All Photos by Abby Grace Photography
Everyone told us that communication is paramount in marriage, but we didn’t really understand what exactly that meant when we were engaged. And maybe this is still not exactly what other people were talking about, but for us, communication means proactively and intentionally getting on the same page about our schedules, our finances, our upcoming plans, and how things are going in our marriage. This avoids a lot of disappointed expectations, keeps us on track for meeting our goals, and generally helps use our time more purposefully. Today, I’m sharing our family meeting agenda!
Our goal is to have a weekly family meeting, either on Sunday afternoons or in the evening after dinner. But I want to note at the outset that we don’t get to it every week! If we have three in a month, that’s a good month. It’s important to have realistic expectations here. Progress, not perfection!
Now that that’s covered, here is our basic agenda.
1. Scheduling
At the end of each month, we print out a blank calendar for the next month and use three different colors of pens to record our schedules: one for Will’s plans, one for mine, and one for things we are doing together. This includes everything we can think of, including major work deadlines, travel, our small group, professional events, dinners with friends, work-out classes, OB appointments, Junior League events, etc. We put this on the fridge, and Will likes to have a scanned copy on his computer.
Then, each subsequent week during the month, we just look this over, note if there are any changes, and discuss dinner plans for tricky scheduling nights. We still have the inevitable 4:00pm check-in about whether the other’s plans for the night have changed and what time they expect to be home, but we’re not completely in the dark about what to expect anymore. The added bonus for this is that it really helps ensure we don’t miss any appointments coming up for our week, because we’ve reviewed them in advance! I imagine this will get a lot more important and a lot more complicated once our kids have activities on their own calendars as well.
2. Finances
Next, we check in with how we’re doing on our budget for the month and discuss any big expenses that still need to be made in that month. We use mint.com to keep track of our budget right now. It’s very basic, but it gets the job done. We also discuss where we can cut back and save or delay expenses to the next month.
3. Our Family Mission Statement
We created our family mission statement back in 2015-2016 using this blog post from the Art of Manliness. It took us a very long time (over many road trips) to finish, but it was such a fun and beneficial exercise! Ours includes an introductory paragraph followed by a list of core values with a bit of a further explanation after each. We’re excited to share this with our kids someday and would like to have a pretty art print of it made eventually so we can hang it in our home. (I’ve actually already picked out a wall for it, but we need a special occasion or month with few expenses to pull the trigger!)
So the next thing on our agenda is that we check in with our family mission statement. We discuss how we’re doing and try to brainstorm ideas to incorporate more of our mission into our month. This may include planning visits to see family, planning to see friends we’ve been meaning to see, putting a date night on the calendar, or scheduling a day to do something active or explore a new area.
4. The Five Questions
Finally, we check in with each other about how our marriage is going, usually with the help of these five questions. I heard about this blog post from a friend in a small group way before I was engaged or married and remembered it all these years! It is a helpful template to start the conversation. It’s amazing what kinds of great discussions can come out if you just schedule a time to reflect and talk about the real stuff.
These little meetings don’t take too long, but they are a huge part of how we keep our lives in sync and our marriage growing! It can be hard to make the time, but it ends up saving you a lot of time trying to plan things as you go. More importantly, it is a great way to make time for relationship maintenance so you can spend date nights talking about more fun topics!
And for good measure, here are more photos from our anniversary session with Abby Grace!
Does anyone else have any good tips for staying on the same page with your spouse?
