You and your fiancé will be the center of attention.  You’ll receive gifts, toasts, and good wishes.  You’ll have parties thrown for you.  You’ll be asked all about your wedding. You’ll feel more in love with your fiancé than you have since he popped the question.  

You’ll find yourselves envisioning holidays in years to come, imagining new traditions you’ll start and the children that you’ll share them with.

Being an engaged couple during the holiday season is exciting, fun, and full of love, right?

You and your fiancé will be the center of attention.  

You’ll receive gifts, toasts, and good wishes.  

You’ll have parties thrown for you.  

You’ll be asked all about your wedding.

You’ll feel more in love with your fiancé than you have since he popped the question.  

You’ll find yourselves envisioning holidays in years to come, imagining new traditions you’ll start and the children that you’ll share them with. 

The holidays are indeed a magical time for engaged couples.

Don't be surprised, however, if you feel a twinge of blue for a moment.

Many brides describe being flooded by an irrational sadness at some point during the holidays.   You're doing all these incredibly happy things, and yet you might feel momentarily sucker-punched by the blues.

Perhaps it happens during an engagement party thrown for you.  

Or as you’re opening gifts on Christmas morning, your fiancé by your side for the first time. 

Or as you go to sleep in your girlhood bed.

You can’t predict when this sadness hits, but it’ll be easier to bear if you understand why.

The sadness can hit at those moments when you realize that it’s an end of an era in your life. 

Next Christmas, you won’t be sleeping in your girlhood bed, but in the guest room, with your husband. 

Or maybe it hits when you’re driving from your family’s house to his family’s house.  You’ve never had to leave your family before:  indeed, this is an end of an era.

So, as excited as you are about getting married to this great guy, and as much fun as you’re having celebrating your first holiday season together, don’t be surprised if you have momentary blues.

This is the end of an era, and any change -- no matter how positive -- is hard.So be gentle and patient with yourself this holiday season.

Enjoy the celebrations and the excitement about your future, but also have respect for your past and how you are growing and changing as you prepare to marry.

Cheers, to being Emotionally Engaged!

Want to get in the right mindset for your engaged holidays?  Contact me for a free 15-minute consultation.  Let me help get you prepared!

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!

Fun piece in this Sunday's NY Times on the new trend of taking a "mini-moon" right after the wedding and the official honeymoon a few months later.

I love this new trend, and wish it had been going on when I got married back in 2002.  Because I felt like the brides quoted in the piece (and I bet you do too):

• Planning fatigue -- the idea of planning a really nice honeymoon is overwhelming, on top of planning your wedding
  
• Money is tight -- paying for a wedding and honeymoon in one fell swoop...that's a lot of dough
  
• Work is neglected -- the final weeks before your wedding, let's be real:  your work gets a bit neglected.  It's tough to imagine tacking another 2 weeks off after the wedding.
  

Interesting statistic:  of the 38 couples married at the Whiteface Lodge in Lake Placid, NY, half took mini-moons after their weddings.  To read full article, click here.

I can think of 3 brides I worked with who married this summer who are taking "mini-moons."

How about you? What are you doing?

It's a big day here in the village of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, where I live: parade with homemade floats and marching bands, skydivers, neighborhood BBQs, afternoon at the beach, and fireworks.

I hope you and your fiance are celebrating in whatever way feels best to you.

My thoughts this week are with 2 brides:  A. in California and J. in New Jersey. They're both getting married this Saturday. I know they're busy with last-minute details, and I also know they are both ready, emotionally, for their big days.

A. had some last-minute bumps in the road with her fiance.  The latest report: working through these conflicts has just made her relationship with her soon-to-be husband even stronger. They understand each other better, more deeply. 

That's what engagement's about: getting to know each other on a whole new level.  Being yourselves.  Being real.  And learning how to work together as your true selves.  How to have conflict, how to disagree, and how to work through it.

In our work together, J. in New Jersey came to understand the differences between her extroversion and her fiances introversion and how that plays out in their relationship.  

She learned during her engagement how to ask her fiance for more closeness, more communication, more emotional intimacy...and she got it.  She has it and is excited about her marriage ahead.  

This is what she wrote to me a few weeks ago:

A. and J.: we all wish you well as you make your walks down the aisle this Saturday.  

And Happy 4th to you and yours.