But sooner or later, you’ll be ready to start planning! Wedding Priestess called Jen Thomas of Bud to Blossom Events in Philadelphia. To get us started, the first questions I asked were the first questions we all ask. “Jen, how do we get started? What do we need to do first?”

Jen’s very practical response included two clear cut assignments (how did you know she was going to say this?):

• Set a budget! A budget is going to help you determine where to look. It can cost $200 a person at a big venue. Your budget is going to help you figure out what makes sense – and Wedding Priestess certainly hopes you’re going to be sensible about your budget!
• Get a guestimate of guests! venues are number specific, can’t have 400 in an intimate inn! This means you need to think a little about what kind of wedding you want to have or how many relatives you want to invite! The most romantic venue in the world can be all wrong for you if the two of you are longing for a large family wedding.

Before you get final answers to these questions, you need to be clear who’s going to be setting the budget. Are you paying for your wedding? Are your parents helping or perhaps paying for everything? If your parents are paying, who’s making the decisions about the venue, size, etc? Remember, the greater percentage you spend, the more the decisions are yours to make.

Tip: It’s all about making choices. If you’re not a great decision maker, or you want some help figuring out what the options are, a wedding consultant is going to be wonderful support. Remember, most wedding consultants work on both an hourly or a project basis, so there are lots of ways you can get help!

This is a Wedding Priestess Prejudice. Peace needs to be a value in your relationship. You need to live in peace with one another. You need to find a way to make peace with your differences and your (dare I say it?) eccentricities. The great thing about being a whole person is that you’re odd and individual. When you enter into relationship, you take all your oddities and all your individuality and rub it up against your partner’s. And that’s great. But you need to do that with respect and hope and plans for working things out.

And then you need to take that out into the world. Because whatever you believe about how you deal with what’s happened, it’s important to know that respect and hope will change things going forward. How you meet the world is often how you will be met. And a peaceful world is what you want to give your family.

Tip: Today marks the end (no really? Well, ok, it’s Three Kings Day tomorrow and in Sweden, you take advantage of Epiphany to dance the Christmas tree out of the house!) of the holiday season. Nothing big coming until groundhog day! Thank you for spending the season with me. Thank you for looking creatively at how to spend your holidays in a way that will enhance your wedding planning, your wedding and, most importantly, your happily, healthily ever-after marriage.

Now, go practice!

Too often when people fall in love, their interest in their long-term friends falls away. Now, this is somewhat understandable, after all, the species has survived because of the power of infatuation. Being swept away keeps us moving into marriage and family. But we are more than our hormones! And we need friends with whom to hang out, celebrate and commiserate.

As you get ready to choose your attendants, there are many ways to think through who will stand with you as you step forward into your life. It’s true your BFF from kindergarten probably needs to be there. But what are the qualities that you and your beloved truly value in friends.

• List 11 ways you are a good friend. If your list isn’t as long as you’d like it to be, there’s some work for the new year! Being a good friend is a fairly fundamental characteristic of being a good person, in the Wedding Priestess’ humble opinion.
• Then list 11 ways that friends support, challenge, stimulate and amuse you.
• What are the most important characteristics to you?
• Then consider your friends in light of those characteristics. Who among them have been really good friends?
• Are they the same people you were considering as attendants? Were there people missing from your attendant list?

Tip: It’s fine if you’ve already made your attendant choices and this list teaches you something different. You now have the opportunity to find other ways to weave these people into your lives. The success and health of your marriage is enhanced by being a member of a thriving, healthy community. So as the Girl Scout song says “Make new friends, but keep the old, One is silver and the other gold!)

What’s just as amazing as the love you have for your partner is the love he or she has for you. Tonight, I want you to sit down together. Light your advent candles if you still have them, or just light some candles! Bring 10 sheets of paper, or ten note cards apiece. Cuddle for a bit.

