The Perfect Engagement: People Don't Plan to Fail... They Fail to Plan

By Douglas M. Graf

The Perfect Engagement is a book that helps Christian couples move from dating to marriage in the best way possible, from planning the wedding to arranging your honeymoon. From purchasing a house to budgeting for the family. The Perfect Engagement gives each couple detailed timelines and processes to help them plan and organize all the details for their nuptials, honeymoon, budget, and so much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9780996946919

Book preview

Preface

Congratulations on your engagement; what wonderful news! This is an exciting time for you and your future spouse. It’s a new chapter in your life. You’ll get to tell your friends the romantically memorable story of the proposal and have to answer, So what’s the wedding date? a thousand times. There will be lots of wedding and honeymoon planning to do, and on top of that, you have to mutually decide where you want to live, how many children you want (if any), and so much more.

This book is a guide to getting your new family off to the best start possible. Many of you read my first book, Bible Principles for Christian Dating. This book is the next step to your marriage and future family.

In this book, I will show you how to plan for everything during your engagement including: how to budget, how to merge families, how to evaluate a new place to live, and more. Planning is the bottom line, and the one theme you’ll see time and time again throughout this book.

When you plan ahead, everything runs smoother. Our God is a God of order. He likes when you seek Him for guidance to keep order in your life. Planning helps reduce the amount of stress in your life because planning requires that you organize your priorities.

The most important thing to remember about planning is to take your time. Rushing will lead you to make hasty decisions, which will lead to poor judgment and even poorer results. In addition to planning, always seek God for confirmation. This is supported by Proverbs 16:9 (NASB), The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

In this book, we will discuss how to plan certain events and how proper planning affects your present and future. We’ll talk about timing, order, and executing ideas together. You’ll have the information and insight you need to help you with what to purchase and when in great detail throughout this book.

Marriage is a strong covenant with God that some people take for granted. In Deuteronomy 24:5 NLT, God says, A newly married man must not be drafted into the army or be given any other official responsibilities. He must be free to spend one year at home, bringing happiness to the wife he has married.

That’s a strong statement! God says for one year a man must be free to bring happiness to his wife at home. I will analyze the meaning of this scripture and its application to modern-day marriage in The First Year of Marriage section of this book. The most important thing to be mindful of is that you are bringing happiness into each other’s life and that you commit to grow together.

Once again, I congratulate you on your engagement and wish you and your future spouse the finest blessings in your new marriage.

chapter one:

Preparation

The engagement period is the time you will spend preparing for your immediate and distant future as a married couple including the wedding, your shared home, and your existence together as one in general.

As you prepare for the different phases of your engagement, I encourage you to pray to God for wisdom and knowledge. Pray for good discernment and for the right people to be placed in your paths to help you through this exciting time and for certain people to be blocked or removed who may hinder your engagement.

The Bible says in Proverbs 2:6-9 (NLT): For the Lord grants wisdom! From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest. He is a shield to those who walk with integrity. He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him. Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will find the right way to go.

Our God is a God of order. God created everything at a specific time so it all works together. It wouldn’t have made since for God to have created man before He created animals or plants. What would Adam and Eve have eaten to stay alive? He created the Earth before He created animals and plants so they would not be floating in space. The Earth is what plants and animals called home. When you get married, you will call your new place home to your family. Your marriage is the start of making your house your home.

In Numbers 4:27-49 (NLT) God gave Moses instructions to assign duties to the different members of each clan. Each person had a specific duty to perform. This is qualified in verse 49 where the scripture says, When their names were recorded, as the LORD had commanded through Moses, each man was assigned his task and told what to carry. This example demonstrates the establishment of order within the clans.

How does this relate to marriage? As a married couple, you will want to be in agreement of how the different household duties are divided up. This means that during your engagement, who pays the bills, who washes the clothes, who cooks, who cleans, etc. has to be carefully considered and worked out.

In my last book, Bible Principles for Christian Dating, we talked about establishing all of the processes, timelines, and personal visions, and we entered into an engagement to be married. We also talked about continuously learning about each other.

Engagement is the time to disclose anything of a sensitive nature. It is a time to talk about every topic or situation, especially if it can be brought up at a later time by someone else. You don’t want any surprises or issues that can disrupt your marital bliss. These discussions should and could include anything from finances and credit to how many children you want (or don’t want) and when you’d like to have them. You should also talk about any past addictions and legal issues.

One of the most difficult topics to talk about is past sexual relationships but you should know to some extent your partner’s sexual history. What one person says is in their past may be in their past until you run into that someone from their past, which makes for an awkward present. No woman of God wants to be in the mall with her husband only to run into another woman complaining how he owes her back child support. Your past is the past until it rears its head in the present, and can possibly disrupt your future.

Any tumultuous issues from your past or your partner’s past should be disclosed and forgiven if it has been dealt with and there has been deliverance. Nobody is perfect or has a perfect past but it should be acknowledged.

Your engagement is a good time to start getting ready if you want to have children. When you decide to have children, your focus should be on what is best for your children, even if that means personal sacrifice, and in most cases, it will. You should want the best and provide the best for them to the extent that it is within your means and ability. What you do in preparation for their arrival and how you raise them once they’re here will be the most prominent factor in their development from a child to an adult. This will be discussed in more detail later in this book.

Remember, everything being planned—from the nuances of the wedding to the effort you put into your new home—is being planned out of love. Everything done out of haste has a greater chance of failing. Buying a house out of haste, especially, neglecting to consider all the payments that will be owed may cause you some tough times down the road. Letting a wedding planner plan your entire wedding without keeping in close contact with them because you don’t want to deal with it can cause a big problem when you get to the reception if what you see is not what you want.

Honesty is the best policy because you are the other half to the person you’re marrying. It is important to be honest with your other half because when you decide not to speak up about things that bother you, you lead them to believe you are okay with whatever the matter is. Most of the time if a person is not happy about something then they will confide in a friend and say, This is what is wrong… or This is what’s going on…

Be truthful with your mate and let them know your concerns, and they might just agree to change. They may want to talk it out and explain why they behave or think a certain way and what bothered you at one point might make a lot more sense once you talk it through and understand their side of things. Open dialogue provides an opportunity for compromise on one or both persons’ part.

What you don’t want to do is hide your feelings, tell a friend, and then find out that it got back to your mate later. That will cause disruption, division, and dissension. The non-communication or hiding your feelings is what starts the tension because it could have been dealt with in the beginning as opposed to letting something fester for several months.

When someone in the relationship allows something to happen and don’t tell their mate that it bothers them, but then complains to others, it leads to arguments and discord down the road. The complaint only sounds like the other person doesn’t care when in reality, the other person just doesn’t