Good Cop, Bad Cop: Surviving Wedding Planning

A still from the show "Brooklyn 99" after jake and Amy's wedding, a nice illustration for this installment of Surviving Wedding Planning where we talk about how to play "good cop/bad cop" to get people out of the way.

When it comes to your planning your Boston wedding, everyone seems to have an opinion. The moment you announce your engagement you're going to be deluged with the surprisingly strong feelings of friends, family and total strangers (especially for brides). Even when the advice is well-meaning, the sheer volume can let a lot of the air out of wedding planning.

There are plenty of ways to deflect, demur and decline these conversations - but sometimes you can't just scream at someone to shut up about how everything you're doing for your wedding is wrong (as satisfying as it might be). So how do you end the conversation when subtle hints just don't seem to work? Then you might try invoking your partner as something of a buffer as Captain Awkward suggests in a recent post (just make sure you let your future spouse know what you're up to ahead of time). Suggest they take point on certain conversations or topics, short-circuit anything that's getting exhausting with "sounds interesting, why don't you bring it up with Dwayne (note, in this scenario you are marrying the Rock)?"

In a lot of cases this is all it takes because these conversations tend to be more about your relationships and dynamics. Take you out of the equation and suddenly all those "very serious thoughts" about weddings don't seem important enough to be bothered whether it's about your black tie wedding in Boston, your casual Cape Cod beach wedding or something in between.

But "a lot" is not all. So there are times when your partner might have to field that call and the two of you will have to present a united front of "thanks, but no." This can be easier when you have your partner at your back (or, if it works for your situation, delivering the decision) because there's some power in "we" statements (after all, that's part of why you're getting married). Of course, you need to be careful when you’re deploying these strategies because some people will stop at nothing to give you a piece of their mind - in that case you might need to draw up firmer and more direct boundaries to make sure your Boston wedding doesn’t go right off the rails.

Ryan Richardson is a wedding and engagement photographer serving Boston and beyond; including Cape Cod Weddings, New England Weddings, Massachusetts Weddings and Rhode Island Weddings.