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Honeymoon: The Newlyweds’ Guide to the Celebrations and Challenges of the First Year of Marriage by Sharon Naylor By Melissa J Wantuck  |
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The summer wedding season is in full swing and here’s a book you can give as a gift to the happy couple, or all the happy couples, you know tying the knot this year. Home from the Honeymoon: The Newlyweds’ Guide to the Celebrations and Challenges of the First Year of Marriage by Sharon Naylor (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009) is a cute self-help book providing plenty of common sense advise to the newly married couple.
Naylor is a well-published wedding advisor. Her writing is easy to read and sounds like an encouraging pep talk, perfect for young love birds flying several cloud levels above reality.
The first year of marriage is typically dubbed the toughest year and regardless how long a couple has been together or lived together before marriage, signing the license changes everything. Naylor deftly navigates the hurdles of marriage that many newlyweds face when their status changes from the celebrity like affianced to ‘ole ball and chain by encouraging celebrations and offering advice on handling the tough times.
Home from the Honeymoon is broken up into two parts. Part one is about celebrating all of the countless firsts of marriage. Part two addresses how to overcome the first challenges married couples may face. Each part contains several chapters that cover a specific topic, and then there are separate sub-topics within each chapter. Finding a specific sub-topic is not always easy. Some are repeated in different chapters but each sub-topic is titled so once you narrow down the topic you are looking for, peruse the sub-topic headers for quicker reading of information pertinent to you.
Every conceivable first Naylor could come up with is covered in Home from the Honeymoon, from crossing the threshold, the first dinner party, writing the last wedding thank you note, to ordering your first pizza. For all of them she encourages newlyweds to celebrate and she gives many ideas for doing that.
Brides don’t have to be scrapbookers to record all of these moments but Naylor recommends taking pictures of many of them to look back and remember someday. The pictures don’t need any more work than writing the date, the first, and putting it into an album. Naylor’s point is the first year is important to enjoy and celebrate because it only happens once. Celebrating the little things and each other helps strengthen the foundation of a couple’s relationship to support the rest of their life together.
Part two could be called “Continue to Communicate” and state its sage advice for the possible difficulties newlyweds might face in the first year. Saying it is easier than doing it and Naylor wisely discusses the many possible scenarios on an individual basis.
Couples long past their first year of marriage will also enjoy this book even though all the firsts are past. There are many great recommendations for keeping a relationship on track and keeping the romance going, or sparking it back up after the newlywed phase has faded into memory.
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