Power Plays for Brides

By Shimona Mayo

I bet you never thought choosing a wedding book could set you on course for a more productive, less stressful lifestyle with your soon to be husband.

If you are the average bride, you already have a hectic life and you want to know the best way to add this project with minimal stress. With the typical bride spending over 200 hours planning her big day there is little time for error.

You need Power Plays for Brides – a book of proactive action steps and countless tips that aren’t found in your common wedding planning book. This book will:
1) Help you to plan your event without cracking under the “normal” pressures of the wedding;
2) Help you to effectively collaborate with your groom on key long-term topics;
3) Set the foundation for your life as a wife; and
4) Offer you an improved lifestyle of managing, collaborating and delegating

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shimona Mayo
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991484515

Book preview

Power Plays for Brides

Power Plays for Brides

By Shimona Mayo

Copyright © 2014, Shimona Mayo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Published by Shimona Mayo in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-0-9914845-1-5

This work is licensed. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission from Shimona Mayo.

Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and company references printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Power Plays for Brides or Shimona Mayo. We do not vouch for the content of these sites and website addresses for the life of this book.

Our staff wants to hear from you. Please send us your questions or comments about this book to

[e-mail]. For downloadable worksheets mentioned throughout the book, please email [e-mail] and provide your purchase date and the site. We will verify the purchase and send all worksheets promptly.

Cover design by: Amy Vanderhoof

Interior design by: Brandi K. Etheredge

Introduction

I have a confession to make: I crave control. You know, as in, I like to be in charge—the person who calls the shots; the Boss. I don’t need a boardroom to prove that I am a natural born leader because I was born ready to be in charge. From birth, I instinctively ordered and organized everything within my reach—objects, friends, circumstances, and later in life, even the most important event of a woman’s life, my wedding. In my defense, and the defense of my fellow control-craving brides reading this book, a person like myself is generally able to multi-task, quickly identify problems, and delegate assignments.

But why is all of this important? Why should you even care that I am a control freak? It wasn’t until I planned my own wedding that I realized my personality, and the lack of real strategies played a major role in the successes and failures of my big day.  In fact, my control-craving behaviors made me more stressed out than was actually necessary. That’s why I am using this book as a platform for sharing many of the secrets I learned during my wedding and as an event planner/designer over the last 15 years.

Who you are really does impact your wedding planning process in more ways than you know. Using strategies to match your wedding planning strengths and weaknesses will put you way ahead of the brides who don’t! 

If you are excited about the mere thought of becoming a wife, you need this book. It encourages you to sit back and think about planning your wedding before diving in full steam ahead. It pushes you to understand who you are, how you function, and what you need in your role as a bride and wife.  I am especially excited about this book because many of the strategies that I share for your wedding can be incorporated into your marriage. I have learned much of this information by attending marriage conferences with my husband, planning events in the corporate world, and just working with brides in general.

I know there are a lot of great wedding resources available. Navigating all of those resources can become very confusing – too many different voices and opinions, and so many tutorials to help you achieve similar results. For the best results with power plays, I highly recommend that you use it as a standard event planning and design guide. Supplement with blogs and magazines for real-time design options. Don’t forget to visit the website www.powerplays4brides.com to see how we can help you in real-time with your specific wedding needs and to get answers to questions that you have about the book.

Acknowledgements

This book would not be possible without God. I am so grateful for the vision He gave me when writing this book to make it significant, relevant, and something other than what is currently on the market. Special thanks to my husband, Geoffrey Mayo, for always supporting me with my crazy projects! He is an awesome support, and he still takes my breath away. Geoff, I am grateful that you groomed me into a supportive wife and mother.  I am glad that you chose to love me in the way you did. To my children, Dylan, Caden & Chase whom I love with every beat of my heart, thank you for giving me quiet time to work on this book. Thanks also to my parents, Ernest and Sherleen for taking time with me and nurturing me to be the strong-willed, persistent, and entrepreneurial woman that I am today. You pushed me to be the best.

To my favorite wordsmith, Adonna, this book would not have a title without you. You have given me a trademark that I pray will outlive us both.

To everyone else who knew that I was writing this book and offered words of encouragement, I extend my sincere appreciation.

Chapter ONE: He Proposed!!!

Yes…What does that really mean?

Will you marry me? With shock, awe, and excitement, you said, Yes!

Since that moment, you have probably purchased every wedding magazine on the shelf and looked at several blogs to help you conceptualize what your day could look like. You may have registered for bridal shows, searched vendors, started thinking about who should be in your bridal party, and possibly even visited a few venues. Especially if this is your first marriage, you may be looking at life through a new set of lenses. Unfortunately, one lens (the wedding planning process) is foggy, and the other (uniting in marriage) is completely muted. You have a million questions and tons of great ideas, and you are struggling to navigate your way to a strategy. But in all of your preliminary planning, you probably haven’t thought about the nuts and bolts of what you are about to experience and how to best stay afloat while you plan your wedding.

Many brides think everything falls into place once they get the ring.  If you have been planning for more than a month however, you know that’s not true. Learning to become a wife to the man that is learning to become your husband is often a difficult transition for couples. (Trust me, I have been married for over six years. Sometimes we’ve run the race with enthusiasm, while other times, like our engagement, we barely crawled over the hump!) Even if you’ve been married before, you are now learning the specific needs, controls, and desires of this particular relationship. Planning a once-in-a-lifetime event while learning about each other and yourself in this new role can make that transition even more interesting.

Let’s be honest: challenges often times occur when people are going through a learning curve because they are trying to gain control of where they are, and many struggle to establish their roles. The most important thing that I want you to remember throughout your learning curve is that you loved this man enough to say yes, so the hardest part is done. You have dated, you know him personally, and you can trust him. You know that the husband’s role is to provide, and the wife’s role is to support. It’s just that easy.  There’s no need to argue or try to establish a role that doesn’t belong to you.  Take this time to understand how you can be the best wife to your husband, and I guarantee your transition will be smoother than brides who just forge ahead.

Let me give you a business example.  Our staff went on a retreat last year,