FH brushes off planning...

rainalame · October 2013

Our wedding is next September, but I'm already starting to get things together. I am SUPER excited for our wedding!! However, any time I try to get FH to contribute, or give me any ideas, he brushes it off or says we have plenty of time, or just doesn't answer me. I got him (after extensive nagging) to help figure out where we wanted our reception to be and what theme and the catering, but everything else he is still holding back on... Has anyone else had this problem? I'm getting a little discouraged about it.

mscearce · October 2013

Honestly guys usually do not care about this.. it is drilled into their brain that it is the girls job and they are to "show up"

Atleast that is how it is here...

Then it is all on the girl and the bridesmaids again their job is to buy a dress and show up making it all up to the bride...

What has helped me (one my bridesmaids & moh live in different states and my parents are a pain and too picky) I give an A or B option and ask which he likes best... then I go from there... only bring up things you really need help on...

climbingsingle · October 2013

I think sometimes the problem might be that men don't understand/realize that a lot of these things need to be booked way in advance. My FI certainly didn't. He's never been married or planned a wedding before. I had to explain to him that the venue, photographer, etc. all needed to be booked sooner rather than later. Once he understood, he really got involved in the planning with me.

Maggie0829 · October 2013

The only thing my H cared about was the food, the booze, the music and the venue (he really wanted to get married in Ravens stadium so that is what we did).

He did not care about the color scheme. I doubt he would have cared about a theme if we had had one. he didn't care about the flowers or decor or linens or invitations. I would still share with him my ideas and options that I had narrowed down but 99% of the time he would say "whatever you want is fine with me."

If your FI is not really into the whole wedding planning process then don't try and force him. It will just make things less fun and more stressful. The best thing you can do is ask him what things about weddings that he does care about and get him involved with that, if he wants.

itzMS · October 2013

The key for me like a pp mentioned was ASKING him to help and contribute. Being a bossy nag won't serve you well.

"Honey, what do you think about X for a venue?"

"Is having an open bar in our budget and is it important to you?"

"Dinner option X costs X dollars and dinner option Y costs Y dollars. Should we go with one or both?"

I took care of setting up a lot of the appointments...but he knew to always check our shared calendar.

Be a team, not a boss.

mscearce · October 2013

Too add to my post.... cake, venue, photographer, venue, dj, video, and so on are things I asked if he would help me decide... Those are points that you both want to make sure you get EVERYTHING out of.

PolarBearFitz · October 2013

Maggie0829 said:

The only thing my H cared about was the food, the booze, the music and the venue (he really wanted to get married in Ravens stadium so that is what we did).

He did not care about the color scheme. I doubt he would have cared about a theme if we had had one. he didn't care about the flowers or decor or linens or invitations. I would still share with him my ideas and options that I had narrowed down but 99% of the time he would say "whatever you want is fine with me."

If your FI is not really into the whole wedding planning process then don't try and force him. It will just make things less fun and more stressful. The best thing you can do is ask him what things about weddings that he does care about and get him involved with that, if he wants.

This is your answer ^ Nagging about wedding planning sounds like sucking the fun out of your engagement. My FI has actually been pretty helpful when I've asked but he is a guy's guy and really just cares that we are getting married. He wants to talk about cars and not so much linens or colors. He did all the leg work of asking my parents for my hand and saving for the ring. He is the reason this is all happening so I let him be him and give input. We discuss all the big stuff and if he doesn't have an opinion then it just is what it is. (BTW we are also getting married in September 2014)

melbelleup · October 2013

Ugh. Ironically my FI really wants to help. His aunt (who I don't get along with) keeps telling him that he shouldn't help and it's my decision and he just stands there... uhmmm interesting. Like when we went to taste test cake and look at our venue... she couldn't understand why he wanted to be involved. Oh well! But that being said, he mainly cares about booze, chocolate fountain and cake. One thing FI really enjoyed was registry shopping.. but I think that's because he cooks more than me and enjoys it.

AprilH81 · October 2013

FI has been married before so he REALLY doesn't want to be involved in planning the wedding. I asked him to do some of the big stuff with me and otherwise I just made the decision myself or asked him if he preferred "A" or "B".

