Where is this opinion coming from?

You know when you think you know someone only to find out new and exciting things about them you never knew existed? Well... apparently Joe, my fiance, has a very large opinion on everything wedding. This took me by great surprise because in general in life, he's pretty laid back. He doesn't seem to really care about a lot of things. When he moved into my apartment a while back he came sans anything but his clothing and his dog River.

So here we go with the wedding planning. You know, the thing that ever girl begins when she's 7, dressing up in bedsheets with her best friends, singing "here comes the bride" while walking deliberately one foot at a time down an aisle of her most coveted stuffed animals? Yea, all that jazz. So when I got engaged I already had ideas spinning in my head. Already had things thought about, ideas pieced together, torn apart, redone. I didn't think that I would have much contention from the peanut gallery (read, the better half), but oh have I so far!!!

I thought that it would be nice to involve him, or at least ask if he wanted to be involved in the planning of things. I had talked to many of our friends and they had said that they (the girls) had planning the wedding and their husbands had merely shown up. That was even what my own father said he did at his wedding. So I thought I would ask Joe if he wanted to know what was going on, knowing him well and knowing that he's mostly complacent to things and would be a good perosn to be there for support. But it seems to be the completely opposite. I feel like I'm dealing with the ultimate Czar with his thumb in the air either pointing up in approval or down in rejection. I'm finding this exhausting and its all coming to a head really. Maybe we can find a middle ground? Maybe he can find something to own that I don't take quite as much stock in... like the entertainment, or the favors? But so far I feel like the input on the venue (this is as far as we've gotten) is quite elaborate and specific for the amount of work that we have respectively put in.

I really thought, after talking to many ex-bride to be's out there that this was something that the girl did... something that was put together by the bride, and driven by that msotly, but that is not turning out to be the case in my arena. Not by a long shot.

I'm sure there will be more to come later. Maybe he'll get tired of wedding planning and turn back to video games. Leave me to the girlie stuff like its supposed to be!