How do families contribute to indecision about getting married?
People will come to me and say 'neither family is in favor of this wedding,' and right there that's a red flag. My job is not to counsel a couple, but because I get so close with the couple I do tell them, 'If your family is not happy about the wedding, but they're going to have any involvement in the planning process, I need to know right off the bat.' And it needs to be something that is discussed. And if they're not happy with it, but they're willing to go through with it because you love the person or what have you, that's one thing. If it's something where they're going to make the entire planning process hell for you, and they're going to make it ruin your wedding day, it's horrible, and we need to know that right off the bat. There's definitely other things too, like cultural differences. I do a lot of multicultural weddings, I call them hybrid weddings, and basically it's where we're connecting two different cultures together. We've done an Armenian and a Latina wedding, things like that. And some families really really want you to marry within your culture, and that's okay, but you definitely need to make sure that the families are ready for the marriage to happen because it's not just a marriage and a combining of two people, it's a combining of two families. And when the families are really open to it and excited about it, the wedding is extraordinary. We're able to bring in two cultures and basically create something that both families feel like 'I was represented,' and, 'I was enhanced.' Which is really really, really cool.
