Congratulations on your engagement! I am so happy for you!

I know the instinct is to throw yourselves headlong into planning for your wedding, but before you do, there are a couple things, that if you do well, will enrich your wedding ceremony beyond belief, and oh, by the way, deepen your marriage. And most of it is pretty easy.

It's time to do some dreaming. What will it mean to you to have a partner for the rest of your life. What possibilities do you envision? What richness is there? What bumps as you attempt to bring balance to your mutual independence, your love affair and your partnership?

    * Remember that you're engaged. If you look up being engaged, you might be surprised to find that it doesn't say, engaged in frantically planning your marriage. It means that one has asked and another has accepted to spend  the rest of your lives in one another's company. Stop and revel in that a bit. You and this magical creature are going to be married.
    * You get to decide what kind of marriage you want to have. What works between the two of you? What goals and values do you share? Where do you complement one another? What's the work you need to do to stay in healthy, thriving relationship?
    * The goal of a great wedding ceremony is to help you create a life-long marriage. When you take an oath that promises a lifetime, those oaths have lifelong implications. Promises are far more difficult to break than today's divorce laws would have us believe.
    * Your wedding vows are the bedrock on which your marriage will be based and will establish your marriage as the principal and permanent relationship in your life.
    * Your community will be invited to celebrate your love and support your relationship. Who do you want those people to be.
    * From now on, you will have to balance being an independent person, a lover and a partner in a working relationship. Other life choices will be filtered through the lens of your wedding vows and your marriage.

Only once you've looked at and shared those dreams is it time to head back out into the world and begin gathering information for planning the big event. Allow the answers to these questions and the dreams you are looking to fulfill be your guidelines for your wedding planning. You will not be able to comprehend how much more support you will garner if you plan from knowing your strengths and goals.

Build the dream of your new life together. Do this in the middle of your wedding planning and watch how it changes the focus of the planning and the tenor of your wedding! Too many people let their marriage founder because they don't know their dreams and take conscious steps toward realizing them. Now you don't have to do that!