Mother of the Groom: Everything You Need to Know to Enjoy the Best Wedding Ever
288
Mother of the Groom: Everything You Need to Know to Enjoy the Best Wedding Ever
288Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
• Celebrating the announcement in style
• Sharing the spotlight with the bride’s mom
• Budgeting your time as well as your money
• Tracking down the best locations, food, and flowers
• Dressing for the special day
• Welcoming the bride into your family
• And much more!
Filled with worksheets, checklists, and resources of all kinds, Mother of the Groom is a fully loaded planner providing everything you’ll need to know to make your son’s big day an occasion everybody will cherish for years to come.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806526454 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2007 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 678,130 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.13(w) x 8.13(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Let the Celebrations Begin!
You may have known it was coming. Perhaps you knew your son bought the engagement ring, and you were in on the secret that he's been hiding that little velvet ring box in his sock drawer for the past two months. Maybe he even solicited your advice as he planned the proposal to his bride-to-be. ("Fill the room with white roses and pillar candles, and don't forget to get down on one knee! Chivalry counts!") It's then a waiting game until your son and his new fiancée burst through your front door, glowing and radiant as they share their wonderful news with you. The ring hasn't even been on the bride-to-be's finger for a full day yet, and here she is holding out her hand as if she had a fresh manicure, hardly able to speak coherently. The excitement is palpable and contagious. Soon, there are tears in your eyes too, and you're so excited you can't speak either.
This is a special moment. There are few in life so electrically charged with pure happiness and joy. So, that means it's time to celebrate.
Sharing with Bride and Groom
If you were in the know ... if you were privy to the date, time, and place of your son's proposal and have just been waiting at home, watching the clock, for the newly engaged couple to come through that door, then you might have prepared for a welcome celebration. Perhaps you chilled a top-notch bottle of champagne, spent the day making a delicious meal, or stopped in at the bakery for a cake. Time to fire up the espresso machine, and it's a party!
If the surprise was kept even from you, then be spontaneous! Call your other kids to come over, load everyone into cars, and go out to dinner! (By the way, if the "big moment" has already passed and you didn't celebrate immediately, it's not too late. Call the couple and take them out for a congratulatory meal or drinks now.)
Whenever and however your first celebration with the happy couple takes place, go the extra mile and make it special. Bring flowers for the bride-to-be (she might have a bouquet for you, too!), make your son's favorite meal (the one he requests for his birthday dinners). Choose the best Hallmark card out there and inscribe your most heartfelt wishes, congratulations, and perhaps even a gem of advice from Mom. From this moment on, every special touch you offer becomes part of their forever-cherished memories of the best time of their life together.
Remember, this first celebration with the couple doesn't have to be an all-out, expensive affair. There will be plenty of pricey, fancy parties later (like the rehearsal dinner). This is a celebration with more heart than art, more personality than price. It can be cocktails by your home hearth, drinks at a jazz club, even a laid-back backyard barbecue. All that matters is that it reflects a sense of home and family to the groom and his new bride-to-be.
Meet the Folks
In today's wedding scenarios, the couple's sets of parents might have already met, and may be close friends already who socialize as if the bride and groom are already married. Or, since we do live in a global society where a bride from one state might be marrying a groom from another state (or country!), the parents might not have met in advance of the wedding plans. In the case of truly international love stories, they might not even meet until the wedding weekend.
If the engagement means that you'll be meeting the bride's family for the first time, this is an important celebration. The bride and groom are bringing their two sides of the future family together, as you're all going to be one big happy family ... hopefully. We'll get into the challenges of working with the bride's family in the next chapter, but for now we'll deal with the celebration at hand. You're going to be partners with the bride's family. Not just for the wedding, but for every blessing to come in the future: your grandchildren, the couple's new homes, trading off holidays spent together. These other parents, the bride's parents, are going to be in your life, so here's where you start off that new relationship with a flourish.
