10 days out: details meltdown

OK. I pretended to be all cool and calm in this morning's post, but the truth is I'm having a meltdown. I'm swimming in details, constantly exhausted, and I feel like an unorganized failure. I know that's silly, that we've done a lot of things right and we're actually very organized, but in the past few days I just keep slamming against stupid little humiliating things that aren't working or that I didn't do right. And Econo Boy has gone backpacking with his father, so I'm left alone facing an ever-increasing list of stupid wedding crap like the following.

* Had the florist not reminded me, I would have missed her final payment deadline. And I think I may have missed the deadline to pay for the cake, judging from the very friendly but firm voicemail the baker left me today. Great.

* I still don't have shoes. I'm wearing a very cute wedge sandal for the ceremony (which is outdoors, hence the need for a heel that won't sink into the ground), but the shoe is vinyl and doesn't breathe at all -- I doubt it's going to be very comfortable for dancing. So I've been searching high and low for a cute sandal with a 2" heel that I can dance in and that won't break the bank ... and so far, zip. Zero. Nada. I've seen cheap shoes with footbeds that won't bend at all, great shoes with 3" heels, great shoes with only one pair left in a size way too small for me, and one pair of perfect shoes that turned out to be $300 Stuart Weitzmans, but nothing in my size and price range that I like even a little. And I came dangerously close to strangling a saleswoman who tried, very loudly and insistently, to convince me that a pair of shoes did in fact have a 2" heel if you "measured it right." Call me crazy, but if a heel adds 3" to my height, in my book that's a 3" heel.

* I'm also lacking a necklace. Several months back I found a stunning necklace online: Lily, from Blue Sprinkle.

Image from bluesprinkle.hostasaurus.com

But it was more than I wanted to spend, and so I kept looking. And looking. And looking. And I found ... nothing. And now, after several humiliating trips to various jewelry stores and department stores, having received looks dripping with either pity or scorn when I explain what I'm looking for (a very simple necklace with a drop pendant) and my ideal price range ($50ish), I am jewelry-less. (It's not like I want diamonds! I'm happy with paste, seriously, it only has to look good for about 4 hours. But the saleswoman at Nordstrom, which usually has such great customer service, turned away with a disgusted look on her face and *stopped talking to me* when I said that the pearl pendant she showed me was out of my price range. And it was a fucking ugly necklace to boot.) Maybe I should just give in to temptation and pay for 2-3 day priority shipping on the Lily necklace, but it still feels like too much money, and frankly I'm not sure I trust USPS to deliver it in the promised time frame anyway.

Ugh. Between hair appointments and shoes and jewelry and looking skeptically at the very expensive dress that I'm not even sure I like anymore, I feel sick about the money I've spent and the money I'm thinking about spending on myself, and I feel like I'm going to be the world's most unimaginative, slapped-together, frumpy bride no matter what, so why bother? It's probably gauche not to show up for one's own wedding, but I am so over this right now that I just want it all to go away so I can spend the 25th eating popcorn in front of a TV, having eloped to the courthouse the day before, donated my dress to charity, and run over my shoes a few times in a very large and heavy car.

Ah, to be a serene bride

Shortly after we hired our DOC, I ran across a debate on a message board about the entire DOC concept. The brides fell into two camps on the issue.

Camp A: You spend SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT on this ONE DAY and it should be PERFECT and why on earth would you leave the details to anyone but a PROFESSIONAL?

Camp B: Ugh, I don't need to pay someone else to organize for me. I'm laid back. I won't care if things go wrong. I'm marrying my best friend and that's all that matters.

I started to feel that sinking combination of guilt and shame. The Camp B brides appeared to have it all figured out, and I wanted so badly to be a Camp B woman. And yet, here I was, worrying about what would happen if I forgot a detail or this or that vendor flaked out on us. If I'm marrying Econo Boy, why should I care if the cake doesn't arrive or I forget to bring the table numbers? Am I a micromanager who can't see the forest for the trees? Do I even deserve to marry such a great guy if what I'm worried about is whether or not the menu cards get set up and the rental company delivers enough plates?

