Couple & relationship

Between the yes and the day lies a stretch of time nobody talks about much: you are not only planning a party, you are making more joint decisions in a few months than in the years before. Most conflicts in planning are not questions of taste but unclarified responsibilities — who decides what alone, and what genuinely belongs to both of you.

Then comes a third party nobody invited: family expectations. They rarely arrive as a demand and almost always as an assumption, and they are easiest to handle while they are not yet a promise in the room. An early "we're doing that differently" costs less than a late one.

And then there is the day itself, of which the two of you notice remarkably little if you have taken on everything. This section is about what happens between you — dividing the work, the recurring flashpoints, time as a couple during the planning year, and the question of what you each expected of the other and how much of it was ever said out loud.