Before any of the big, official engagement celebrations begin, even if you've known the bride's family for years, it's a wonderful idea to have a special celebration dinner with the couple, the bride's family, and all of the bride's and groom's siblings. Call this an "inner circle" party where the wine can flow, and you all can bask in the glow of the couple's great news together before the preliminary discussions of wedding plans, budgeting, and who's going to do what for the wedding. It will get crazy very soon, so take the initiative to gather close family together for a shared celebration dinner. Ideas for this gathering include:
* Informal at-home dinner, cooked by you
* Informal at-home dinner, catered
* Dinner out at a formal restaurant
* Dinner out at a family-style restaurant
* Dinner out at a sushi restaurant
* Dinner out at a tapas restaurant (very hot right now!)
* Dinner out at a fondue restaurant (also very hot right now!)
* Dessert and champagne party at your house
* Wine and cheese party at your house
* Brunch out at a restaurant, or catered/homemade at your house
* Drinks at a jazz club
Make the setting, meal, and celebration something different, something that will please the guests and make this an occasion to remember.
And yes, after this dinner is when the first official planning conversations might take place, especially if you or the bride's parents have had to travel far to attend, and this is the best and most efficient time to set the foundation for the wedding plans with everyone face to face. So enjoy the celebration, and then move on to start talking about how the couple wishes to divide the wedding plans among everyone, how budget will be handled, and also — most important — so the bride and groom can share with you the their wedding ideas. Will it be outdoors? A destination wedding? A traditional wedding? This meeting is where you will find out. Some tips to ensure that it goes smoothly (share these with the groom's father and any stepparents if that applies, so that they may go into this meeting well-prepared for the diplomacy required):
Ask the bride and groom to begin sharing their wishes for and plans about the wedding.
Offer your ideas when asked.
Remember that body language speaks louder than words. If you don't like what you're hearing — from the couple or from the bride's parents — just remain neutral. You can speak with the bride and groom later. Eye-rolling or obvious signs of impatience or frustration (especially if you're not so fond of the bride's parents, which can be the case) will only create problems.
Again, flip to chapter 2 for all you need to know about working with others. I wanted you to be prepared for some "shop talk" at this initial celebration, but otherwise the mood should be celebratory, relaxed, and tension-free. If others seem to be stepping over the line, you can win big sainthood points by interrupting to steer the occasion back to its true nature: a party. Time for dessert!
Engagement Parties
Traditionally, and even with the big shift in who's planning and paying for weddings these days, the bride's family usually handles the engagement party — that is, if you're all living in the same geographical area. If they're in one state, they can have their own engagement party for the couple, and you can hold a separate engagement party with your own guest list. Dual parties in your own time zones mean that the bride and groom's bridal party members from both regions can more easily attend a celebration in the couple's honor.
The style and formality of the party you give is, of course, up to you. Some parents of the groom love being able to host a formal party in their homes, or out at a restaurant or hotel ballroom. There's also plenty of more informal party-giving such as backyard barbecues or picnics at a local park, something easier on the wallet. You do have a wedding to plan, after all.
That said, you should also know that many brides and grooms choose not to have an engagement party. They might see it as an unnecessary burden on their guests if they ask them to block off time in their busy schedules, travel, and buy a gift for this official party. For some couples, it's just too much, and they really don't want or need an official engagement party. It's enough that they celebrated with their closest family and bridal party members, and that the shower and the rehearsal dinner are still to come. So, again, before you start to plan an engagement party, be sure it's something the bride and groom want.
Newspaper Announcements
Submitting the couple's official engagement photo and brief bios to the local newspaper used to be the big way to share the good news. Most couples stick with tradition and submit their basic information via the newspaper's semi-strict format and somewhat bland wording for all the town to see, but many more couples these days are taking the public announcement a big leap further. They're going online ...