Reality check.
1) We are throwing a very large party. There will be lots of details. Some of those details -- like whether or not the menu cards make it to the tables -- won't be noticed by anyone if they fall through the cracks. Others -- like whether or not people have plates for their food -- will make a big difference in our guests' enjoyment of the day.
2) Econo Boy and I could have chosen not to throw a large party, and simply tied the knot at the courthouse. In fact, I thought about it pretty seriously. But we decided to do it this way because we wanted to be with our family and friends. It's OK to care about their comfort and enjoyment.
3) If someone doesn't do the job you paid them to do, it's OK to find that annoying and to want them to fix it. Yes, even if you're getting married that day. Getting married does not give businesspeople license to take advantage of you and then call you a "bridezilla" when you complain.
4) Weddings are stressful. Being worried or stressed out on occasion is not a moral failure or a sign that we're focused on the wrong aspects of the wedding. It's just par for the course.

Phew. I feel better. Anyone else find it easier to give yourself permission to be stressed on occasion than to guilt yourself into pretending you don't really care?

I need a drink, and possibly a hug

This week, I had a freak-out, and I think I need to write about it.

This year has been a very busy one for Econo Boy – he’s been job-hunting and teaching a fairly heavy course load. As a result, I’ve been taking on a larger share of the household chores every now and then. More of the meal planning, more of the shopping, more of the cleaning, and almost all of the cooking. I was happy to do it – he was busy and I wanted to support him, since the outcome of his job hunt was huge for us as a couple.

But this week, as Econo Boy buried himself in a giant pile of final exams to grade and I buried myself in a stack of dirty dishes, I started to wonder if this was a pattern, if I had inadvertently become the “little woman,” cooking and cleaning and being sweetly non-demanding because her man has big important work-type things to do. All of this built up to a panic attack, in which I saw myself in 20 years, earning $2000 a course in a crappy part-time adjunct position that I’d accepted in order to be the one responsible for doing all the cooking and shopping and chauffeuring the kids to and from school, piano lessons, and sports practice, while Econo Boy basked in his tenured glory, came home at 6:30 to dinner on the table, and never noticed that I was pulling the day-to-day weight of keeping the family fed and organized. In other words, the same pattern from my parents’ marriage (although my mom actually did like her job) – the pattern that led my father to idiotically declare that my mom "never did anything to help this family" because her job wasn't a major source of income. (I know. Don’t even get me started. That’s a whole other post.)

That scenario terrifies me, and not just because my parents' marriage ended in a very bitter divorce. I like my work and I think I’m good at it, and I want to be in a job where the work I do is valued and compensated appropriately (i.e. not adjunct teaching). I’m willing to make career sacrifices, or even change jobs for our relationship and for our family, but I’m not willing to give up working, or to take a job that makes me miserable just because that’s easier for everyone else in the family. Whatever my future career and future household responsibilities look like, I want my role to be a choice I made, a choice I was happy to make, rather than something I slowly slid into without even realizing it until I resented it.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one having a bit of a freak-out about marriage and the future at the two-month mark (Meg, thanks for another spot-on post!), which makes me feel much less crazy. And I’ve talked to Econo Boy about my frustrations and we’ve both talked about how to avoid falling into gender traps in our relationship. Unfortunately I think it’s really easy for even the most driven women in heterosexual relationships to accidentally find themselves taking the supporting role, because that was the model a lot of us grew up with, the model that Western society still sells us, ever so subtly, every day.

I don’t have any easy answers for how to avoid it, except this: avoid it. Every single day, avoid it. Pay attention to the choices we make, and make them deliberately and consciously, knowing the implications for our careers, our family, and our future happiness. Appreciate each others' contributions, no matter how day-to-day and mundane. And above all, avoid becoming my parents!

You're not going to believe this

I still don't have my invites in hand. And today, when I contacted the seller to ask her to follow up and warned her that I would have to report this as a non-delivery if I didn't hear from her ... she changed my Etsy purchase status to "Declined"!!

OK, you can't finish the order. Annoying, but OK. But you ignore my communications and passive-aggressively cancel my order 4 months after accepting my money, and don't offer to refund any of it?! Aargh!!!

Let me re-iterate the major lesson from my mishap, friends. Never, EVER pay in full for a custom order up-front. NEVER. No matter how nice the seller seems or how glowing her feedback is. NEVER. An honest, experienced professional will not object to a half down, half upon delivery payment plan.

