Have Fun with Him for Free

By Molly Triffin

1. Park your car in a secluded place and kiss like you were in high school. Crank slow jazz, roll back the seats, and fog up those windows, baby!

2. Board games aren't b-o-r-i-n-g if you play them right. Put a naughty twist on a classic and invent something fun, like strip checkers — each time one of you jumps a chip, the other person has to peel off an article of clothing. Hey, everyone wins!

3. Does your city boast world's largest ball of twine or perhaps a chicken with a human face? Visit weirdus.com to discover strange stuff in your area. Then go eyeball the bizarre findings with your man. Bring your camera!

4. Peruse yellowpages.com to find the number of a local wine shop. Call to see if they offer free tastings (many do!), and then make a day of it.

5. Put on a ratty concert tee and ripped jeans and head to a dive bar. While you're jamming to Bon Jovi on the jukebox, challenge your guy to a game of darts and, okay, spring for a $1 draft.

6. Flag your dream home in the real estate section of the newspaper. Then do a fantasy walk-through with "The Mister" during an open house.

7. Rock the house on the house. Type the words free concert along with your town and state into the search engine kaxy.com to find a gratis gig in your neck of the woods. Great bands play at no cost on occasion, so there's a good chance you'll get lucky.

8. Have an urban campfire. Fire up a hibachi on the front stoop or in the backyard; grab a box of graham crackers, a couple of chocolate bars, a bag of giant marshmallows, and two skewers and roast s'mores in the great outdoors.

9. Head to the court with your guy and play hoops. Practice free throws and three-pointers before asking him to help you perfect your layup.

10. Take an architectural tour of a nearby city. Spend a few minutes researching the buildings online and then go visit them in person. You may have passed by cool sites you'd never even noticed.

The 7 Steps to Happily Ever After

By Marjorie Ingall

Marriage is a home, a refuge against the outside storms. And like any house, it requires a strong, lasting foundation. To build one, every couple needs to take certain steps — seven, to be precise — that turn the two of you into not just you and me but we. You may not move through all the steps in order, and you may circle back to complete certain steps again (and again and again). But if you make it through them all, you'll be well on your way toward creating a marriage that will be your shelter as long as you both shall live.

Step 1: Find a shared dream for your life together.

It's easy to get caught up in the small stuff of married life: What's for dinner tonight? Whose turn is it to clean the litter box? Did you pay the electric bill? But the best partners never lose sight of the fact that they're working together to achieve the same big dreams. "Successful couples quickly develop a mindfulness of 'us,' of being coupled," says REDBOOK Love Network expert Jane Greer, Ph.D., a marriage and family therapist in New York City. "They have a shared vision, saying things like, 'We want to plan to buy a house, we want to take a vacation to such-and-such a place, we like to do X, we think we want to start a family at Y time.'"

This kind of dream-sharing starts early. "Couples love to tell the story of how they met," points out Julie Holland, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. "It's like telling a fairy tale. But happy couples will go on creating folklore and history, with the meet-cute forming the bedrock of the narrative." As you write and rewrite your love story ("our hardest challenge was X, our dream for retirement is Y"), you continually remind yourselves and each other that you're a team with shared values and goals. And P.S.: When you share a dream, you're a heck of a lot more likely to make that dream come true.

Step 2: Ignite (and reignite) a sexual connection.

In any good relationship, sex is way more than just a physical act. It's crucial for the health of your emotional connection, too: It's something only the two of you share; it makes you both feel warm and loved; it draws you back together when you're drifting apart. And did I mention that it's a whole lot of fun?

Striking up those sparks when you first meet is easy. Nurturing a strong, steady flame? That's the hard part. When you've got a mortgage, a potbelly, and a decade or two of togetherness under your belts, it can be hard to muster up the fire you felt when you first got together. That's when it's even more important to protect your sex life and make it a priority. "You have to keep working to create allure and seduction for each other or your sex life will become lackluster," Greer points out. "Who wants the same turkey sandwich over and over? You want it on whole wheat! On toast! As turkey salad! On a roll!" (And now I will imagine my husband covered with Russian dressing. Thanks, Dr. Greer.)

As the years go by, you'll keep revisiting and realigning and reimagining the passion you have for each other. And if you keep at it, you'll have a sex life that transcends your marriage's lack of newness, the stresses of family and work, the physical changes that come with aging. Now that's something worth holding on to.

Step 3: Choose each other as your first family.

For years, you were primarily a member of one family: the one in which you grew up. Then you got married, and suddenly you became the foundation of a new family, one in which husband and wife are the A-team. It can be tough to shift your identity like this, but it's also an important part of building your self-image as a duo (and maybe, eventually, as three or four or...).