Wedding Web Sites
Oprah has her own Web site. So does Bed Bath & Beyond. And now your son and his bride can be the stars of their own personalized, all-about-us wedding Web site. They can create their own site featuring their official engagement portrait plus additional photos of themselves from the night of the engagement, their baby pictures, snapshots from vacations, and so on. They can post the story of how they met, how they fell in love, how your son proposed. They can even arrange the site to play a video of the actual proposal. It's the twenty-first-century answer to the wedding announcement, with special effects and all. And you can help make it happen for them. More and more parents of brides and grooms are buying the happy couple a year's worth of wedding Web site service, where they can share their stories and all the must-have information the guests will need. It's a keepsake and a planning tool, not to mention the best way possible for them to share their wedding news with their far-flung friends and family.
Check out www.wedstudio.com, one of the top sites where couples can build, design, write, and post their own wedding Web sites. WedStudio.com's vice president, Krista Meikle, has this to say about what such a site can do for the couple: "Wedding Web sites are a great way for brides and grooms to announce their engagement and upcoming wedding. A personal wedding Web site by WedStudio.com provides the bride and groom with the ability to share their traditions and special moments as well as providing one place for all of their friends and family to enjoy." With a WedStudio Web site, the bride and groom can:
* Announce: Tell friends and family they're engaged and getting married.
* Inform: Give guests the information they need to ensure a stress-free visit.
* Share: Post photographs and share special moments with loved ones.
* RSVP: Save time and money by getting RSVPs online.
* Connect: Provide local city, hotel, and site contact information for out-of-town guests to arrange their travel plans.
* Register: Link to online retailers and provide guests easy access to registries.
"WedStudio.com, a leading provider of personal wedding Web sites, makes it easy for even those that are not so computer savvy to purchase a wedding Web site subscription as a gift. It's as simple as filling out a form, and then WedStudio will e-mail your gift to the recipient."
Throughout the coming months of planning, this Web site will be a fun place for the bride and groom to record all the goings-on, a great way for their friends to share in their joy, and also a monumental timesaver and stress reliever — you won't have to provide directions and details to the 150 people on the guest list, individually or through a mass mailing. The guests just go to the site, point and click, and they find all the directions and information they need. They can contact the hotel to request a crib for their room; they can find the bride's registry information. Simple as that. No worries for you or for the bride and groom.
Even better, my recent survey said that of the 80 percent of today's grooms participating and partnering in the wedding plans, most of the men said they loved creating and managing the wedding Web site, updating it, posting new photos ... using their hi-tech smarts to show their enthusiasm about the wedding (and the bride) as they were never able to before. So if you give the bride and groom their own Web site to enjoy and share, you may also be giving the groom a place to shine.
Celebrating on Your Own
The happy couple has left the building and now comes a warm and wonderful moment during which you can share a private toast with the groom's father. After all, this is the start of a new phase in your lives. You've done a wonderful job raising your son, and he's about to embark on a fabulous adventure.
Congratulations, Mom. Here's a toast to you as well.
CHAPTER 2Where Do You Come In?
SO, WHERE DO I BEGIN? you might be wondering.
Even though you know mothers of the groom are more involved in the planning process, the exact size and scope of your role, your exact assignments and responsibilities, will be determined by the bride and groom. This is true even if you're paying for a good chunk of the wedding.
That's right ... the old adage sung by many a later-resented parent, the battle cry of "I'm paying for it, so I make the decisions" is gone, gone, gone. Today's brides and grooms are not kids, and they'll just as likely cut you out of the entire planning process if you try such a time-honored power play. It just doesn't work anymore.
Today's mothers of the groom are far more gracious and respectful. Even if they've contributed a boatload of cash for the wedding, they know it's the bride and groom's day to plan. Since you're gracious and respectful, your response is going to be a good-natured "How can I help?"
I can't emphasize enough that deferring to the couple is key.