The good news: Econo Boy and I spent some time playing around with some blank A7 cards and we think we've come up with a nice, cost-effective way to print our invitations ourselves. I've asked the seller to refund enough money for us to rush-order invites from Wedding Paper Divas, but if that doesn't look likely, we'll probably go with the lower-cost option.

I'm kind of venting right now, but to be honest, I've spent so long being upset over this that I'm pretty much over it. The weaselly move she made in canceling my order confirmed for me that this woman is profoundly unprofessional, and while it was foolish to pay up-front, this is her fault, not mine. And most couples I know had at least one awful vendor, whether it was a photographer or a florist or a caterer. Hopefully this means I got my mandatory wedding disaster out of the way, and the actual party will be nothing but fun!

You've got to be kidding me

Received a box from my invites designer today. It contains ... the envelopes. And only the envelopes. No invitations, no RSVP cards, no inserts.

AND the return address on the invitation envelopes has a mistake (she included my mom's name when I asked for just the address -- nothing major, I'm just annoyed she didn't listen to me).

Now, when the designer sent me the tracking number, she said the invites were being shipped in 2 boxes. But I don't have a tracking # for this mythical second box. Is it wrong of me to be suspicious that there is no second box, and to wonder if this was her way of buying more time to finish the printing?

Ugh. I am so sick of dealing with this woman and of worrying about these stupid invitations. I just want them in hand so I know it's over!!

How many excuses does it take to change a light bulb?

Aaaaand we're back to here.

My recalcitrant printer agreed to mail my invites on April 15 and send me the tracking number. On April 16, having heard nothing, I contacted her to ask what my status was. She replied that she was out of town for a family emergency.

She returned on the 21st, and when I contacted her, she told me my new delivery date is April 30 ... more than two weeks after what she promised me in March.

Sigh. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, I really do, and I don't question that she's had some bad luck of late. But after three and a half months of terrible communication and multiple tales of woe, she's starting to remind me of that student who always has an excuse for why she can't turn something in on time -- "my grandmother's sick," "my car broke down," "I'm super-busy and so stressed out," etc. etc.

It's gotten so bad that Econo Boy and I have already chosen and customized the Wedding Paper Divas invitations that we'll rush-order in mid-May if the Etsy invitations don't come through. If May 15 rolls around and we still don't have a tracking number, all we have to do is click "buy."

A couple of people have contacted me wanting to know this seller's name so they can steer clear. I don't feel comfortable trashing her by name, but I will advise anyone looking on Etsy for a printer to read the recent feedback *very* carefully (i.e. look for neutral as well as negative feedback -- neutral feedback doesn't get counted in the feedback score -- and make sure you're looking at feedback from fellow buyers, not sellers who sold things to the owner).

To DOC or not to DOC?

Early on in the wedding planning, I came to a disturbing realization: almost everyone assumes the bride is in charge. Even if your fiance is organized and efficient and happy to talk to vendors, it is darn near impossible to get a caterer or venue coordinator to call the groom, no matter whose number you put down as "primary contact." Our moms are slightly more effective buffers (apparently mothers of the bride and groom are also permitted to have knowledge of wedding-related events), but from where I'm sitting, just about everything seems to be the bride's job.

And right now I'm frakking sick of it. (Yes, that was a Battlestar Galactica swear word. Yes, I'm a geek.)

Yesterday while fielding half a dozen questions about the wine order, while simultaneously trying to re-order my veil and figure out what's going on with the invitations and organize a conference that it is totally not my turn to organize (long story), oh yeah, and write a thesis chapter, it occurred to me that I don't want the wedding day to be like this. If the cake is 15 minutes late or the rental place didn't bring enough silverware or the bathroom runs out of toilet paper, I don't want to know about it. And frankly, I don't want my mom to know about it either, or Econo Boy's mom, or Econo Boy (not that anyone would ask him what they should do, he's just the groom, grrr). And I certainly don't want to be the one on the cell phone trying to figure out what's going on and how to fix it.

I think I may need a DOC.

Image from www.weddingapproved.com

A DOC is a day-of coordinator -- someone responsible for making sure things run smoothly, for setting up the pretty menu cards I designed, for calling the rental place and telling them to bring us the rest of our forks, for running out to the store if the venue runs out of toilet paper.* Our caterer is great, and can handle most of the setup and take-down, but I'm starting to think it would be really nice to have someone else there who is the point person for all problems and will make sure some of the details fall into place.

