You’re Engaged! Congratulations! What Should You Do First?

He finally popped the question with a sparkly diamond ring and you’re officially engaged.
What’s the very first thing you should do?

Since I’m a wedding photographer, you’d probably half expect my answer to be: book an amazing wedding photographer!
But, I might shock you here, that should not be your “Step 1”. In fact, I’m going to suggest not booking anything – venue, ceremony site, DJ, florist – nothing until you’ve completed this first step. Even before you consider dates, your budget, your theme & colors, there’s something else I’d highly recommend doing.

Set a good foundation

It’s super easy to get swept away in wedding planning. The dress, the centerpieces, the guest list, the transportation, the bridal party – the list goes on and on. It can all be extremely overwhelming. There are fabulous checklists out there (Wedding Wire has some amazing ones) to help you stay on track & to remember everything. Wedding planning is not a race that you need to run alone, there are tons of resources out there to help you! Take advantage of anything that you think might help!

However, before you jump into the deep end of the pool & get completely over your head with wedding planning, how about considering the bigger picture?

Plan for your marriage – not just the wedding

The season of life that is your engagement might feel like forever. Once you determine your wedding date, the countdown will begin ticking, and some days, it will seem like that countdown is getting longer rather than shorter. I know! I was there once! Derrick & I had a long-distance engagement and it was tough! All we wanted was to be together & our wedding date simply could not arrive fast enough.

Here’s the crazy part though (and the piece that a lot of people don’t think about):
Your engagement season might last 6 months if it’s short, 1 year if it’s average, 2 years if it’s long, but your marriage has the potential to last for the next 50, 60, or 70+ years!

Let that sink in, because that’s a long time!

So now, view your wedding day through the goggles of the long term. What suddenly seems more important? The type of ribbon your bouquets are tied with or your relationship for the next several decades?

Remember why you’re getting married in the first place

It’s not that the little details on a wedding day aren’t important. Most brides have been dreaming about & mentally planning their wedding for years (maybe even their entire lives). However, before you run to your Pinterest board & begin furiously planning the perfect Pinterest wedding, step back & look at the big picture.

Here are some ideas to build a strong foundation for your upcoming marriage (that don’t really have much to do with actual wedding planning):

Agree on open & honest communication

The coming weeks and months of wedding planning is going to be a challenge – one you’ve never faced before. There will be bumps in the road – whether it’s the relationships with your family, budget constraints, guest list problems – planning a wedding is hard and a lot of work! But planning a wedding with the person you love the most in the world can be a fun challenge. Agree to not hide anything from the other person, to be honest with each other, and to stand by each other no matter what. These qualities that you practice during your engagement, will carry through to a strong & healthy marriage.

Make a plan to go on dates (coffee dates, dessert dates, movie dates)

Leave the cell phones tucked away & the wedding binder at home. Determine to go on weekly or monthly dates to keep connected (completely separate from wedding talk). Remember just a few weeks ago when you were “just dating”? Yep, go back & pretend like you still are. Again, these qualities that you practice during your engagement, will carry through to a strong & healthy marriage.

Agree to get marriage counseling

If you think you are probably going to be getting married in a church, marriage counseling is typically a prerequisite of the church officiating your ceremony. Even if you don’t intend to get married in a traditional church, marriage counseling is profitable. No matter how long you’ve been together, a good counselor can help you sort through uncomfortable and controversial topics. It’s much better to talk about them sooner, rather than later, and with a good counselor to help guide the conversation, it will draw you closer together than ever before. Again, these qualities that you practice during your engagement, will carry through to a strong & healthy marriage. Who says marriage counseling is just for newly engaged folks? Or marriages in trouble? I know couples who are having absolutely no problems, but will attend a counseling session on occasion to simply act as a “checkup”: Is our relationship healthy? What can we work on?

Don’t forget to keep falling in love

I know, you don’t think you can fall any deeper in love than you currently are. Being newly engaged – the world is all sunshine & rainbows & lollipops. There’s this crazy thing about love though – it has the potential to keep growing: deepening & widening. I’m sure you’ve heard couples who have been married for 30 years declare that they love each other more today than the day they got married. That doesn’t seem possible, does it? But, that’s the crazy thing about love! So, don’t let the overwhelm & challenge of wedding planning stifle that love. Determine to keep it alive & growing, no matter what. And, you guessed it, these qualities that you practice during your engagement, will carry through to a strong & healthy marriage.

I dare you to pour more intent, thought, and effort into your relationship with your fiance and the foundation of your marriage, and let the wedding take it’s rightful 2nd place. Because there will always be something. Today it’s wedding planning, but tomorrow it’ll be a baby, and the next day it’ll be unexpected bills, and the next day will bring something completely new. Build your marriage on a strong foundation now, so that in 70 years, you can declare that your love has never been stronger. Leave a legacy for your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to look up to in awe, as something to aspire to.