written by Happily Hitched and Season Journals
Journaling is often associated with positive outcomes. It allows people a safe place to record precious memories and capture moments of time they want to remember forever. Today, we are partnering with Happily Hitched Wedding Planning & Coaching to share how you can learn to journal with your significant other!
Season Journals helps people invest in their well-being, foster their relationships, and document their stories through journaling. Happily Hitched helps couples plan a wedding day reflective of their story with a marriage-focused approach.
Together, we want to share how you can begin journaling with your loved one!
Step 1: Set a consistent time and/or place for journaling
Create a routine around journaling. Take the question “when should we journal,” out of the equation and decide on a time together when journaling can happen. Perhaps it’s the first of the month, Saturday mornings at your favorite coffee shop, every Sunday night after dinner, or the day coinciding with your date night.
Step 2: Create a safe space for open and authentic dialogue
Together, come to a mutual understanding that you will be open, honest and your authentic self during journaling sessions (and in your entire relationship, if we’re being honest!). Journaling can be a vulnerable activity, so make an agreement that this is a judgment-free zone and you’ll be well on your way.
Step 3: Decide who will take the lead writing during each journaling session
Talk about your personal preferences for who will actually write in your journal. You may want to assign one person the “designated writer,” or you can switch off writing each session. Having both people write in your journal certainly adds to the uniqueness of your keepsake.
Step 4: Discover your journaling style
Do you like discussing the question or activity before writing it down? Or are you more of a stream-of-conscious writer who documents while you talk it out together? Either method works – you can even experiment with both styles to find what you prefer. You can always use pencil, instead, if you want to go back and change some of your answers.
Step 5: Take liberty to skip around
If your personality type is more “rule-follower,” feel free to complete your journals in the order in which they were written. But for the rest of you, take the liberty to skip around! There are plenty of topics to cover within the Engagement Journal that don’t require being completed in order. Your journal practice is your own and we encourage working through questions and activities that you want to tackle that day.
Step 6: Read the room
Depending on the topics at hand, journaling can bring up emotions, stressors, or even heated discussions (no one ever said planning or discussing major life events would be easy!). Know when it’s time to drop the pen and take a break. Revisit another day.
Step 7: Keep each other accountable
Another trick to building habits is having an accountability partner. Journaling can be hard to keep up, especially during a busy time in your life like engagement. Help keep one another accountable, and you’ll have a better chance at journaling consistently throughout your engagement. Trust us, it will be worth it to have this keepsake to look back on after many years have gone by.
Now that you have the steps to journaling with your partner, check out Season Journals’ Engagement Journal! The season of engagement is such a special time and this journal serves as the perfect space to write down all of the moments and stories from this time in your life to document your legacy.
As a bonus, you can pass your journal down as a cherished family heirloom for future generations to remember in years to come.
about happily hitched
Happily Hitched is a team of wedding planners for the detail-obsessed, floral-loving couple building marriages even more beautiful than their wedding. With planners based in Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland, the team specializes in providing full-service wedding planning and event management services with a marriage-focused approach. Since 2014, it's been their goal to create customized wedding days full of calm and ease for their couples and guests to enjoy!
Leave a comment