Here's where you will all work out who will do what for the wedding and everything leading up to it. You're setting the foundation — a solid foundation — for the process ahead of you, so that it will turn out fabulously in the end. Right here is where the bride and groom, you, the mother of the bride, the fathers and various stepparents perhaps all sit down to break down the enormous wedding-planning task into bite-size pieces, each planning detail dealt out to the eagerly waiting hands of the parents. But be forewarned: Things can get a little bit tricky.
Bewareof the Spell
People can get very possessive and territorial over who gets to handle certain wedding tasks — often the high-profile ones, like the cake and the entertainment, the things the guests will notice most. I've seen sets of parents who got along like best friends for years suddenly turn into snarling pit bulls brawling over something as simple as ordering the wedding favors (i.e., "It has to be traditional candy-coated almonds for good luck!" "No, it has to be Godiva chocolate! It's elegant!" "Oh, so your precious elegance means more than our family tradition?!" "You are a terrible person!" "No, you are a terrible person!" Usually, they don't say "terrible person" but something more colorful — you get the picture.) Veins throb, voices are raised higher, and hands are clenched, as former allies start snatching assignments away from each other like they're playing the Road Rage version of Go Fish. Everyone loses their minds over who gets "the best assignment" and who's stuck with "the raw deal." And the bride and groom sit there stupefied while their parents turn their wedding plans into a game of high-stakes poker.
It's like a spell descends upon them. Afterward, stumbling out to their cars after the irate groom and the tearful bride have thrown the bickering parents out, they think ... "What happened back there? I can't believe I lost my mind like that." That's the Spell.
Weddings have a way of making even the calmest person — mother or bride — transform. In the media, they call this new creature Bridezilla or Momzilla, and neither one is a pretty sight. So what's the solution? How do you prevent such a metamorphosis? It's a two-shot solution: preparation and understanding, with a dash of good communication thrown on top.
Here's where you all start to prepare, so that you understand what the bride and groom want, and open up the doors to good communication as you make the first important decisions for the wedding.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Mother of the Groom"
by .
Copyright © 2005 Sharon Naylor.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Also by,
Title Page,
Dedication,
Preface,
Acknowledgments,
PART ONE - Pre-Planning,
CHAPTER 1 - Let the Celebrations Begin!,
CHAPTER 2 - Where Do You Come In?,
CHAPTER 3 - Works Well with Others,
CHAPTER 4 - When Money Becomes an Issue,
PART TWO - Getting Into the Details: The Ceremony and Wedding Day Plans,
CHAPTER 5 - So, Have You Set a Date Yet?,
CHAPTER 6 - Location Scouting,
CHAPTER 7 - Planning the Ceremony,
CHAPTER 8 - Invitations and Printed Cards,
CHAPTER 9 - Bouquets, Corsages, and Boutonnieres,
CHAPTER 10 - Capturing the Moment,
CHAPTER 11 - Riding in Style,
CHAPTER 12 - A Place to Sleep,
PART THREE - All About the Reception,
CHAPTER 13 - A Beautiful Room,
CHAPTER 14 - Everything Is Delicious!,
CHAPTER 15 - Putting On a Show,
CHAPTER 16 - A Little Something to Take Home,
CHAPTER 17 - Gifts and Grand Gestures,
PART FOUR - You Look Beautiful,
CHAPTER 18 - Your Dress for the Day,
CHAPTER 19 - Beautiful Touches,
CHAPTER 20 - Keep Stress at Bay,
PART FIVE - The Wedding Weekend,
CHAPTER 21 - Wedding-Weekend Activities,
CHAPTER 22 - The Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner,
CHAPTER 23 - Before the Wedding,
CHAPTER 24 - During the Wedding,
CHAPTER 25 - After the Wedding,
Appendix 1 - The Mother-in-Law Course,
Appendix 2 - Sentiments for Your Son,
Appendix 3 - Wedding - Planning Timetable,
Appendix 4 - Tipping Chart,
Sample Menu,
Resources,
Copyright Page,
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
