How to Help Your Daughter-in-Law Enjoy Her Wedding

Weddings are events loaded with emotion and sometimes overshadowed by anxiety. There's usually enough edginess to include everyone even remotely connected to the wedding event. Certainly ushers and bridesmaids are feeling twitchy just knowing they are going to be on public display before many people who they only slightly know and wearing clothes not of their own choosing. But even folks like the florist, the caterer and the photographer get a case of the "nervous nellies" because this is their livelihood and they need everything to be perfect. Most often the bride leads the anxiety parade. After all who is really looking at the groom? A wedding is very much about the bride, how she looks, how she acts, how she moves. That's why what mother- in- laws really need to discover, as a perfect wedding gift , is how to help your new daughter-in-law to enjoy her wedding.

1. Use the Engagement Period to Build a Positive Relationship - Anxiety about the wedding starts from the moment of the engagement. The bride to be has a great many concerns . Between getting the church, the minister, the hall, the caterer and all the other lesser things on her "to do" lists, the bride may be working herself into a near breakdown before she's even accustomed to her engagement ring.

Whether there is a long or short engagement period , one way to help your daughter-in-law enjoy her wedding is to take a positive attitude towards her. In this new relationship the mother-in-law clearly has the upper hand in a variety of ways. You are likely to find your daughter-in-law bending over backwards to try to impress you and gain your approval. But you have the experience of sitting where she is now. You know from your own experience as a daughter-in-law how devastating or uplifting the remarks, expressions and reactions of a mother-in-law can be.