I'd also love some help from a pro with figuring out the ceremony. Since our ceremony is at the venue, I don't have a sweet church lady helping me figure out who comes from where, and the venue employees are not much help (the contract explicitly states that the venue employees are there to make sure we abide by the mansion's rules, and are not responsible for helping us with anything at all).

The downside: it's another expense. We can afford it, but I feel guilty adding yet another line to our budget. Also, at 3 months out, it may be difficult to find a good coordinator who isn't super-expensive.

Plus, is it really necessary? Econo Boy thinks we can ask family to handle a lot of the stuff I'm worried about, but I am not particularly comfortable with asking aunts, uncles or grandparents to arrive early and make sure all of the table numbers are in the right place. They're our guests, not free labor.

What do you guys think? For those who are married, is a DOC worth the expense? If you didn't have one, how did you handle things?

* The toilet paper thing? Based on a true story. According to my friend who was a bridesmaid at this wedding, the mother of the bride ended up leaving the reception and driving 30 minutes to the nearest grocery store to replenish the supply. You can't make this stuff up.

Lessons learned the hard way

It appears I may have spoken too soon about our wedding invitations.

In the past two months, I have sent our invitations designer 5 e-mails requesting further information on the project. In return, I have received exactly 1 e-mail from the designer, explaining that they are "backed up" but promising she would send me the proofs and have my design on press the next week. That, by the way, was 4 weeks ago; I haven't heard anything from her since. I also noticed that last week, a buyer on Etsy left her negative feedback reporting non-delivery of a custom item. At this point, I am almost certain that I will not receive the invitations that I ordered and paid for, and I am wondering when I should panic and order something else instead.

I feel utterly, utterly foolish. I am *way* past the date when I can dispute the initial transaction on PayPal; at this point I don't think there is any way I can get my money back, unless Etsy is able to assist me or unless my credit card company can do something. I'm going to push the designer to send me proofs and get me the invitations, but I don't really see it happening, at least not in time to actually send them out. (The way things are going, I half expect them to show up on my doorstep on July 26, the day after the wedding, thus enabling the designer to justify keeping my money because hey, she sent them.)

I'm normally very cautious about online transactions, but I really screwed this one up. My advice from this episode?

1. DO NOT pay for a project in full up-front. Yes, I know, "Duh." But it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of seeing a cool custom design, trust that 100% positive feedback rating, and decide that you don't want to be difficult by asking to split the price into a down payment and a payment-upon-delivery. Be a bit difficult. It's OK. A quality professional will understand the preference for a split payment.

2. When faced with an unacceptable situation, be demanding. I have been way too nice about this whole thing, waiting weeks for a response and telling myself "just be patient, it will all be OK, don't be a Bridezilla." But the only response I got from the designer was when I was semi-demanding and expressed "concern" at the "poor communication." Of course, when I read her sob story, I immediately reverted back to Nice Mode and told her how sorry I was to hear about her troubles. The result: being ignored for another 4 weeks.

I'm not advocating bitchiness in all online transactions, but when someone's not measuring up, don't be afraid to let them know it, and don't back down when they come up with excuses. Politely but firmly insist that they do what you have paid them to do, and if they don't follow through in the agreed-upon amount of time, start pestering them again, and continue being a pest until you get what you want.

3. Create a paper trail via e-mail and/or Etsy Conversations, in which you are highly specific about what you expect and when you expect it. This may end up being your only recourse if your seller flakes on you.

Ugh. I'll keep you updated on this whole situation, but right now I am so disappointed, both in the designer and in myself for being so gullible and losing a fairly large chunk of money. In the grand scheme of things, I know it won't matter if we send out self-printed invitations from a Target kit or high-end letterpress from a designer featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, but I was excited about this and I can't help feeling bummed, and also pretty stupid.

Weddings, money, and family: Advice to parents

There is no shortage of books, magazines, and websites aimed at brides. There are even a few aimed at grooms. But what about the parents of the happy couple -- also known as "the people likely to be footing at least part of the bill"?

After composing my last post, I realized there was an unexplored flip side: advice to parents who may or may not be paying for the wedding. So here is my attempt to address that group, with Bride in Exile's Tips for Parents on (Relatively) Stress-Free Wedding Planning. (Note: I've written this largely as if it's directed to the mother of the bride and the couple is heterosexual, but I think the advice could apply to all parents and step-parents of any couple getting married.)

