Sometimes wedding plans come to a halt – that’s why I’m writing about how to get unstuck, how to keep your partner from stalling during wedding planning, and how to keep the momentum going.

Tell me if this sounds familiar …

You’re planning to book a wedding vendor – let’s say, a caterer.  You’re excited because you found a handful of great options. All you have to do now is review the options with your partner – and pick one!  

When you’re done describing each catering service to your partner, you finally ask, “So which one should we pick?!”

And then your enthusiasm quickly deflates when your partner responds with, “Meh, I don’t like any of those”

Isn’t that the worst?  All that hard work to find these seemingly perfect options, and then *poof* your ideas are rejected in a matter of seconds.  Just like that. Ouch.

Maybe you ask something like, “OK, what kind of caterer would you like?”  And then your partner responds with, “I don’t know.”  And then …

You’re stuck.  

You have some options, but you’re not sure how to move forward:

• Keep researching – but you don’t want your ideas to get rejected again
• Ask your partner to come up with ideas – but you don’t want to constantly nag them about it
• Wait and see what happens – but the wedding date is approaching and you don’t have time to waste

You want to move forward, but you feel … stuck.

Can you relate?  

When we were planning our wedding – we ran into this scenario.   But I found a way to deal with it. My goal was to keep moving forward, cross tasks off of my to-do list as quickly and painlessly as possible – and I want to share my strategy with you today.   

So How Can You Get Unstuck?

Before I get into how to get unstuck – I highly recommend that you schedule weekly wedding planning meetings.  These meetings are great because you’ll get to check-in with each other every single week – which is great for accountability!

Step 1 – Agree on a Goal & Assign Specific Tasks

First, pick a goal to achieve.  Let’s say the goal is to book a caterer.  Once you’ve both agreed to this, break the goal down into specific tasks that each of you will complete.  At this point, it’s not necessary to plan out ALL of the tasks that need to be done to reach your goal – but you should at least come up with a few immediate tasks.  

For example, a task could be to research caterers.  During your meeting, you can agree to each research some caterers and come to next week’s meeting with at least three catering options to consider.  

Again, this is why I highly recommend scheduling weekly wedding planning meetings!  You’ll have a set time each week to check-in and report progress! Plus, each meeting serves as a deadline to complete the work that you promised to do. 

Step 2 – Complete the Task

This one’s pretty straightforward – just do the work that you promised to do 🙂  I think it’s really important to take the tasks seriously and hold up your end of the deal.  That’s what teamwork is all about.

Step 3 – Report Your Progress at the Next Meeting

Now that you’ve done the work, tell your partner about it at your next meeting!  This meeting can fall into one of three scenarios …

You both did your homework – good job!  🙂

Since you both completed your tasks, you should have a pretty good idea about how to move forward – you’re not stuck!  YAY!

Let’s go back to our catering example.  At the previous meeting, you both agreed to research caterers and find three catering options each.  If you both did you homework – you should have six options on the table. Now you can come up with your next task, which might be to discuss all six catering options and see which ones are worth contacting for estimates.  

One of you didn’t do your homework – oops  :-/

There are some weeks when you can’t complete your tasks as promised.  

Let’s say one of you has three catering options to present – you can choose to move forward and review those three options if those three options are good enough to move forward – great!  

If none of the three options are appealing to the person who didn’t do their homework and they prefer to research other options – you can agree to extend the homework deadline and have them present their three catering options at next week’s meeting.  Agree that if the homework is still not done by next week, then you’ll need to move forward with the current options. Time is of the essence!

Neither of you did your homework – it happens  🙁

Some weeks might be so hectic that neither of you will have time to complete your tasks.  In our catering example – if this happens, you won’t have any caterers to discuss during the meeting.  You can agree to do some research during the meeting and/or agree to present three catering options each at next week’s meeting.  This is basically like extending the homework deadline for both of you. Make sure you do your homework this time!

Step 4 – Deadline Day!

OK, let’s say that at the previous meeting you agreed to extend the deadline because (a) one of you didn’t do your homework or (b) neither of you did your homework.  And now, the time has come – it’s deadline day! Here are the possible scenarios – (hint: they are the exact same possible scenarios described above):

You both did your homework – good job!  🙂

You can move forward!  In our catering example – you should have six options to consider.  

One of you didn’t do your homework – oops  :-/

At this point, it’s best not to extend the deadline a second time – otherwise, it’ll become a pattern of procrastination.  Using our catering example, you should still have three options to consider – these were presented at last week’s meeting. Since there aren’t any new options to consider this week, then you can move forward with the three options that were presented last week as agreed.  

Neither of you did your homework – it happens  🙁

If neither of you was able to complete your tasks to reach this goal, you might be trying to do too much.  Take a step back and see if you’re overextending yourselves by working on too many wedding-related goals/projects at once.  At this point, you might need to rework your priorities and to-do list.

Give it a Try!

This step by step process helped me and Luis get unstuck and move forward with our wedding to-do list.  Virtually every task on our checklist was completed this way. Having a structured process in place to keep moving forward helped us keep the momentum going.   

Quite honestly, the weekly meetings are what helped us stay on track. With so many moving parts, it was nice to have a stable, structured, and consistent meeting at the same time, same place, every week.  So if you haven’t already – I hope you’ll consider having a weekly wedding planning meeting!