Planning a wedding is an exciting (if a little stressful) time for couples. You’re in love, you’re happy and you can’t wait to spend the rest of your lives together. But first, you might want to consider some of the subjects that it would help to agree upon before you walk down the aisle…
1. Do you want children?
Some people believe the whole point of marrying is to have a family, while others don’t even consider kids a part of the equation. Are you sure how you feel about having children? Are you happy with what your partner feels? It’s natural to be a bit nervous about having the ‘baby conversation’, but honesty is always the best policy.
2. What will we do for Christmas?
Or Easter, or any major public holiday, really. These are the times when we tend to expect – and want – to indulge ourselves in the traditions of our childhoods. And we often feel uncomfortable if we have to spend the holiday in ways that differ from how we spent them when we were young.
You may find that your partner assumes you will always have his or her parents to stay. Or that your parents will assume you and your partner will always go to them. It’s important to discuss these things in advance so that you can find a way to accommodate what you both want.
3. Do you like my parents?
Most of us have parents who are ambitious for us, and this definitely applies when it comes to our choice of partner. So, do your parents really like the person you’re planning to marry? And do your partner’s parents like you? These are thorny issues that people often prefer to avoid but need to be considered.
But you and your partner also need to be honest about how you both feel about each other’s families – and about how you’re going to support each other in the event that either set of parents is difficult. Many marriages flounder when arguments happen if our partners side with their families rather than with us.
4. What’s a perfect Sunday to you?
On days off, one of you is up with the lark and out for a run, or busy doing a big weekly wash, while the other sleeps till noon. This is all very well when you’re young and newly together, but is it a tenable state of affairs long-term?
Perhaps you feel that your free days pass in a daze on the sofa when you’d rather be out doing interesting things. Or maybe all you want to do is to sleep and potter around the house while your partner keeps pressing you to shop or go walking. It’s a good idea to have an open conversation about leisure-time to make sure you’re on the same page.
5. How often will we spend time apart?
You may have a lot of mutual friends, but what about your own friends and those of your partner? After you’re married, will you expect to go out drinking with your own mates – just as you do now? Plenty of partners have strong opinions about how ‘married people’ should behave. Make sure that you and your other half are on the same page.
6. Is staying fit a long-term priority to you?
It may be you both have similar attitudes to exercise – and you may even exercise together currently. Will this be a priority after you wed? What about when you have children? It’s always useful to discuss how you will keep fit when life and priorities change and you have new challenges and commitments.
Don’t assume that your partner will be happy for you to go off to play football with the lads on Sunday mornings. She or he may have some notion that this will stop after you marry. It’s worth checking that you understand what’s important and non-negotiable.
7. How often will we holiday – and will we always go together?
By the time you marry, chances are you’ll have been on several holidays together, but people change over time. Men, often long for a bit of solitude on holiday, while women sometimes relish the idea of a spa break with girlfriends. Can you both accommodate these wishes? And are you of one mind about seeing the world, or perhaps travelling less as you get older?
It’s a smart idea to list your future travel plans and see how alike your desires are compared with those of your partner.
8. Will we go on ‘date nights’?
Finding time together as a couple isn’t always easy – particularly when you have mortgage payments to meet and children to feed and care for. But before you marry, it’s a good idea to have a chat about how you will continue to have time together as a couple. Men and women who do this tend to keep their relationships more romantic and companionable.
9. How do you want to spend evenings?
Often, after marriage, one partner feels you should spend more time together in the evenings. This doesn’t always work. If one of you regularly works much later than the other, the chances are that your evenings together will be short.
The partner who is home earlier can often feel lonely or neglected – even if he or she knows that this is an unreasonable emotion. If you are that partner, plan to fill your evenings with pleasant or useful activities – an evening class, a visit to your parents, meeting up with friends or a gym session. That way you’ll feel you’ve used the time well and you won’t feel so dependent on your spouse for companionship.
10. Do you mind my hobbies?
One of the battlegrounds in many marriages is how much money is spent on leisure interests. For example, a premier league football season ticket can seem like an unnecessary expense to one partner, but an absolute essential to the other. Or you might find that all those dance classes you take to keep fit make your partner mad because of the time you’re out of the house and the money it costs.
So talk about the things you do and which you plan to keep doing. And make sure each of you respects the time and money that important hobbies are likely to involve.
11. How often should we have sex?
It’s amazing how quickly sex can go off the boil – particularly if you’ve had a complicated and expensive wedding that has taken months, if not years, to prepare. So do talk about how you will timetable in some good sex – even when the honeymoon is over and the daily commute takes over your life once more.
If you allow yourself to believe that good sex always happens spontaneously, you might find that it quickly becomes a rather rare occurrence.
12. What’s your attitude to money?
Relate, the relationships agency, says that these days money is the most difficult subject for couples to talk about. We can manage religion, politics and sex, but we avoid discussions about cash if at all possible. A similar attitude to expenditure is a good thing to have but if you’re not similar (maybe one of you is a spender and one a saver).
Make sure that you have a pretty strong agreement about your finances before you tie the knot. Quarrels about money are often bitter and can lead to a miserable marriage.
