Real Bride Advice For Stress Free Wedding Planning

It goes without saying that wedding planning can be very stressful. Add a college graduation, moving to another state, starting a new job and searching for a house into the mix during the same time frame, and you have my engagement story.  When I was getting ready for my day, I would have loved a guide about stress free wedding planning, so I’m happy to share the knowledge I wish I was given.

I know what you’re probably thinking: This lady’s insane. And I think my friends and family would agree with you. From the outside, they think I must be going crazy. “You poor thing,” their voice insinuates in conversation. But little do they know, I have a secret to making the madness manageable. There is a reason why I haven’t lost my marbles during the wedding planning process, and that is this: I refuse to hold my wedding or myself to a standard of perfection.

I try my very best not to second-guess. If I have a good feeling about something, then I just go with it! As an example, during my hunt for a wedding gown, I ended up selecting the very first dress I tried on at the second shop I visited. I knew I could spend weeks traveling to different shops and searching for more and more gowns, but I realized I would rather spend that time hanging out with my fiancé than running around like crazy searching for “the perfect gown” that may not exist. The same holds true with decorations, jewelry, hairstyles, save the dates, invitations—all the little details. My advice? Give yourself a little grace and allow yourself to make decisions freely and rather swiftly.

Be confident in your ability to plan efficiently. Don’t hold your wedding to a standard of perfection. It will be beautiful, trust me. Why? Because it’s a celebration of love!  There is nothing more beautiful than that (even if you were to spend thousands of hours or a lifetime planning the perfect wedding).  Those are my two cents. Now it’s time to hear what other brides have to say! Here are three more stress free wedding planning tips from recently wed or about-to-wed brides.

Chelsea Fetter (guest author)

Planning a wedding can be stressful, that is inevitable, but there are some ways to make it more stress-free. After being married now for three months and looking back on our big day, I’ve learned a few things.  I have realized that spacing the process out and giving ourselves time to enjoy being engaged was the most important aspect of having a stress-free wedding. My husband and I gave ourselves a year-and-a-half to plan our wedding and felt this was necessary to enjoy being an engaged couple, while not losing sight of the big picture.

Being a graduate student (along with living in Florida when my wedding was in Indianapolis) was difficult. However, I didn’t feel pressure because I had time to space the planning process out. So many couples are in a rush to get married, but forget to enjoy all of the exciting things that come along with being an engaged couple. Being engaged was one of my favorite parts about getting married! I enjoyed all of the cake tastings, venue tours, bridal showers, honeymoon planning and so much more! Giving ourselves time to discuss everything and the time to make changes if need be was vital to a stress-free wedding. In addition, we kept a calendar and planner to help keep track of appointments, parties, fittings, etc.

This leads me to my next tip for having a less stressful wedding: organization. It was vital for me to have a planner that contained all dates and times of all meetings with vendors, when payments were due, and a checklist of what had been completed.

Lastly, it is imperative to have a wonderful and dedicated Maid of Honor. Someone who is willing to help every step of the way and when you do have those break downs, she instantly takes care of things and promises you that everything is going to be okay!

Haley Beer (guest author)

Wedding planning doesn’t have to be the hair-pulling-out experience that most people talk about. In truth, there were many points where lots of tasks needed to be completed for the wedding and it was stressful, but I managed to keep a lot of the stress manageable by using Google Docs to track my to-do lists.

Another thing that was very helpful was that my fiancé and I chose a chapel where they have the reception venue at the ceremony site and coordinate much of the wedding services. We paid a little more for the wedding package and chapel, but we were so happy we did because it made planning a hundred times easier for us. In other words, if you have the money, spare yourself and do something like this!

Other things that helped wedding planning not get the best of me were that my fiancé was very eager to help—and I had to let him! I know most girls just want to take over the wedding planning, and I also know most guys want nothing to do with colors and girly stuff. But there are plenty of little tasks that can be handed over to the man. My advice to brides would be don’t think that this is entirely your job and your man shouldn’t have to do any of it. Don’t be afraid to relinquish some of the control of the wedding. It takes some stress off of you as the bride, and if nothing else gives you a chance to work on communicating about details, which will only benefit your marriage.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the only things you really need that day are yourself, your soon to be husband, the minister, and a witness. Anything and everything else can go wrong, but you’ll still be able to get married, which is the goal of the day. In other words, don’t get too caught up in making sure the every detail is perfect. Remember that at the end of the day, you will be married to your best friend, and that is the best thing ever!!

 

Avery Aragona Burns (guest author)

Before getting engaged, I often thought about all of the fun I would have planning my wedding. After I got engaged, I quickly found out that this task was not as easy as Pinterest makes it look! In fact, it was a lot more work and stress than I ever could have planned for. That being said, our wedding really was perfect.  We worked very hard beforehand to ensure that the big day would go as smooth as possible. Overall, we really were not too stressed on our wedding day. There was a bit of pre-wedding anxiety, but everything went very smoothly. Our friends and family were extremely helpful, and we could not have done it without them.

We had amazing vendors who really treated our special day as though it was their own. We knew that we had the very best people and we had to just trust that everything would look beautiful; and it did! There is no use in stressing over details you can’t change. I had to keep reminding myself that even though I had a picture in my head of how I wanted everything to look on our special day.  No one else would know if every detail didn’t match that picture. Brides, try to remember that even if something does not look exactly how you had envisioned it, nobody else will know. Your wedding will still be lovely, and in the end, the show will go on!

 

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Article by Clane Gessel Photography