A few years ago the church secretary made an attempt to count how many times my husband has tied the knot. She estimated somewhere between eighty and a hundred weddings over the past thirty years or so. That’s a bunch, to put it mildly.

Weddings are one of the few remaining events in our culture where we dress up and follow traditional rules of conduct. We receive and rsvp to formal invitations, we are seated by ushers and handed programs. We sign guest books and (sometimes) go through receiving lines. A wedding requires incredible planning and requires a lot of its guests. Here is my own little list of ten things a bride should think about while planning her wedding. (I wish I had read this before my own wedding!)

1. Make the invitation clear. Don’t make the invitation so colorful and cluttered that your guests may miss the main details (which are in 3 pt font printed up the side). And remember to write out all the names on those invited, so there is no ambiguity about the children.

2. When you go to buy a dress, keep the context in view. If you’re having an outdoor wedding in July, don’t buy a dress with a train that looks like you’re headed for Westminster Abbey! Stay on task, no matter how elegant everyone says you look in it.

3. Stay in your budget. There is nothing in the world wrong with a reception of cake, punch, and mints. If your parents are offering to buy you a full sit-down dinner for 400 guests, then God bless them, and go for it. But if you are operating on a different kind of budget, no one will mind a simple slice of (delicious) wedding cake and a cup of punch.

4. This is a party in your honor, but you still want to honor your guests, so  when you pick a time for your wedding, consider whether it will work for your family and friends.

5. Be kind to your bridesmaids and don’t ask them to pay $200 for a dress they’ll never wear again. And don’t pick a dress that only one of your ten bridesmaids will actually look good in. Remember that the first view most of the guests get of the dress is the back, so make sure the dress is cute in the back, not just in the front. Not everyone looks good from every angle  in a backless, strapless wonder.

6. Make certain if you invite five hundred that you actually have five hundred seats, not four hundred fifty.

7. Keep the reception moving so your guests can actually stay until the end. If you plan a lengthy reception, you’ll necessarily lose some of your guests. It’s always better to have everyone wishing it would last a little longer than have them wishing it would end, and fast.

8. Beware the open mike. It’s always better to ask a few very specific individuals to offer the toasts or wedding speeches. It is something to prepare for, not something to be given off the cuff.

9. Let go of the details, once it’s planned. If the bows on the aisles are not exactly what you had hoped for, don’t worry about it. Look over them to find the eyes of your groom.

10. Be sure to thank your parents and kiss them goodbye.

I’ve written about submission when it’s hard. In fact, in the earlier post on unsubmissiveness, I said that it isn’t even submission if you agree with your husband. But I need to clarify that.

In a godly marriage, a wife is living in a respectful and submissive manner with a husband who is living in a loving and sacrificial manner. Both are sacrificing for one another, laying down their lives for one another, and they do this all the time. They may not even notice because it is such a pattern of life for them. Submission is an attitude of the heart, and it is a frame of spirit. So a wife could be living submissively day-in and day-out and never really be identifying it as “submission.” But it is.

I don’t want to give the word submission a bad rap by giving the impression that it is only applicable when it’s hard. It is sometimes hard. When Jesus submitted in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was very hard. But when He was doing the will of His Father day-in and day-out while on the earth, He was living in a submissive manner. God’s will was Jesus’ will. They agreed. And in the Garden, Jesus made the Father’s will His own.

So God has shown us how to submit when it is hard, and He has shown us how to live submissively all the time. Both are good. Both are required.

Married women the world over can fail to understand their standing and authority in Christ two ways. The first way is when they over-shoot and miss the mark by assuming headship over their husbands. Some husbands like it that way, and they go along quietly because, if they keep their heads down, life goes along peacefully enough. But “wearing the pants” is not all it’s cracked up to be.

The second way women fail to grasp their position in Christ is to cower and “submit” to a man who has forfeited his authority over her. In the first instance, I suppose the man should send up a flare for help. But no one really feels sorry for the husband who gets walked all over. After all, he’s the guy and should know how to stand up for himself. But when a woman gets walked all over, she should also stand up for herself. She is a free woman in Christ. Sometimes a Christian woman should be what some might call “unsubmissive.”

Now before you gasp and think I’ve gone over to the dark side, let me just clarify. Authority is a good thing. Moms Read More

Sometimes, as I’m sure you know, wives can take on more than they can  physically, spiritually, or emotionally handle.  It’s absolutely humanly impossible, but they manage somehow anyway, and the family survives the craziness after all. Survives. That’s an interesting word. But there’s a toll. And the family or the kids or mom herself pays it.

When a wife is carrying a burden of responsibility that is simply too much for her, her husband is the one with the responsibility to notice. He is supposed to protect her from her own rash commitments. In fact, somewhere in the OT law there is a verse about how if a husband hears of his wife’s vow on the same day that she made it, he can overturn it. That’s a good one, and I fully approve. Three cheers for the husband who says, “You said you’d do what? Are you crazy? I don’t want you to do that!”

Wives tend to underestimate the impact they have on their very own families, and, at the very same time, they also overestimate their own ability to carry far more weight than they were designed by God to carry. (Did you follow that?)  A wise husband will Read More

Two things in this short post. First, a friend sent me an email she received inviting her to a Bible study for women on how to keep your marriage healthy. And, in closing, the study leader said something like, “Can’t wait to share all my husband’s faults with you!” Now it may have been tongue in cheek. I certainly hope so. But it still sent a shiver down my spine. And along these lines, here is a fantastic article that I’d like to commend to each and every one of you readers, whether you are married or not. And God bless the author of this piece. I always appreciate a solid exhortation, and here’s one for you. Hang on to your hat!

One of God’s clear commands to wives is to see that they respect their own husbands. One of the hard things to get wives to see is that this is not about their husbands. It is not a command to the husbands to be respectable (though they should). It is to and for the wives. And respect is really about the wives, not the husbands.

What do I mean by this? A wife is to see that she does something herself. Respect is a behavior that the wife is to display. Here are a few things that characterize a respectful wife.

1. She thinks right thoughts about her husband, contemplating his strengths and godly traits.

2. She shows gratitude to him for his work and provision and abilities.

3. She shows concern for his needs and wishes.

4. She speaks courteously to him.

5. She fulfills his requests, submitting to him in the little things and the big things.

6. She speaks highly of him to others.

7. She is trustworthy.

8. She goes to him for counsel first.

9. She prays for him.

10. She forgives him.

Now some women will say, “I refuse to do that. My husband is not worthy of such treatment.”  Then why did you marry him? Some husbands may say that they refuse to love their wives because they are not lovely or lovable. So why did they marry women they couldn’t love? They are still required by Scripture to love them anyway.

This is why it is so important for women to marry someone for whom they have great respect. Otherwise, this is a very high bar. If you have great regard for your husband, then you married the right guy. And respecting a respectable man is not too difficult after all.

But if on the other hand, you are already married to someone for whom you have little respect, the command is still there, but it will be much more difficult to obey. At the same time, if you begin to treat your husband with respect unconditionally, out of respect for Christ and His Word, it will be good for you and good for your husband.