He went to all of the venue visits and cake tastings with me, otherwise I've set everything else up by myself. I just try to keep his likes in mind when I make the decisions.

mmm4763 · October 2013

My FH has definite opinions on things but I have found that I am more successful with presenting options rather than open ended questions (b/c then he would do nothing to "help" and I would get frustrated). Example from this week: Do you prefer a round cake or a square cake or do you not care? Square. (So I go look up some things I like, present him my favorite first...I really like that, let's do that...DONE)

grumbledore · October 2013

I think it's kind of ridiculous for a man to expect to do nothing. There's so much that goes into planning a wedding. And it takes two to get married.

I would be pissed if my FH didn't help to be honest. I didn't expect him to care about stuff like centerpieces (turns out he does, more than I do) but I do expect him to take part in choosing venues/dj/food/what we wear/etc.

southernbelle0915 · October 2013

grumbledore said:

I think it's kind of ridiculous for a man to expect to do nothing. There's so much that goes into planning a wedding. And it takes two to get married.

I would be pissed if my FH didn't help to be honest. I didn't expect him to care about stuff like centerpieces (turns out he does, more than I do) but I do expect him to take part in choosing venues/dj/food/what we wear/etc.

This.

I can't relate to the sentiment that the guy doesn't help at all. So what if two gay men are getting married? It just doesn't happen because they're dudes and it's not "their" role to plan a wedding? Sorry, but IMHO a penis is not an excuse to not help out.

Now if the groom wants a really intimate wedding without any frills, that's a different story. For example, if his vision is a backyard bbq with an intimate group of family/friends, while the bride's vision is 300 people in a fancy venue, then the two of you should compromise and come up with something you can both agree on.... And then work together to plan it.

WinstonsGirl · October 2013

Agreed. DH actually found our venue as he wasn't happy with the ones I was looking at. He also insisted on chair covers last minute cos he thought they would look nicer. What a Groomzilla!!

For a lot of smaller, not so important things though, I gave him a choice - Do you like A or B?? If he's not interested in planning, give him 2-3 options to pick from and leave it at that. Then, he gets some input but doesn't have to do the legwork if he's not interested.

blueobsidian · October 2013

ClimbingBrideNY said:

I think sometimes the problem might be that men don't understand/realize that a lot of these things need to be booked way in advance. My FI certainly didn't. He's never been married or planned a wedding before. I had to explain to him that the venue, photographer, etc. all needed to be booked sooner rather than later. Once he understood, he really got involved in the planning with me.

This was exactly what is happening with us. When we first started talking about venues, FI thought it was way too early. But we were initially looking at a vineyard for next September (right in the middle of their busy season). He isn't a planner and didn't understand why I wanted to look at it 15 months out. So, I decided to email them and ask about their availability for the month and how far out people normally booked.

When he saw that there were already a couple weddings booked for that month, he realized how important it was to get the big things locked down. He's not a guy that cares about flowers or decor, but he does have specific opinions on food and venue. Showing him that we needed to get those things figured out before they were booked helped. He knows that he needs to think ahead to have his first choices.

allelsefaild · October 2013

FI wanted input into everything, but half the time when I told him something, all I got was "that's stupid". For example, "Where would you like to have the rehearsal dinner?" "Why would we have a rehearsal dinner? That's stupid."

He decided he wanted to design the STDs as he's very good with Photoshop. But he was too busy playing NS2 every night so they never got sent.

Granted, he did make some nice invites and he was pretty excited about having a guitar as our guestbook and making the table names names of bands we've seen together.

I also had issues with him not understanding that we needed to book vendors as far out as possible. He couldn't understand why I was freaking out that I didn't have a DJ at the 5 month mark (thankfully we did get one booked).

HisGirlFriday13 · October 2013

grumbledore said:

I think it's kind of ridiculous for a man to expect to do nothing. There's so much that goes into planning a wedding. And it takes two to get married.

I would be pissed if my FH didn't help to be honest. I didn't expect him to care about stuff like centerpieces (turns out he does, more than I do) but I do expect him to take part in choosing venues/dj/food/what we wear/etc.

