There is No "I" in Team

"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it." ~Roseanne Barr

I took a pretty big risk by allowing my soon-to-be husband take a role in the planning process.

To be fair, it was his knowledge in alcohol. Anyway, I thought I was being completely reasonable and fair by delegating the all important task of choosing the elixir of life for our wedding. I did not realize that throughout the whole process, I watched him. Very carefully. Monitoring his every move, in fact.

"Jacqueline!" he snapped at me one day, as I hovered casually over him.

"What?" I tried to feign innocence, but the jig was up. He knew I wasn't just coincidentally cuddling up to him when he just happened to be looking at the wine lists available from our caterer.

"Frankly speaking, you're turning into a Bridezilla! You can boss your bridesmaids around all you want, but this is my wedding too! Now go to the other room and play with your shoes or something. I'm choosing the wine on my own!"

"But --"

"No buts....go!" He put his foot down. Figuratively and literally.

I slinked off to my room and sat on the bed, sulking.

"How dare he!" I seethed down the phone a minute later to big sister Vivienne. "It's my big day! I want it to be perfect! Urgggh!!! He's probably going to choose the wine that doesn't even match the menu!"

"Jacqueline....not that I'm taking sides, but do you really think your husband is that incompetent? Is that why you're marrying him? Because of his amazing inability to make life decisions?"

I sat silently. She was right, of course. One of the things I loved about him was the fact that he was able to easily make decisions about anything, instead of ooh-ing and aah-ing about it for ages.

"You're going to have to accept the fact, that this day is not about you, but about the both of you...and let him make some solid decisions. He's probably happy to let you choose the color theme because....let's face it....which man knows the difference between teal and aqua?...But let him decide on the things that he's actually good at."

"Jacqueline....I can see you standing there," hubby warned me when I poked my head into the living room. "I've got everything under control."

"No, no....it's not what you think. I wanted to apologize. I know you can do a good job and wanted to thank you for even being remotely interested in being involved with this project. And no, I'm not being sarcastic" I added when he looked up at my suspiciously.

In the end, we talked about what aspects of the wedding he was interested (which, of course, didn't really go beyond the food, alcohol, music and transportation), but we agreed that he would be in charge of those, without me checking up on him every five seconds.

I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and really wish I had thought of this earlier instead of trying to do everything myself.

It's like they say: There is no 'i' in team. There's a couple in 'bridezilla' though, and who wants that?

Posted by Jacqueline H.