Today I asked Matt if I could steal his blog post. He did a really good job of posting the essence of our relationship the past eight months, so I hope you don’t mind reading his perspective on the process of being one 🙂 Enjoy!

We were sitting at the table, side by side, with our laptops open and it was a month into the wedding process at this point.  The discussion had been about who was going to do what.  Of course it was her day, so I did the best I could to surrender all opinions and control to her. But that didn’t work so well.

I tried to be helpful the best way I knew how. This included:

• An excel spreadsheet with addresses of all of our guests
• A comprehensive budget
• And a 72-point checklist and deadlines to prepare for the wedding

I literally thought I would win the Fiancé of the Year award!

So as I prepared to win the award, I started to design the spreadsheet.  I don’t know what she was working on (something about succulents I’m sure), but she was focused and intense.  I did the best to enter in all the information into the spreadsheet but there was some information only she had.

Occasionally I would have to ask for it.  Each time I did, I began to notice that she was becoming more and more irritated.  I wondered why she was so irritated as I was doing this amazing thing by putting together all the information for the guest list.  This continued for a little while until finally she stopped whatever it was she was doing and barked back with, “Why are you doing this?!”

I had never seen this look on Bianca’s face.  It was if Satan himself entered her body, created the nastiest, gnarled look possible and made her do it.  My jaw dropped—I had no idea what to say at this point but I am sure my response didn’t help the situation.

In our own minds we were setting priorities and planning out what we individually thought were the most important things.  She was annoyed that I wasn’t doing what she thought was important and I was hurt because my work wasn’t valued.  And vice versa.  We realized quickly we needed to learn to work better as a team or suffer satanic breakdowns in our pending future.

This brings me to another learning from the wedding planning process: surrender.  Not surrendering our rights, although biblically that is part of it, but realizing that alone we are good, but together we were great!

We both have learned to survive and thrive alone.  Not only that but we did it using different strengths.  But now we’re getting married and choosing to spend the rest of our lives together because of the greatness of what will happen when we become one.  She will make me a better person, leader and father.  But this comes with surrendering things that are good in order to become great.