Conclusion

Now that the semester is coming to an end, my blogging season is also coming to an end. I started this blog for my English 152 class. My professor gave an assignment to the class. The task was to keep up with a blog for sixteen weeks, instead of writing essays or reading from the text. We got to pick any topic of our choice in which we could educate ourselves more about. At first, I thought it was going to be hard to constantly writing about one topic every week. In addition to that, I have never blogged in my life. However through my experience this semester with blogging, the end result was very beneficial to me.

Photo Source

The topic that I chose was on weddings. I chose this topic because I am getting married this summer. I thought planning my wedding and writing a blog would be like knocking two birds with one stone. The fact that I chose weddings as my topic, I was able to educate myself more about wedding and marriage. Within our blogs, I learned how to write more academically than just raining on and on like a social network. I learned that blogging has many forms of writing, but for the purpose of my assignment was to conduct our own research and reflect that into our blog post. From doing this, I learned that wedding are very expensive and time consuming with plans and appointments. Furthermore, I am happy with my chose of my topic weddings, because without blogging the past sixteen weeks about it I would have never saved as much money as I have already. I learned different ways to budget myself, plan, gain different ideas about vendors, decorations, do it yourself crafts, and I also looked at how a relationship can change being married. Another reason why I was happy about my topic is because wedding have a variety of avenues and subtopics that I was able to talk about each week, so I did not run out of ideas to write about.

Another way that I benefited from this experience was that I was able to get feedback from other students with this assignment, as well as my professor. It gave me insight on what worked and what I could’ve added, also what else I could’ve touched up on.

Thankfully I chose a topic that has a huge community of bloggers from many different websites. The ones I used mostly were Theknot.com and Weddingbee.com. From here each website had other bloggers blogging about weddings. They talked about planning, their own weddings, experiences, crafts, ideas, marriage, and the list goes on and on. I have become a part of this community by reading their post and commenting on it. This abled me to communicate with my community. I asked questions about their post, also I was able to ask where they got their research. I was able to see different perspectives about wedding and marriage from my community. Connecting with my community made this experience more interesting.

Overall I found this assignment very worthwhile. It is different than the normal English class. Like mentioned I thought it was going to be hard because it required new research every week and constantly talking about the same topic, but once I was able to find a topic that I wanted to learn more about, it became easier. Also because I picked a topic that I was interested in made it easier too. From what I have gained though this experience was that I am able to write more academically and conduct research. This assignment helped me save money, gain ideas, and plan for my special day as well as connecting with others in my community has helped me see their views on the topic I am researching. For future students who are required to blog, do not be overwhelmed. This assignment will help you grow by learning a different way than most professors have taught you in the past. I never thought blogging could have benefited me as much as it has so far. 

Before Marriage and After Marriage Part 1

Life is no storybook, but somewhere in the subconscious we lurk a romantic vision of Disney’s Cinderella and Prince Charming. How does the relationship become affected when deciding to a serious commitment?

First, I would like to start off by sharing important statistics on marriage. From Statisticbrain.com, “the number of marriages in 2009 was 2,077,000. The probability that a first marriage will survive 10 years is equal to 1 in 15”. The probability of marriage stood out to me like a sore thumb. It had me think of what couples really meant when they said their vows, “for better or for worse, for richer or for poor, and in sickness and in health. Is it because they are in such a happy moment at the alter on the day of the wedding they were not thinking sickness, death, or poor?

Living Together:
From what I think, it makes sense that couples would choose to live together before committing their entire lives in marriage. Now days more couples move in with each other and cohabit before they decide to become wedded. Thomas Bradbury studies how intimate relationships develop and change.  He wrote a blog titled Testing, Testing: How does living together affect a marriage? And based off Thomas Bradbury’s blog , I saw another perspective.

            “About half of all couples entering their first marriage today live together before marriage… There are at least 10 times as many couple living together today than there were just 30 years ago. (Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Smock, 2000). This is a huge increase when it comes to demographic trends, and the common intuition seems to be: “it’s a great idea to live together first- you can see if you get along before making a serious and life-long commitment”. Contrary to popular wisdom, though, cohabiting relationships tend to be less stable than marriages, and marriages in which people cohabit together prior to the wedding tend to be less stable than those in which partners did not cohabit” (Bardbury).  

How could it be that spending more time with your partner is harmful? I do not see anything bad about living together before a couple decides to be married. Thomas Bradbury’s goes on in his research,

           “There probably isn’t anything wrong. The relationship instability that goes along with cohabitation seems rooted instead in the characteristics of the people who opt to cohabit and in the relationships that they form... Cohabitation is not bad for relationships, but the people who do cohabit are not a random slice of population. Second, high levels of conflict are likely to be inherently detrimental to relationships, and couples’ decisions to live together rather than marry may pivot on how well they are dealing with the differences that are arising between them. So, how much arguing is going on? Why? How does it get resolved? Couples with a lot of unresolved or poorly resolved differences are wise to hesitant, and to put their relationship to the test, given what we know about the harmful effects of mismanaged conflict on the intimate bond that people are hoping to create”.

It is important to have a serious talk with your partner about moving in together. It is also important  to be on the same page as to what the next step means for the relationship, or to have an understanding of expectations. You do not want to eventually move into a marriage with someone who only view living together as an easy to pay the rent, or to get by.

To be continued... 

Final Analysis Paper

I have found many potential sources for my final analysis paper throughout my blog post so far this semester. I am considering at least three so far. These are, Weddingbee, TheKnot, and Nittanyweddings. All of these sources give great information about weddings, how to plan, do it yourself ideas, different vendors, budgeting, etc. They each also have a different way going about the elements of a wedding.

Weddingbee is a site that features blogs, boards, do it yourself ideas, photo galleries, and vendor reviews. This site is read by brides like myself, grooms, bridesmaids, wedding vendors, etc. It is quite interesting of how many people do use this website to help guide them with planning a wedding, or to capture ideas. This information is useful to any engaged couple because if offers opinions and views on subjects in a wedding.

TheKnot is much like Weddingbee. It too has photo galleries, vendor reviews, and ideas for the big day. However, TheKnot also provides planning basics, such as what needs to be done monthly before the wedding, also ways on how to budget for the celebration. Also this site gives statistics on weddings around the United States. Theknot is not only a website, it also a magazine which includes available etiquette experts’ advice.  Theknot has a variety of useful information to couples looking for a variety of ways on how to start saving for the special.

NittanyWeddings is a site which provides articles written by actual local wedding vendors. This is gives great insight and the experienced view from the people to help make weddings come alive. Like my other sources it is the same, in aspects of what works for weddings or do it yourself ideas.  This site is useful to get information on wedding advice, what works for vendors, or other wedding articles.

As of now these are my top sources I will be using for my final analysis paper. I have used them throughout the semester because each provided information I needed in order to conduct my research. In some ways each give similar information, much like how to plan a successful wedding. But, are also different from the users, vendors, bloggers, or wedding statistics that are on each site. The reason I choose these sources is because they gave me the most information from which I have benefited from.