Prepping for the ring

Emotionally Engaged: A Bride's Guide to Surviving the "Happiest" Time of Her Life - Alison Moir-Smith (Hudson Street Press, 2006)

I was expecting the wedding-planning stress. I don't like event planning. Several times before even meeting my future husband, I suggested the desirability of a "surprise wedding." In my vision, I'd be engaged, and I'd probably even have some say over the guest list and maybe some other broad details. But essentially just one morning someone would wake me up and say, "Okay, this is the day. Let's go" and hustle me into the dress and off to the ceremony site. All details handled. Obviously there are enough problems with this scenario that I didn't use it as much of a guide in planning my actual wedding. But still...

What I thought less about what the transition that the wedding marked, that the engagement was the transitory space between being single and being married. And that one is truly fundamentally different from the other. It was a good reminder that much of the planning stress isn't just about planning an event, but is also indicative of the broader changes going on in almost all of your relationships.

So Moir-Smith talks about her own challenges during her engagement, and how she turned to her own MFT training to try to get in touch with how she was feeling, and why. And then how she turned that into a professional practice, and also the book. She invites the reader to go deep, and grieve where necessary, and feel ALL the feelings.

Among the things that change: your own sense of identity -- saying goodbye to Single You; your relationship with your family; your relationship with your partner; your relationship with your friends (particularly the single ones). Beyond those, Moir-Smith offers advice on how to stay emotionally present and engaged not only throughout the engagement, but also during the wedding and honeymoon, and into marriage. Some of this seemed inapplicable to me and my life, but other parts of it really forced me to look at some things that were going on from a different perspective.

I read this long enough ago that I went back and re-read it this week, with a more critical and skeptical eye. Not sure why the change. I walked away glad that I read it, and glad that I engaged with the questions and emotions raised by the book, but also a little wary that I not "create" tensions that don't exist simply for the sake of doing the process "correctly." Everyone's journey is going to be different, and I maybe could have used a little more of a reminder of that. Maybe then, this is the sort of book that benefits most by being read more than once.