Where are you spending Thanksgiving this year?

With your family, or with your fiance's?

In this brief video, I offer up 5 tips for a Happy -- and Emotionally Engaged -- Thanksgiving.

Tip 1: Clarifying Expectations
Tip 2: Respecting Family Cultures
Tip 3: Loving Your Family
Tip 4: Taking Time for Yourself
Tip 5:  Taking Time as a Couple

Do you have any advice or tips you want to share with other brides? 

Comment below or post on my Facebook page.

Happy Thanksgiving!

How’s this for making it real?  

A California couple wants "shadow weddings" to be a part of the marriage rite and now counsels other couples on doing so before their weddings, as reported in this fascinating 9-minute NPR radio clip, "Speaking the Unspeakable:'Shadow Weddings' Before the Big Day.

The psychotherapist and life coach couple define shadow wedding as a very intimate ritual that takes place fairly close to the actual wedding, i.e. the “light wedding.”  (To hear what they said to each other, listen to the clip.)

A Shadow Wedding is a sacred space created to speak to all of the fears, all of the concerns, all of those wedding jitters so that you can clear the way for pure joyous celebration on your Light Wedding.  

It’s like a really cathartic therapy session with your spouse before you walk down the aisle.  

In this spirit, what fears and concerns do you think you'd like your future spouse to know before the wedding?  

If you're already married, do you wish you'd gotten it all on the table before you'd said I do?  

If so, what warts-and-all parts of yourself would you reveal to your spouse (that they probably eventually found out anyway )? 

Are you really struggling with your fiance's "warts"?  Contact me for a free 15-minute consultation. Let me help you sort it thru.