This, exactly. DH cared about certain aspects -- the food, the cake -- that I expected he'd care about. He booked the photographer (a co-worker of his), but asked me first. I booked the DJ (a friend of mine) but I asked him first.

He and I had basically equal say in those vendors -- there were more photos I wanted taken, but there were more songs he wanted played at the reception.

I picked the flowers with my mom, who paid for them, with DH's caveat of "no roses."

We made most decisions jointly, and the ones we didn't weren't major ones -- i.e., I decided without asking him that the BMs were going to wear black shoes. (I didn't see how he needed a vote in that decision anyway.)

We had a fairly short engagement -- just shy of 10 months -- so DH was really on-board with doing the planning early so we could nail down the stuff we wanted.

SBmini · October 2013

Don't expect him to care as much as you do. I learned quickly that he had no vision and had never thought about the wedding. It was tough pulling information from him. But I started asking very clear questions to figure out what he wanted. Then I did the research and showed him what I found to get the thumbs up. If he didn't like something I found I asked him why and used that feed back to find something that suited his taste better. It took some time to figure out a balance, and it hasn't been without frustration, but it's working now. And he tries to help where he can.

He's found the DJ and negotiated pricing with some vendors. He picked the suit color as is tradition. The caterer was easy since they did a friend's wedding and we loved the food, so that we both agreed on. And his one "must haves" is a traditional Armenian reception entrance, which we'll be doing. Pretty much everything else has been all me though.

thisismynickname2 · October 2013

OP, I was in that boat. It took a screaming match to sort it out. His parents are contributing the largest portion of funds so what I finally screamed that got through to him is that I can't be in charge of reading his and his mom's mind and spend their money without his help. He really did assume wedding planning was my job.
What helps is the knot's checklist. We figured out a lot early, so once the 12 mo mark hit, I said, "all we gave to do between now and Christmas is find an officiant." He's a planner, so telling him the major benchmarks let's him contribute in a timely and organized manner rather than me randomly nagging him. Good luck!

katieg520 · October 2013

I would ask him what he cares about and what he doesn't care about. The things that matter to him, ask him. Otherwise, just let him be.

arrippa · October 2013

Wow, I guess I am lucky but my FI has been so helpful in planning. We are deciding everything together and I feel as close as we are, planning our wedding has brought us even closer.

ameraznhuney · October 2013

I had a tough time getting my FI involved in the planning process too. I tried to get his opinion on a lot of things but ended up getting really frustrated with him because he couldn't make up his mind or would simply say "whatever you want", which didn't help at all.

So..what I did was I would narrow my choices down to two that I loved and would be ok with either one, and presented him with those two options. "Here honey, you get to pick option A or option B, that's it..no ifs, ands, or buts", it worked out really well! You could try that. Explain to him that it's both of ya'lls day and that you really want him to have some sort of say in something, but make it easy on him too by offering just the two options.

CLI242009 · October 2013

moemacWed30594 said:

Wow, I guess I am lucky but my FI has been so helpful in planning. We are deciding everything together and I feel as close as we are, planning our wedding has brought us even closer.

We're doing some DIY projects for the wedding and he's helping out with that. Everything else he says "I want you to be happy. As long as I'm married to you at the end of the day and you are happy I don't care" He'll say a couple of things are important to him (like needs to get married by a catholic priest, no rap played at the reception, etc.)

So yeah you're lucky haha

maryemoo · November 2013

CLI242009 said:

moemacWed30594 said:

Wow, I guess I am lucky but my FI has been so helpful in planning. We are deciding everything together and I feel as close as we are, planning our wedding has brought us even closer.

We're doing some DIY projects for the wedding and he's helping out with that. Everything else he says "I want you to be happy. As long as I'm married to you at the end of the day and you are happy I don't care" He'll say a couple of things are important to him (like needs to get married by a catholic priest, no rap played at the reception, etc.)

So yeah you're lucky haha

This is my FI exactly. "As long as it's pretty and as long as we're married at the end I don't care." I'll persuade him in to helping with some things but as he says, "you're the one that's good at all that planning stuff so I just figured you'd want to do it all since you're so particular."

FH brushes off planning...

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