Then sit and list ten things about your that your partner loves and the ways he or she shows that love. Then read them aloud. Having trouble getting started? Write two. Read them aloud. Write 3 more. Read all five aloud. Write another 2. Read all seven. Another 2. Read nine. And then your last one. Read all ten. Each time you read, you reinforce the ways you are loved.

(if you really want to up the pleasure, before you start, write on a piece of paper ten ways you love your partner. Don’t read these until after you’ve done your own assessments. It’s a thing of beauty to hear how well you are loved!)

Carry these cards with you. If you’re having trouble during the wedding planning process. Stop and read them again. The more you know about how you are loved, the less easy it is to push it away. If it’s too hard to think of things, or it’s too hard to accept, then you may need to work through this. (If you really can’t think of ten ways your partner loves you and your partner can’t come up with ten ways, you may want to consider why you’re planning a wedding!) It is a blessing to have someone love you. Honor that gift by taking it seriously and cherishing your lover for his or her gifts of love.

What’s just as amazing as the love you have for your partner is the love he or she has for you. Tonight, I want you to sit down together. Light your advent candles if you still have them, or just light some candles! Bring 10 sheets of paper, or ten note cards apiece. Cuddle for a bit.

Then sit and list ten things about your that your partner loves and the ways he or she shows that love. Then read them aloud. Having trouble getting started? Write two. Read them aloud. Write 3 more. Read all five aloud. Write another 2. Read all seven. Another 2. Read nine. And then your last one. Read all ten. Each time you read, you reinforce the ways you are loved.

(if you really want to up the pleasure, before you start, write on a piece of paper ten ways you love your partner. Don’t read these until after you’ve done your own assessments. It’s a thing of beauty to hear how well you are loved!)

Carry these cards with you. If you’re having trouble during the wedding planning process. Stop and read them again. The more you know about how you are loved, the less easy it is to push it away. If it’s too hard to think of things, or it’s too hard to accept, then you may need to work through this. (If you really can’t think of ten ways your partner loves you and your partner can’t come up with ten ways, you may want to consider why you’re planning a wedding!) It is a blessing to have someone love you. Honor that gift by taking it seriously and cherishing your lover for his or her gifts of love.

I don’t know whether anyone has done the sleep math for couples who are planning a wedding, but I do know that people in almost every age group in the United States are sleep-deprived. Here’s some thing I do know. Sleep deprivation makes you cranky! It makes every one cranky. Wedding planning makes most people cranky as well, so all in all, it’s not a great thing. Planning a wedding, cranky. Not getting enough sleep, cranky. Partner breathing wrong, cranky, cranky, cranky.

Here you are marrying the person of your dreams and you’re cranky.

Tip: Start the new year out right. Go to bed early tonight and get enough sleep. Get a little more than enough. Climb in bed early, talk to one another, see where that leads, and then go to sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, cuddle up and roll over. There’s nothing that you have to do that can’t be done an hour later. That’s what the Wedding Priestess thinks!

There have been other years, when life went more smoothly, that this commitment could seem to be a little high-blown. But in a year when so much has gone wrong, (other than your engagement!) It seems that we might be better engaged in paying some attention to not only bigger goals but also to the places that we look for support. What is the struggle? Who are our teachers? What support do our leaders need? Who is our community?

You’re getting married. You’re making a start on something new and wonderful. Take this wedding and make a marriage that you want to live in forever. Celebrate what’s real and strong between you. Find ways to hold your hopes up to your community and get their support. Let love be the guide that takes you forward into life. Your community needs the testament of hope and faith your marriage offers. I’m so excited to see how you all are going to change the world in the year ahead.

Tip: Take a slow meander through the official Kwanzaa website www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org There you’ll find the answers to your questions and be able to start your study and your celebration. Bookmark it, so you’re ready for next year!

Life is uncertain. We have the amazing opportunity to participate in it. It’s easy when you’re planning your wedding, and celebrating your engagement, to forget how important your marriage is in the larger scheme of things. The more stable relationships societies have; the better they function (and the more stable the relationships are, so it all works out nicely!).

