Love and Marriage: How to Get Your Fiance to Set a Wedding Date Already!

You've got the ring (yay!). Now you want a wedding. One issue: Your man is dragging his (cold?) feet. If he didn't want love and marriage, he wouldn't have proposed, right? Probably, so here's how to turn your guy into a groom.

Start the conversation.

Even though guys and gals play equal roles in love and marriage, many men think of weddings as women's domain, so they wait for you to get the planning party started. If you've tried talking weddings with him and he freezes up or, worse, changes the conversation, try this: "I'd like to discuss wedding planning with you. Do you want to talk now or tomorrow?" This is reasonable because if he's not up for it at the moment, he has a full day to mentally prepare (and it works on Paul…usually). Just don't accept any excuses if he tries to back out of the chat the next day.

Tell him what you want.

Explain that when he proposed, you were hoping you would get married next year (or whenever you were hoping for). No need to overwhelm him with wedding details during this initial talk, but you can tell him, briefly, about the kind of wedding you're envisioning: "An outdoor daytime wedding in the summer," for instance.

Get him to tell you what he wants.

After you've gone through your hopes for love and marriage (or at least your wedding day, anyway), ask him to explain what he's looking for. If he's quiet, ask some questions to get him talking: "When would you like to get married?" "If you're not sure, would you be opposed to my proposed timeline?" "Are there any things you absolutely don't want for your wedding? Anything you must have?"

Find out what the holdup is.

If your suggested wedding date is too soon for him, hear him out on why. For Paul, he was afraid we'd be too stressed out and too poor if we only had a year to plan our wedding, so we agreed to have a two-year-long engagement (love and marriage are all about compromise, baby!). More than likely, your guy is freaked out about wedding planning. Who could blame him? If my only experience with brides was from what I'd seen on "Bridezillas," I'd be hesitant to plan things for sooner rather than later.