planning a wedding, and still keeping up with friends and family. This past weekend we could have taken a Saturday to relax, but instead we shopped for furniture for 8 hours. EIGHT. HOURS. We literally came home for a lunch break as if we were working for the day. What could have been a lazy Saturday turned into a full work day of evaluating what we would need 5 months from now, something we could have separated into much smaller chunks.

4) Enjoy the journey. The first (and second…) times I tried on wedding dresses felt more task oriented than like a purely fun outing. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun feeling beautiful and I was cared for so well by both places I shopped at. But I was more focused on accomplishing something on the list, not necessarily taking in the moment. So for other plans, I’ve tried to take a step back and enjoy it more fully.

5) You are a team– delegate tasks to each other and trust in the others ability to help. Companies specialize different tasks for a reason, and we’ve just now gotten to separate different tasks based on our strengths. It was a huge relief realizing that we are sharing the load, and we’re in it together!

It’s going to be okay. (That was a phrase me and my college roommate wanted to make a huge poster of.) At the end of the day, we will be married and if things fall apart, we will still be beginning our marriage 🙂