If you are helping to pay, make your expectations -- and your intended contribution -- clear at the beginning.
Think about the aspects of the wedding that are important to you, the things you consider “non-negotiable” given that you are paying for this shindig, and make sure the bride and groom know about them. Do you want to be able to invite your entire extended family, including third cousins the couple has never met? Tell the bride and groom up front, before they fall in love with a reception site that has a 50-person maximum. Do you hate buffet receptions and want a plated, seated dinner instead? Don’t spring it on the couple after they’ve signed a catering contract. When you offer financial support, tell them “We would love to contribute $x to the wedding fund, with the understanding that you will invite these people/hold the ceremony at our church/rent nice chairs for the reception [hi, Mom!].”

Small digression here: if you are not going to do much of the planning yourself, it is much better to tell the couple a dollar amount that you're comfortable with contributing than to say something vague like "just let us know what you need." What you think the wedding should cost may not line up perfectly with what the couple thinks the wedding will cost. Never be vague about money, it only leads to misunderstandings.

OK. You've decided on your contribution, and you've told the couple what you expect from them if you are going to pay. Now, here comes the hard part: if the couple doesn’t like your requirements, they may decline your financial help. That will probably sting, and you may feel rejected and cut out of the planning. That’s understandable. But try to focus on the good: this means your son or daughter is mature enough to be honest about what they want, and also mature enough to assume the cost of doing what they want. Which means you've done something right in the parenting department!

Even if you are paying, you should still be willing to compromise.
You may think you've covered all your bases up front, but other issues will almost certainly come up during the planning. For example, it may not occur to you to mention that you think hydrangeas are ugly and you don’t want to serve fish for dinner – until your daughter tells you all of the flowers will be hydrangeas and suggests menu choices of salmon and tuna.

When these little clashes of taste or style do arise, your first thought may be, “No way. It’s my money, and I don't want my friends and family sitting in a room full of hydrangeas and eating fish!” And honestly, that’s not entirely crazy. It is your money and you want some say in how it’s spent.

But wedding planning will be much smoother and more harmonious if you listen to what the couple wants too. It may be your money and you may be the hostess, but it's their wedding and they are the guests of honor at the reception. If you veto everything the couple suggests without a second thought, you will be resented, and rightfully so. Pick your battles (e.g., say "OK" to the hydrangeas but push for a different menu) and don't use your money as a weapon, unless you want the couple to call from Vegas with the announcement that they couldn't deal anymore and eloped.

Be realistic about costs.
$5,000 will pay for an absolutely lovely wedding. But in 2009, it will not get you a plated, seated dinner for 200 people at the local country club. Some of the most stressful wedding planning experiences I’ve seen involved parents turning over the planning to the couple, and then complaining that the couple’s choices were “cheap” or “not very nice” and pushing for more expensive options that simply were not in reach of the budget. If having fancier, more formal touches at your child’s wedding is incredibly important to you, be prepared to cover the additional expense.

The same goes for the guest list. It's a basic equation of wedding planning: more guests = more food, more chairs, more alcohol, more cake, more rentals = more money. Please do not get on the phone with the bride and tell her you're sure she can squeeze in 50 extra people if she "just budgets a little bit better," unless your intention is to drive her insane and/or goad her into attacking you with a grapefruit spoon.

If you are convinced the couple is spending their budget foolishly, ask to see their catering bids, facility contracts, and other relevant research – you may be surprised to find that food, facilities, and flowers really are that expensive, and that your son or daughter has made smart, cost-conscious choices. Or, if it turns out the couple is spending a lot of cash in areas where you think they could cut back, looking at their budget information will help you come up with constructive and specific suggestions for how you'd like to change things up, e.g., “Tina, Frank, I noticed that you chose surf and turf as the entrée. That sounds delicious, but it’s also the most expensive option on the menu. If we went with a different entree, we could afford to invite more people.”

