Boy, they really know how to work you, don't they? In my many years as a wedding expert, I've comforted brides whose parents have attempted to guilt them into having the wedding *the parents* want, and not what the bride and groom want. And the tactics can be spine-chilling. One of the worst is when parents say, "Well, you never know how long I'll be alive" or "I might not be here next year." It happens more often than you might expect. When parents show their dark side and zing you with a scary guilt trip, how are you supposed to handle that?

I have some steps for you here...

1. You HAVE to do a little self-assessment to see where your parents have programmed you, which fears they successfully hit. Where else in the past have they guilt-tripped you successfully?

2. Now, you have to journal out how those guilt trips felt to you then, what you did about it, and how long you regretted giving in (could it be that you STILL regret it?). Write out all of the ways these guilt trips have hurt you. I know, it seems disloyal to parents to write about their trickery, but hey...if they're going to manipulate you like this, your faults in writing down your feelings pale in comparison.

3. You have to create new scripts for yourself. The words come before the confidence you'll eventually feel when you get some practice at defusing their threats. When Mom says, 'Hey, I might not be here next year,' it would be far better to laugh and say, "Wow, I just saw that same line delivered by the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding." If you call her on the fact that such a line has been used as 'ridiculous' in a comedy, that could drain the danger from it. Or, say, "I wish you wouldn't say such things."

4. Call your parent on the guilt trip. Just say, "Please don't try to push me into what you want by saying such things. We agreed to (x) when we first started talking about the wedding, and that's what we'd like to do."

Part 2 on Wedding Guilt Trips coming soon.