You’re deciding how to spend a lot of money this year as you plan your wedding. Why not consider as you look at the grand total (don’t faint, you’re spending the money you have to spend, right?) allocating some of that money to support the values on which your wedding vows and your marriage are based?

What do you believe in?
How do you spend your money?
Do you have a budget?
What proportion is for your household? What is for frivolous pursuits? What is for you? (If you have a shoe budget, you may want to have a donation budget, eh?)
What values will make this relationship strong?
How do you support their existence in the world at large?

Take some time today when you’re hanging out, even if you are hanging out in a large group, and talk about how you spend the money you spend on supporting the world and the changes you long to see take place.

Tip: Commit to sharing your wealth, because you are rich in many ways, with your community. Consider your generosity and how you want to be known as individuals and as partners. Go hear what Suze Orman has to say on the matter.

So, you’re a couple, so this means 12 stolen kisses! Where are the really great places to steal a kiss in Philadelphia and its environs? (you have to let us know! There are still 6 days left for people to practice in.)

Kissing is an art form. It is not a prelude to any thing; it is the culmination. It is not an appetizer, but dessert! It is the chocolate soufflé of desserts. It is the fine wine savored not only with food but also alone.

• Set the tone a little bit. Walk through the house alone and consider where you might kiss your beloved. Imagine kissing your beloved. Hmmm. Very nice. Now think places outside that are part of your daily journey through life.
• Set the tenor: What kind of kisses do you want to give? If it’s going to be surprise kisses, you’ll want to vary them. Butterfly kisses, sexy ones, hand kisses, smooches. What feels right where? Does a place have a kind of kiss? Or do you want to give 6 smoochies in the same place and vary the kiss? What are you thinking?
• Set your goals. You’ve imagined the kissing. You’ve thought about when you might try to catch your beloved off guard. Standing in front of a mirror? Sitting in front of the computer? In the coat closet? Ooh, yeah!
• Transform your life. Kiss your partner in out of the way places today. And tomorrow and tomorrow. Who says you have to stop when Christmas ends? Let your marriage sing with unexpected kisses! (Don’t you hope the Obamas spend a lot of time kissing in the White House? My guess is a lot of those rooms could use a little expended passion to dispel some of the weight of words!)

Remember: six stolen kisses, five looks of love, four calling friends, three (no)snow strolls, two nestling hearts and a day free of expectations! Enjoy!

• Do you have a role in moving your community of birth or choice forward?
• What is it?
• What difference does it make in your life if your community fulfills its greatness?
• How does your community help and support you?
• Where have you learned about community? Are you still active there?
• Who are your advisors and mentors?
• Who are your advisees?
• Who’s coming to your wedding and why?

It’s been really interesting to watch the Obamas ready themselves for the White House by tightening their ties to what they refer to as their Kitchen Cabinet. Some of their close friends are talking about moving to Washington, putting their work and lives on hold so that they can support this new Presidency. Certainly Michelle Obama’s Mother, Mrs. Robinson will live close to the White House or even in the White House. This is a group of people (people of power) who have strategized and planned with one another for years. How do you advance and succeed in a world that is not interested in or even hostile to your success? It’s hard to tell whether they will call Barack Obama Mr. President in private, although they certainly will in public. President Elect Obama (it’s hard to stop calling him Barack, isn’t it?) may not look to them for advice on Israel and Palestine, although I’m sure he’s willing to take a good idea from anyone there, whew!), but he will hear them when they talk to him about how he lives his life as president and how Michelle and he parent their two daughters. Some of these friends are their age, some are older. His familial elders may be gone, but his community elders are going strong. If it takes a village, Barack is taking his with him!

Tip: So figure out who your kitchen cabinet is. Who will help you live the lives you want to live? You may be able to do this on your own. You got this far. But if you can get good support and advice from people you respect, why wouldn’t you do this? How will you bring the concept of Nia into your wedding and marriage planning?