You've gotten engaged and now it's time to start planning your dream wedding. But besides getting down on a knee and giving you a ring, your fiancee doesn't seem too interested in getting married. When you ask their opinion on flowers, or cake, or a venue, you keep hearing the same thing: "Whatever you want, love."
Should you be worried that your partner doesn't seem invested in your wedding? It depends, says Rose Hartzell, PhD, a marriage and family therapist in San Diego. Maybe your partner just isn't caught up in the details of the wedding, but can't wait to marry you. As long as they're invested in your relationship and your future life together, it's not a huge deal if your S.O. doesn't care if your wedding cake is chocolate or vanilla. "Maybe he doesn't care about centerpieces, but if he doesn't care about centerpieces and also doesn't care about getting married, that could be a bad sign," Dr. Hartzell says.
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Not everyone cares about centerpieces — or any other detail that goes into a wedding. Wedding planning can be stressful and expensive, and some couples choose to skip it all together. And if eloping doesn't mean that a couple's relationship is doomed to fail, neither does one partner being less enthused about wedding planning, Dr. Hartzell says. But, if it's clear that your partner is avoiding decision-making about your impending nuptials because they're apathetic about the marriage, too, that warrants a conversation.
You can start the talk by saying something like, "I want this to be our wedding, not my wedding," Dr. Hartzell says. "I was hoping to have more of your involvement. Can we set a time to talk about what we each want for this special day?" Red flags to look out for are your partner: not setting a date or continually pushing the date off and not wanting to talk about the wedding at all, she says. There's a difference between genuinely not having an opinion and saying something like "Do we have to talk about this again?"
If it seems like your partner truly doesn't care about the marriage, that can tell you about the kind of person they'll be once you get married, she says. "If they're not willing to put in the work before you get married, that's a pretty good sign that once you get married and life gets more complicated, they won't put the work in then, either."