How to Manage Stress While Wedding Planning
Mindset Changes and Practical Tips For Managing Stress While Wedding Planning
Let’s talk about how to manage stress while wedding planning. This is one of the most beautiful seasons of life. You have found the one your soul loves, and you can’t wait to begin your life together. But along the way, so many couples get bogged down with the process and ask themselves, “Why is wedding planning so stressful?”
What if there is a better way? What if you can embrace this season with joy and savor it to the fullest and keep the stress at a good, healthy level? Any of life’s joyful transitions—getting married, having a baby, or starting a new job—can bring stress. It’s totally normal and okay to feel stressed at times.
However, wedding stress can also be so overwhelming that it sucks the joy altogether from your wedding planning and engagement experience. It may make you feel like you just want to get the wedding day over with. It can make you completely dread wedding planning. If this is your experience, read on for some mindset principles and practical tips for managing stress while wedding planning.
1. Remember The Big Picture
First things first, remember that perspective changes everything. If it’s been cloudy and rainy for a straight month, it can feel like the sun has gone and the sky will never be blue again. But if you get on a plane and fly above the clouds, seeing that bright sunshine will remind you of what the sky is actually like. Similarly, when you immerse yourself in the long wedding planning season, it can feel like your whole world. Each decision can feel big – whether it’s choosing a first dance song or the color of your napkins. But let’s zoom out a bit and ask yourself this question:
Will this matter to me 10 years from now?
I bet a lot of those decisions will feel less weighty. I’ve been married 8 years and can tell you that many of the wedding planning decisions are a blur now. What I remember most are the fun moments I had with family and friends on our wedding day. Decisions do have to be made, but make sure to keep the big picture in mind. Remember why you are getting married in the first place!
2. Create A Master Schedule For Tasks And Keep It All In One Place
Next, let’s set up a system to track to-do’s to help with managing stress while wedding planning. In my experience, having to do lists scattered over all different places is a recipe for disaster. Your brain will constantly fire off distress signals because it worries you might be forgetting something. I recommend getting out a blank piece of paper and writing out everything you have to do (also called a “brain dump”). Then get it all organized in one place with tasks and deadlines for when you hope to have them completed.
While the brain dump is better on paper, the actual master plan works best in a digital format (such as Google Sheets) so that you can easily edit and access it. Having everything in one place will help you quickly and easily know if you are on track with the necessary tasks. Then your brain can calm down and take a chill pill. And you get to relax.
3. Have Smart Tech Boundaries For Managing Wedding Stress
Consider creating a separate email account for wedding planning. This serves two purposes. First, if you’re someone who gets stressed out with blurred boundaries and constant inputs, keeping all planning emails in a separate account will protect you. This ensures that wedding planning emails don’t bombard you when you need a mental break but still need to check your personal email. On that note, it might help to disable email notifications too. Secondly, it helps keep all wedding-related emails in one place. This makes it easier to stay organized and find all the information and correspondence with your vendors.
4. Practice Self Care And Meditation For Less Wedding Stress
When inputs exceed your capacity to deal with them, you become overwhelmed and stressed. When you rest well and take care of yourself, you have greater capacity to deal manage the stress of wedding planning. This means that the same thing that might have bothered you on a day when you are feeling burnt out and sleep-deprived might not feel like a big deal at all on a different day when you are feeling your best.
One of the best kept secrets of self care and stress management is meditation. If you’ve never tried it before, it might sound a bit strange. But meditation is simply giving your brain a chance to take a break from thinking and doing. Meditation to your brain is kind of like decluttering to your closet.
Here’s another way to think about it. Picture a snow globe that you’ve just shaken up. The glitter and snowflakes are swirling everywhere and you can’t even see the main feature inside the globe. But then you set it down and let the sediment settle. And all of a sudden, the Eiffel tower becomes crystal clear. That’s what meditation does for your brain. It allows the craziness to settle so that you can see and think clearly again. If you want to give this a try, Headspace is my favorite meditation app. It walks you through how to get started!
5. Enlist the help of experts and delegate to others
Finally, one of the best practical ways to help you manage stress while wedding planning is to hire a wedding planner. Planners are experienced in making all sorts of wedding planning decisions. They know which vendors will work well together and also what things will help your wedding day vision come to life. Wedding planners make your life easier and free up your time and energy to focus on preparing for your marriage and spending quality time with loved ones.
Planners offer a range of services from complete wedding design to month-of-coordination. That means that even if you’ve already started the planning process they can still help with the rest. Some planners also offer one-time consultations and can provide a wealth of wisdom for you to make planning decisions. If you are looking for a wedding planner in the Charlottesville area, please contact me. I’d be happy to share recommendations of my favorite Charlottesville wedding planners who would love to help you have a more joyful wedding planning experience.
In addition to wedding planners, you can also count on your wedding photographer and other wedding vendors to make your day all come together smoothly. And don’t forget you can delegate to family and friends too!
Closing Thoughts on Managing Stress While Wedding Planning
“Don’t let anyone else trick you into chasing a dream that isn’t yours.”
– Jen Olmstead
Wedding planning is one of those seasons where everyone has some advice for you. Ideas from well-meaning friends and social media are constantly bombarding you. It can be totally overwhelming. It’s good to take breaks and remember that you don’t have to compare your wedding day with anyone else’s. You and your partner are unique. You get to decide what’s important to you and what you want your wedding day to be like. Ground yourself in what’s important to you and be content with where you’re at. This helps so much to let go of the stress and choose the joy of this season.
I hope this post helped inspire you to make at least one change for better stress management while wedding planning. Congratulations to you and your love and I wish you the absolute best for your wedding day, marriage, and beyond! If you are engaged and looking for wedding photographers in Charlottesville VA, I would love to connect and personally support you along your journey towards marriage.
This post is part of a series on Relationships and Well-being While Wedding Planning. If you are interested in more posts like this, you can find the full series below:
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