For me, making this transition meant stopping the incessant bitching to my mom when I was mad at my husband — my behavior was disloyal, and I had to learn to talk to Jonathan, not about him. My friend Lynn tells the story of her mother's reaction to a trip to the Middle East she and her then-boyfriend (now husband) had planned. Her mother hit the roof, calling incessantly to urge Lynn not to go. Eventually, Lynn's boyfriend got on the phone with Mom and explained why they were excited to share this experience. "It was clear then that we were the team," Lynn says now. "Not teaming up against my mother, but teaming up together to deal with her issues."

Whatever your challenges — an overprotective mom? an overly critical father-in-law? — you have to outline together the boundaries between you and all of the families connected to you. Not only will you feel stronger as a united front but when you stick to your shared rules, all that family baggage will weigh on you a lot less.

Step 4: Learn how to fight right.

I'm embarrassed to think of how I coped with conflict early in my relationship with Jonathan. I stormed out — a lot. I once threw an apple at his head. Hard. (Don't worry, I missed — on purpose.) I had a terrible habit of threatening divorce at the slightest provocation. But eventually I figured that this was pretty moronic. I didn't want out, and I knew that pelting someone with fruit was not a long-term marital strategy.

"Fighting is the big problem every couple has to deal with," says Daniel B. Wile, Ph.D., a psychologist and couples therapist in Oakland, CA, and author of After the Fight. That's because fights will always come up, so every couple needs to learn how to fight without tearing each other apart.

Fighting right doesn't just mean not throwing produce; it means staying focused on the issue at hand and respecting each other's perspective. Couples that fight right also find ways to defuse the tension, says Wile — often with humor. "Whenever one of us wants the other to listen up, we mime hitting the TV remote, a thumb pressing down on an invisible mute button," says Nancy, 52, an event producer in San Francisco. "It cracks us up, in part because it must look insane to others." Even if you fight a lot, when you can find a way to turn fights toward the positive — with a smile, a quick apology, an expression of appreciation for the other person — the storm blows away fast, and that's what matters.

Step 5: Find a balance between time for two and time for you.

Jonathan and I both work at home. This frequently leads to murderous impulses. Though I'm typing away in the bedroom and he's talking to his consulting clients in our small home office, most days it really feels like too much intimacy for me.

But that's my bias. When it comes to togetherness, every couple has its own unique sweet spot. "There are couples that are never apart and there are couples that see each other only on weekends," Greer says. With the right balance, neither partner feels slighted or smothered. You have enough non-shared experiences to fire you up and help you maintain a sense of yourself outside the relationship — not to mention give you something to talk about at the dinner table. But you also have enough time together to feel your connection as a strong tie rather than as a loose thread.

Your togetherness needs will also change over time, so you'll have to shift your balance accordingly. "My husband and I spend a lot of time together, but it's almost all family time," says Katie, 40, a mom of two in San Leandro, CA. "We realized a few months ago that we hadn't had a conversation that didn't involve the kids or our to-do lists in ages, so we committed to a weekly date. We were so happy just to go to the movies and hold hands, something we hadn't done in ages. It felt like we were dating again!"

Step 6: Build a best friendship.

Think about the things that make your closest friendships irreplaceable: the trust that comes with true intimacy, the willingness to be vulnerable, the confidence that the friendship can withstand some conflict. Don't those sound like good things to have in your marriage, too?

"Happy couples are each other's haven," says Holland. "They can count on the other person to listen and try to meet their needs." Greer adds, "When you're true friends, you acknowledge and respect what the other person is; you don't try to control or change them. This creates a sense of safety and security when you're together — you know you're valued for who you are and you see the value in your partner."

Then there's the way, when you've been with someone a while, that you become almost a mind reader. You have a shared history and inside jokes. Your guy knows what you'll find funny, you forward him links to articles you know he'll enjoy, and best of all, you two can make eye contact at a given moment and say volumes without opening your mouths. And is there anything more pleasurable than sharing the newspaper with someone? Sitting in companionable silence, absorbed in your respective reading, sipping coffee, occasionally reading something out loud, but mostly just lazing happily together, communing without needing to speak? Ahh....

Step 7: Face down a major challenge together.

You're sailing along through life, and suddenly you hit a huge bump. A serious illness. Unemployment. The loss of a home. A death in the family. How do you cope?

The truth is, you never know how strong your relationship is until it's tested. All too often, the stress of a crisis can pull a couple apart. But the good news is, when you do make it through in one piece, you might just find yourselves tighter than ever.

