Marriage Talk - What every couple should have BEFORE the wedding

When it comes to wedding planning, even the most conservative bride can get caught up on the details. Flowers, colour schemes, invitation font, etc. While these are all important in making your day extra special, we often lose sight of why we're doing it to begin with.

Remember: a wedding is essentially just a big party to celebrate a new bond between two people, and to keep that bond strong for a very long time, there are other discussions to be had that don't involve table seating charts or dress fittings.

MONEY
One of the hottest topics between couples, money is usually the maker or breaker of a relationship. If you and your fiance are clear of each others financial situation and goals, you'll save yourselves a lot of misunderstandings and arguments in the future. A wedding is a great way for a couple to learn how to work together to make something happen. If you don't have financial support from your family (more specifically, your parents) look on the bright side - this is an opportunity for you and your fiance to learn how to budget together. Because you can count on bigger things coming up in the future that you will have to budget for, so you may as well get some practice now!

KIDS
(Funny, because one of my co-workers literally just walked in with her 1-month old. Crazy) Here's a question - do you know whether your fiance wants kids? Do you know if YOU want kids? Learning to live with each other is one thing, but learning to live with a new human being is a completely different thing. And back to the budget point - kids aren't cheap. If the two of you don't know how to budget with jsut the two of, adding on another member in the family isn't going to make the situation any easier.

THE NAME CHANGE
It's a whole different ball game these days. While many women still change their last name, there are more and more that are opting not to. Keeping your name can be for a number of reasons - you are well established in your career and a name change would be confusing, or it could be something as simple as "it's my name and it's a part of who I am." Regardless of what you decide, keeping an open communication with your fiance about this subjust is a good idea. You don't want to wait until the ceremony officiant announces "Mr. and Mrs..." to interrupt and share your thoughts.

FEARS
We all have them. Couples generally don't like to admit they're a little (or a lot) scared about getting married because many people think that admitting it means that there's something wrong with them. SO NOT TRUE. We're human, and anything new is both exciting and scary at the same time. Obviously there's some tact involved when you're admitting your fears, but I think it's better to share than to bottle it up and have it come out much later. you'll be surprised how many you share with your fiance.

What it boils down to is being honest with each other and always keeping an open line of communication for the topics that really matter. And then you can go back to discussing whether you want to go with the ivory of pearl white table linen :)