Rebels' Guide

Anabel Newton from the Happy Couples Blueprint is guest blogging on marriedbyjosh.com this month with some really insightful and amazing thoughts and advice on addressing the big questions in marriage. Today, Jamie asks: I grew up in Boston USA and my husband comes from Poland, we have really different family traditions and he just won’t celebrate Thanksgiving. How can I make him understand how important it is to me? Culture Clash! This is a great cross cultural communication question Jamie and there is a simple approach that I would take. Not necessarily easy… but definitely simple. I would recommend that you sit down with your partner at a time when you’re not arguing about the actual holiday e.g saying “why won’t you celebrate this??” or “its really important to me!!!” – sit down when you’re not having that discussion and talk about your respective family traditions. I don’t know how long you’ve been together for but I’m sure your husband has a lot of tra...

Let’s talk about sex for now to the people at home or in the crowd, it keeps coming up anyhow. Don’t decoy, avoid, or make void the topic cause that ain’t gonna stop it. Now we talk about sex on the radio and video shows, many will know anything goes. Let’s tell it how it is, and how it could be, how it was, and of course, how it should be. This is another awesome guest blog post by  Anabel Newton from the Happy Couples Blueprint , and it’s all about sex ! Amy asks My boyfriend and I used to have sex whenever we could, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, now we’re living together – it’s like once a month if I’m lucky and I’m feeling like I’m always having to ask! Shouldn’t that be his job?? Has he stopped loving me? Let’s talk about…IT Thank you Amy, this is actually quite a big question and I’ll probably struggle to do this in under 2 minutes but I will do my best. The first thing I’d like to address is the “i...

Breaking news! I found some people that are as crazy about significant spaces as I am. I stumbled across Amy’s website – The Significant Space –  as I was doing some research for Sydney weddings I’m booked for next year, and the second I scrolled through and saw (quite literally) significant spaces I knew I just wanted to have a chat! So we had a chat! Josh: I’m all about significant spaces to hold significant life events, so, what do YOU look for in a significant venue? Amy: A space that is truly exceptional, has its own unique personality and inspires memories to be made. We’re not interested in venues that sell themselves on glitz and glam or dancing waiters, because a wedding day isn’t about them; it’s about the couple. Size isn’t important either, but character, ambiance and professional service definitely are, and the opportunity for amazing photos is essential. J: I spend a lot of time arriving to venues for the first time s...

Breaking news! I found some people that are as crazy about significant spaces as I am. I stumbled across Amy’s website – The Significant Space –  as I was doing some research for Sydney weddings I’m booked for next year, and the second I scrolled through and saw (quite literally) significant spaces I knew I just wanted to have a chat! So we had a chat! Josh: I’m all about significant spaces to hold significant life events, so, what do YOU look for in a significant venue? Amy: A space that is truly exceptional, has its own unique personality and inspires memories to be made. We’re not interested in venues that sell themselves on glitz and glam or dancing waiters, because a wedding day isn’t about them; it’s about the couple. Size isn’t important either, but character, ambiance and professional service definitely are, and the opportunity for amazing photos is essential. J: I spend a lot of time arriving to venues for the first time s...

If you didn’t already know, my wife, Britt, and I brought  Pop-Up Weddings to Australia . It’s such a fun and original idea and we look forward to the next event so much! This week we saw seven boyfriends marry seven girlfriends. Seven couples arrive as two kids in love, and they left husband and wife. The concept is simple: for one day we get an amazing photographer, a celebrant (like me!) some stylish people and a venue and we make it look amazeballs. Then every hour on the hour a bride and groom get married with anywhere from zero to fifteen friends witnessing the event. There’s a ceremony and a photoshoot! How you celebrate the rest of the day is up to you. I always leave a pop-up wedding so encouraged, not because of the event, but because a bunch of couples got to get married in an extremely intimate and personal way. And they did it with no stress, almost no guests, and it didn’t cost them a house deposit. Plus it’s one million times classier than a ...

Joint bank accounts for engaged, or newly married couples, can be a tipping point into full commitment, but you don’t have to have joint bank accounts, or do you? Mediator,  Anabel Newton , from the Happy Couples Blueprint joins the blog today with a guest video blog answering that question: to joint bank account, or to not joint bank account? Enjoy! Ashley asks: I’ve been married for 5 years and we have always had separate bank accounts. My best friend is getting married and this came up and she was shocked that we didn’t have joint accounts. She’s convinced my husband must be hiding something – now I’m paranoid. To join or not to join… bank accounts – is that the real question? There are a couple of things that need to be addressed in your question. You say that you have been married for five years and you have separate accounts and judging by what you have written – you didn’t have any problems with that until you had a friend...

I’ve got this thing where I don’t like to do business with people that don’t have the same values as me. It just means that there’s less awkward moments in life. I’d never really stated these, and for all I know they might change or evolve, but for this day in October 2014, this is what they look like: A wedding is but one day, a marriage is for life We’re doing life stuff here. It’s not a show, or a keeping-up-with-the-jones ordeal, this is real, awesome, authentic, life. Two people are getting married It’s not “the girl’s day” or it’s not something “she/he wanted to do” – this is a union which equally involves both parties. Authentic wedding > any other wedding There’s an authenticity, a real slice of reality, required in a wedding to get my blood pumping. We can take inspiration from everyone and everywhere, but on the day it’s your wedding, no-one elses. So that’s it for th...

72% of Australian weddings have taken the church out of their wedding, but are you worried that you’re breaking any of the seven deadly sins on your wedding day? There’s one down the list I think you’ll be ok with hehe. Pride DIY is so much fun, and it can be a great way to save a few dollars if you’re rich in time. But if you are time poor (hand up!) or you just want it done well, please don’t be prideful, ask someone to help! I can recommend a few friends here ! Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, the sin that all others emerge from. Envy Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation. Your wedding is YOUR WEDDING, not someone else’s. So don’t bother yourself with what colour dress she wore, or what she Pinterested, or where they got married. Yoru marriage is a once in a lifetime occurrence, that is crying out for a once in a lifetime celebration! Gluttony Gluttony is an inordinate desire to co...

When The Beatles recorded the song Hey Jude, Paul McCartney hit a bung note and dropped an F-bomb mid-recording and you can still hear it today around the 3 minute mark in the song. Hey Jude is widely regarded as one of the best songs this planet has ever recorded, it still ties for number one place on the list of songs that have held the top of the charts for the longest time and is twice as long as the average pop song, seven minutes. It’s a notable song. Four takes were recorded, the first was released, the one with the ‘Woah! Fucking hell!’ inside it. So here’s a little bit of my “Gospel of Jude”: you can be in the middle of recording a global hit, hit a bung note, swear about it on the record, and still go to great heights. Here’s to the bung notes we hit in marriage. May we whisper ‘fucking hell’ and move on to the rest of the song we’re singing so darn well.

Seth Godin, a business inspiration writer,  recently wrote about the sophistication of truth, the complexity of just being honest, and how the most common form of complexity is fear: Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, “you don’t understand” or, “you don’t know the people I know…”. “It’s complicated,” we say, even when it isn’t. We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear. I’m more interested in the sophistication required to deliver the truth. I read this and instantly thought of a wedding. In my humble opinion the outright best wedding ceremony, well the outright best any kind of ceremony, is a true, honest, authentic one. You c...