"What didn't happen to us?" says Daryl, 28, a preschool teacher in Harrisburg, PA. "My husband lost his job and took a minimum-wage job he was way overqualified for just to make ends meet. He was offered a better job in a mountain town outside San Diego, so we moved. Then during the California wildfires several years ago, our house burned down and we lost everything. We were living in a one-room converted garage with no running water and a newborn. But we found that this chaos somehow brought us even closer together. We took turns losing it. We really kept each other sane."

Hey, marriage is no roll in the hay. It's tough, real work. But the reward, the edifice you build together that will shelter you through years of tough times, is more than worth the effort. The small, friendly cottage you build — decorated with your shared history and stories, filled with color and laughter — will be the warmest and safest retreat you can imagine.

Getting Married? Get a Consultant

Getting Married? Get a Consultant

As the holidays approach, many couples expect to be engaged by the New Year. While neither the question nor the champagne has been pooped, it is not too early to begin contacting the myriad of vendors who make a wedding happen. The first, and perhaps most important being a local wedding consultant.

Why a wedding consultant? The reasons vary with each couple but primarily because a wedding consultant can save the couple time, money, and anxiety. By conducting the research, scheduling appointments, and guiding the couple through the intricacies of hosting what is so awesomely described as a once-in-a-lifetime event, a wedding consultant not only helps define the creative elements of the event, but serves the essential role of overseeing the vast number of details that a wedding and its accompanying celebrations entail. There is so much information available to couples. From well-intentioned family and friends to the Internet to the media to today’s style icons, everyone has suggestions about how, when, and where to host a wedding.

With little time and lots of planning to do, the task of researching, contacting, and meeting so many different people—from the Officiants to the limousine driver and everyone in between—becomes overwhelming and inefficient for today’s busy couples. This is where a wedding consultant’s services are so beneficial. Today’s wedding celebrations, whether grand or intimate, are all about making every element of the occasion personal and quietly elegant. Working with a wedding consultant takes the pressure off the couple and their families so that they can tend to their guests and enjoy the event graciously.

Because most couples share in the planning, coordinating their schedules becomes more difficult. By working with a wedding consultant, they avoid spending hours searching for photographers, florists, and bands only to have to then spend more time interviewing them. By spending a short period of time talking with their consultant about their wishes and budget, couples need only meet with a handful of the most appropriate professionals as suggested by their consultant. For those couples being married a considerable distance from where they reside, a wedding consultant is especially valuable.

Whether the consultant’s role is simply to manage the events of the wedding day, or to plan and execute an entire weekend’s celebrations, investing in the professional services of a wedding consultant is a wise first step toward marriage.

By Maria Ferretti

From Miss to Mrs.

From Miss to Mrs…..Holding on to Tradition.

As our society evolves so do the demands of career, education, family and personal growth. The average age of the first time bride is now at 27, a dramatic increase in the average age of a bride from just 20 years ago. Our modern bride now enters marriage established in her career, financial foundation, personal and professional contacts, and an impressive list of personal records that she maintains.

The transition of Miss. to Mrs. can be for most brides, well let’s just say… overwhelming. Just ask any bride who’s gone through it. With too much to do, and too little available time, the name change process can really amount to quite a large task. But still, most brides want to take their husbands name, or a least hyphenate, and nearly all husbands anticipate this tradition.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
A few frequently asked questions with answers provided to assist in understanding the name change process.

Can I change my name before I get married?
No, you must have your marriage certificate to change your name, this comes after the wedding from the county or country in which you were married and has an embossed county/country seal on the document.

When can I start the name change process?
After you receive your certificate of marriage, approximately 2-3 weeks after your wedding.

I am getting married in a couple months, we are going to honeymoon out of the country, do I need to change my passport?
You will have to wait until you get back from your honeymoon to change your passport. Therefore, you will still be using your maiden name when traveling on your honeymoon. Make your flight reservations in your maiden name so your passport/driver license match.

What if I want to hyphen/non-hyphen my maiden and married name, do I still need to make a name change?
Yes, even if you are hyphenating/non-hyphenating your maiden with your married name you must notify the appropriate government agencies and your personal records to effectively change your name.

What record do I change first?
The kit walks you through six steps and provides all the official forms and addresses of your area taking you through a complete name change process. Our recommendation is to start with your social security record (our 1st step).

Can I change my name by mail?
Most all records can be changed through the mail. All forms and addresses are included in the kit to facilitate your mailing option. The record you must make a personal appearance for will be your State Driver License or State Identification Card.

Do I have to change my name on everything?
Our recommendation is that you make a complete and comprehensive name change, the reason being there can be considerable confusion if you do not. Our kit is designed to take you through every conceivable record you may have and provide a name change form for those records.

Katharine Weissmann
Official New Bride Name Change Kit
www.kitbiz.com
1-800-439-0334