Travis Scheivelhud wants wedding planning to interfere as little as possible with football season.

But instead of leaving all the work up to fiancée Paulette Nieves, Mr. Scheivelhud is jumping into the wedding-planning process feet first.

“I may not want to go to all the meetings (with wedding-related vendors), but I’m not going to not show up,” he said.

As Mr. Scheivelhud, 29, and Ms. Nieves, 26, plan their April 2009 wedding, they reflect a growing nuptial trend: weddings that are about both the bride and the groom.

Planning a wedding, like a marriage, involves communication and compromise.

“It could be a blueprint for how you communicate once you’re married,” said Michelle Preli, editor of brides.com. She added that a groom’s involvement in wedding planning often will be dependent on the man’s personality.

At times, it’s also a matter of logistics. As their December 2008 wedding date looms, Brad Thrasher and Emily Nagle are negotiating wedding details from different cities. She is in Chattanooga, and he in Blackburn, Va., where he attends Virginia College of Osteopathy Medicine.

They communicate about wedding plans by phone, but Mr. Thrasher leaves final decisions to his future bride, happy to take the back-seat role.

“It’s her day, and I’m fully aware of that,” he said. “She wants this moment to be perfect, and that’s the way society has set it up. Whatever she likes, I love.”

When trying to make wedding planning a team sport, experts suggest determining early on who should handle which tasks.

“Men are naturally interested in certain areas of wedding planning,” said Gretchen Viles of mywedding.com. As a general rule, most grooms will take interest in the food, the music and the honeymoon, she said.

“At every wedding, I always heard people say ‘it’s her day and it’s your night,’ so I guess I’m following that philosophy,” said Mr. Thrasher. “Pretty much every suggestion I’ve made, I’ve been shot down,” he admitted.

He does, however, think he has the future Mrs. Thrasher on board for an ice cream bar.

“We are probably going to have one,” said Ms. Nagle. “I’ve done the preliminary looking into it. I like the idea.”

Whether it’s an ice cream bar or the first dance song, remember that a wedding is a wedding for two.

In other words, ladies, let him play too. Sure, you might have had your wedding menu planned since you were 8 years old, but if he has his heart set on giant peanut butter cookies instead of black-bottom cupcakes on a dessert bar, well, let him have his cookies for goodness sake.

“If your groom actually asserts himself during the planning process, be supportive of his thoughts and ideas,” said Alisha Fox of Chattanooga-based Foxy Events. “Let him know that you value his opinion. Being able to bounce ideas off each other makes the whole planning process more enjoyable.”

Being able to bandy ideas back and forth has made wedding planning an enjoyable process for Ms. Nieves and Mr. Schievelhud.

“I want his input,” she said. “It’s his wedding, too. If he’s adamant that he doesn’t want something, I’m going to compromise. I’m not going to make him do something he doesn’t want to do. I like the fact that he wants to be a part of the wedding. He’s not one of those grooms who wants to just let you do all of the work and then he’s going to show up the day of the wedding.”

They said they’ve only suffered one wedding tiff so far. He thought the chapel could do without flowers. She disagreed. She won.

“My mom backed me up,” she said. “My parents are paying for the wedding.”

It’s important to make the reception about who you are and what you love. “Couples these days like creative, personalized touches in their reception, so involving the groom is great way to think of those little details that are fun,” said Ms. Preli.

When UTC graduates Jeff Nastoff and Ashley Vaughn married in June, she made sure plenty of Sierra Nevada, his favorite beer, was available at the reception. They also both had a hand in picking out the right songs for the day.

“I got to help make a lot of decisions about the music that we played,” Mr. Nastoff said. “It was nice to be able to choose some personal music.”

Ultimately, in planning a wedding, like in a marriage, it’s important to keep expectations realistic.

“Despite your best efforts they are not going to be as excited about every detail as you are,” Ms. Fox cautions brides-to-be. “Find out which details your groom is most interested in and attend those meetings together.”

The wedding day is the beginning of two people sharing their lives together. So the wedding should be about two people celebrating that beginning together.

“Weddings aren’t only about the bride,” Ms. Preli said.

Of course if Mr. Schievelhud had his druthers, his wedding reception would involve a re-enactment of a deleted scene from the movie “Wedding Crashers,” which centers around the song “99 Red Balloons.”

“I think he was kidding,” Ms. Nieves said.

“No, not really,” her future groom countered good-naturedly.