The father of the bride is the poorest-equipped member of the wedding. All women, including your wife and daughter, know more about weddings than you do. The groom just needs to make an appearance at the rehearsal and wedding day reasonably sober and shaved. The best man gets to plan a party ” how hard is that?

The father of the bride is expected to spend most of his life savings on the wedding. Unless you just want to give it away, there are a few things that you must know and do.

1. Planning participation is critical. If youre not part of the planning process, you should instead get Free Money tattooed to your forehead. Dont take over the planning, but make yourself available for the things you know how to do. Wedding receptions are just large, expensive parties with a lot of rules.

2. Resolve yourself to dealing with crazy women. There is something about weddings that causes all women to go crazy. I am positive that at least five times before the wedding occurs you will be accused of trying to ruin everything. This is one of those times in life that it is generally better (but there are exceptions) to just suck it up. For the most part your wife and daughter will just want to vent about their frustrations. For this you need to learn only two responses, That bitch, and Those bastards. Repeat frequently.

3. Track the spending. Generally most weddings spend about half the budget on the reception. So far in 2009, weddings have been averaging sixteen to nineteen thousand dollars according to the weddingreport.com. That means that receptions are running about over eight grand. Look hard at this area to save money.

4. Prepare your wedding toast. Even if you do a fair amount of public speaking, practice your toast. The words you say only count for a small percentage of how people interpret your toast. They will be watching your body language and the way you say the words. Eye contact is critical. Write down the toast well before you give it and practice it standing up (youll be delivering your toast standing).

5. Learn how to dance. You will be doing one of the first dances with your daughter while everyone watches. Find out what song she wants played and go to a dance studio to learn how to dance to it. Many dance studios offer wedding dance packages. Surprise everyone with a couple of your patented moves.

I also strongly suggest that you plan a post-wedding vacation for just your wife and yourself. It will be needed.

Tags: best man, bride, family, father of the bride, groom, marriage, men of the wedding, money, Reception, relationships, speeches, toasts, wedding

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 4:45 am and is filed under wedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.