If you are not helping to pay, do not make demands.
This applies whether your financial help was declined or you simply couldn’t afford to contribute. You can certainly ask if your cousin Mary and her children could be added to the guest list, or if the couple would be willing to add a beef option to the menu. But if the couple says “we’re sorry, we can’t afford any more guests” or “having a vegetarian reception is very important to us, we don’t want to serve beef,” thank them for considering your request and leave it at that. Do not start screaming about how you will be "humiliated" by their "ridiculous hippie reception," because that will get you nowhere. And if the couple says "we can't afford that," don't belittle them for being "cheap" or try to guilt them into spending beyond their means -- no, not even if you're doing so in the name of scoring invitations for 30 family members who "have" to be on the guest list. It's a wedding, not the last chopper off that scary island on "Lost." Your cousin's children will get over their emotional trauma if they are not invited.

What other advice should we give the parental half of the planning equation?

But it's MY DAY!

Lately I've run across more than a few posts on various forums that read something like this.

"My parents are paying for the wedding. Now they are making all kinds of demands about the food and the guest list!! Don't they know it's MY WEDDING?!"

I'm always torn when I read things like this. On the one hand, I know one friend whose mother planned her entire wedding and regarded it as the mother of the bride's party, even to the point of cutting the couple's friends off the guest list so she could invite her bridge club. I think that's an unfortunate approach, in part because the couple ends up remembering their wedding day as "oh yeah, that thing my mom planned that none of our friends got invited to, somehow." (Note: my friends were able to weasel their buds back onto the guest list.) I really feel that weddings are best and most memorable when they reflect the couple that's getting married.

But on the other hand, if your parents are paying for the wedding, expecting them to have no input and bow to all of your wishes seems unrealistic, even spoiled.

Here are my own thoughts on parents, money, and compromise, filtered through my own experience and those of my friends.

If your parents are paying, be prepared to let them have some input.
I’m sure there are parents out there who simply say, “here’s a giant check for your wedding. Do whatever you want.” I just haven’t met any. All of the parents I’ve known have at least one or two things they really want or really care about on their list of wedding expectations. My dad wants live ceremony music and a choice of entrees for dinner; my mom wants attractive chairs and the chance to invite her beloved cousins. A friend’s mom had only one request of the bride: “The invitations have to be from Crane’s!”

If your parents are paying for most or all of the wedding, be prepared to give way to their wishes on occasion. It is not realistic to expect that you will get to make 100% of the wedding decisions unless you are providing 100% of the wedding budget.

If you can’t compromise, be prepared to say “thanks but we’ll pay for it ourselves.”
It’s pretty easy to maintain family harmony if your parents’ requests are minor. But what if they’re demanding things that you and your fiancé are absolutely unwilling to consider – say, if you have always dreamed of getting married outside and they’re insisting they will be "humiliated" if it's not in a church?

In cases where you and your parents just don’t see eye to eye, and the thought of giving way makes you physically sick, don't lose it and start screaming "It's MY SPECIAL DAY!!" Lay out the case for what you want calmly and honestly. Tell them this is important to you, and ask if there’s any room for compromise.

If not, if they still insist on their church for the ceremony and their country club for the reception even after hearing your arguments in favor of an outdoor wedding at the park, you have a choice to make. You can either reject their money and do it your way, or take their money and do it their way. It sucks to reach this point, and in an ideal world parents would be supportive of the couple’s wishes, but the truth is that the only way you will have total control over your own wedding is to pay for it all yourselves.

Even if they’re not paying, it’s nice (and very stress-reducing) to take your family’s wishes into consideration.
One of my best friends was not terribly excited about getting married in her husband’s family’s church – it was not the prettiest building in town. But she knew it would mean the world to her future mother-in-law. She could have decided “no, my family is paying, we’ll have it at a prettier church.” Instead, she decided to go with what her fiance’s mother really wanted. This was a gracious and classy gesture that did a lot of good for their relationship (and helped take the sting out of saying “no” to FMIL’s idea of inviting the entire church congregation).

So if non-paying family members have requests that you feel you can accommodate without compromising what you really want, why not say yes? The key there is “without compromising what you really want.” If you are planning a chic 1920s theme wedding, and your parents hate it and want something more traditional, I am certainly not suggesting that you throw away your dream wedding and bow to your parents’ wishes! But if your parents ask for a traditional wedding cake at your wedding, and you weren’t going to have one but don’t loathe the idea, it would be a lovely gesture to say “yes.”

What's your take on it? What kind of input did your family have, and what compromises did you make? Do you regret those compromises, or see them as a contribution to family harmony?