Getting the Groom Involved

Maybe it's not like this for you ladies, but my guy really hasn't been too involved in the wedding planning process. I'll ask him about things but his answers are always so noncommittal. And he usually doesn't remember his answers a week later. Take the following example, from a conversation we had a month ago:

Me: So what about purple, orange, and brown as our wedding colors?
Mr.: Eh, those are all too dark. I don't want three dark colors in our scheme.

Today's conversation:

Mr.: So are we still going to use brown, orange and purple as our wedding colors?
Me: Yeah, we can. Or there's other options.
Mr.: I just think those colors would look good together. What don't you like about them?
Me: I don't dislike ANYTHING about them, YOU said you didn't like them. Remember, they're all too dark?
Mr.: Oh, yeah.
Me: (sigh)

Or how about this conversation a week or so ago:

Me: So I just read that it'd be $1500 cheaper if we get married in the first week of November. What do you think?
Mr.: I think it might be too cold in November. It's fine if that's what you want, though.
Me: Oh hey, August is cheaper too.
Mr.: Definitely August. I don't think November is a good idea.

Today:

Mr.: Why don't we just get married in November instead of August?
Me: Uhh... (cry a little in my soul)

So today we had to take a little road trip to drop off my sisters, who have just left after a month of visiting. I brought The Wedding Book by Mindy Weiss with Lisbeth Levine to keep myself occupied on the five hour road trip. After we left the girls, I picked up the book to read. He asked if I was going to read while he had to drive. "Well do you want to talk about the wedding?" I asked. No response. "Okay, what else do you want to talk about?" to which he replied some utter nonsense. "Okay, look. We can talk about a real subject, or we can talk about the wedding."

This was the perfect opportunity to talk with him about the wedding. He had no TV, no laptop, no video games, no iPod, nothing to distract him from this conversation. I really wanted to figure out what was important to him because I couldn't believe nothing mattered.

So I started listing some things about the wedding like food, groomsman attire, color, music, reception, etc. After he told me some things that were important, we discussed what he pictured for those categories. It ended up being a very fruitful conversation and I learned a lot about him as well. But talking about it really wasn't going to help him remember, guys are more visual than girls. When we got home, I showed him some pictures of some of the things we discussed to get an even better idea of what he might like.

Turns out, he likes the peacock theme better than orange, purple and brown (I should've known really, blue is his favorite color). I also found out that he really doesn't care about the cake, or any of the food for that matter. He'd like to pick out the guys' attire with my help. And the reception has got to be fun (duh). We also decided to skip the boquet and garter toss after we read where those traditions originated from: way back when, people thought any part of the bride's attire was lucky. They would surge the bride after the ceremony, ripping apart her boquet and even her dress (eep!) just for some luck. Eventually the bride started tossing her boquet to keep them at bay. Think that's bad? The garter is worst. Apparantly guests would accompany the bride and groom to their room after the festivities and "encourage" them to do the deed by having the groomsmen help the groom remove the bride's garters (OHMYGOD are you freaking kidding me? Eww) at which point brides started tossing the garter to keep from being groped by a bunch of drunk men. Mr.'s response was "Somehow I don't see your brother helping me do that". Yeah, no crap. These traditions are not for us.

I'm really glad to finally sit down with him and discuss what he envisions for the wedding. It was really enlightening and I feel like we can forge ahead with a little more of an idea of where we're going. What parts of wedding planning are/were important to your guy?