Does your partner seem reluctant to help with the planning of your Gibraltar wedding?
As we have long written about extensively on the Sweet Gibraltar Weddings blog, there are many, many reasons why someone might be drawn to tying the knot in a warm, cosmopolitan, and picturesque overseas destination like Gibraltar.
For you and your sweetheart, the main attraction might be the sun, the sand, that home-from-home, a-slice-of-Britain-in-the-Mediterranean feel… you get the idea. Couples adore weddings in Gibraltar – we’ve seen that over the more than 4,000 weddings we have helped to plan in the British Overseas Territory, stretching back to 2008.
However, if there’s one thing that a lot of couples don’t necessarily enjoy about weddings in Gibraltar, it’s the process of organising one. And that’s fair enough; there are a lot of unglamorous and difficult aspects of tying together all the elements you need for a dream wedding. Plus, you might not have anywhere near the local knowledge and contacts that we have at Sweet Gibraltar Weddings.
One scenario we do see a lot among our clients, though, is the situation of one member of the couple being eager to throw themselves into the wedding planning, while the other seems hesitant, or even unexcited about this process.
So, what are some of the things that you can do to help get your partner more involved in planning your upcoming Gibraltar wedding? Here, we’ve set out our favourite tips.
Don’t assume they don’t want to get involved
This is probably the most crucial advice we could give on this topic. Everyone is different when it comes to exhibiting interest in, and engaging with, something as knotty as wedding planning. You might have already immersed yourself in Instagram or Pinterest, in search of visual inspiration for every element of your nuptials, while your partner may seem more distant from the process.
Does that automatically mean they’re uninterested in getting involved in the planning of the wedding? No, it does not. They might be hesitant to talk to you about the specific aspects of the wedding planning that they feel confident or unsure about. Or they might just be arriving at things like the online browsing of wedding-related blogs (such as this one!) in their own time.
Really, the key here is to talk to your partner. Ask them how involved they wish to be in the wedding planning process, and talk about which specific parts of the planning they might most desire to get involved in. They might also have ideas about particular things they would like to have at the wedding – in which case, this can inform and guide the planning decisions you make together.
Talk to each other about your respective visions
It’s inevitable that you and your partner will not have identical visions for what your special day could and should look like… and that’s a beautiful thing. After all, you’re supposed to be creating something magical and unique; a wedding day that really does epitomise what both of you stand for.
And of course, there will be certain things on which the two of you have similar preferences and expectations – whether that’s the kind of backdrops you would like to have for your wedding photos, the type of venue you would favour, the décor, or something else entirely.
Regardless, you do need to have that conversation with your beloved about your respective visions, at an early stage. Set aside an evening or a full day for it, and as you discuss those visions, you are likely to find yourselves getting mutually excited about all the things your wedding could be.
Have a philosophy of sharing tasks, rather than splitting them
Even if – in your discussions together up to this point – you are clearly drawn to certain tasks and your partner is attracted to others, it is arguably best to follow an ethos of sharing a lot of your wedding planning tasks, instead of simply assigning each other tasks.
Yes, it makes sense to play to your respective strengths, so it might be that one member of the couple takes the lead on certain aspects. But especially when one person in the couple is hesitant to get involved, a ‘sharing’ approach can be great for helping them to feel more at the centre of the planning process.
What are the primary messages we would advise you to take from this article? Well, we would urge you to keep communicating, treat the wedding planning as fun rather than as a series of chores, and remember that both of you do care – after all, you’re both set to tie the knot.
It can, though, also greatly help to have a professional wedding planner on hand, so that you can relieve some of the burden associated with organising your nuptials. Here at Sweet Gibraltar Weddings, we’ve ‘been there, done that’ with weddings in Gibraltar, and so much more besides! So, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for further advice and assistance.
