So you’re recently engaged! Now that the excitement of your engagement has died down a bit, it’s time to start planning your wedding. While wedding planning can be a lot of fun, it can also become stressful at times. From budgeting to searching for vendors to unwanted opinions there are a lot of factors that can contribute to making it stressful. Here are our best tips for avoiding planning a stress-free wedding!
Common Wedding Stressors
Wedding stress can come from a variety of factors. Maybe it’s disagreements between you and your fiance, or maybe it’s due to pressure from one or both of your parents. Regardless of the cause of the reason, here are some of the most common wedding stressors and how to handle them:
Money & Budget
Money and struggling to agree on a budget are often the biggest stressors for engaged couples. Whether you’re paying for your wedding yourselves or having one or both of your parents helping you out deciding on how much to spend on your wedding can be trying. Add in additional stress like house shopping or joining finances and creating a monthly budget, you may find yourselves at odds with one another. To deal with this struggle write out a list of everything you need to budget for and go over them one at a time. Don’t feel like you need to hash it out in one night, rather do it a little bit at a time until you both feel like you’ve come to a budget you both agree on.
The In-Laws
The in-laws (and sometimes your own family) can be a big source of stress before, during, and after your engagement. Everyone’s family dynamic is different so it’s normal to experience some tensions with your in-laws especially during wedding planning season. Whether it’s money matters, the guest list, ceremony location, or even where you’re live after the wedding – these issues can create real tension between you and your future in-laws and even your spouse. The way to deal with tricky in-laws is with patience and good boundaries. Allow them to share their opinions to an extent, but also draw the line to stop the opinions from flowing before it turns into a fight. It’s also very important that you and your fiance stay on the same team throughout any discussions or potential disagreements.
Religious, Cultural and Family Traditions
Other than money, traditions are the most common causes of wedding stress. Maybe only one of you comes from a religious family, or you have different religious backgrounds either way trying to decide which religious traditions (if any) to incorporate into your wedding can be difficult. Plus, once you add in pressure from parents to keep traditions in tact, stress levels can rise even more. Regardless of whether you’re dealing with religious, cultural, or family traditions the best thing you can do is eliminate outside voices from the conversation. Sit down with just you and your fiance and discuss which traditions are most important to you and how you want to represent each of your backgrounds in your wedding. Have the conversation at the time when you’re both calm and able to listen to each other’s side and once you make your decision tell your families what you have decided together.
Unwanted Questions & Advice
Once there’s a ring on someone’s finger unwanted questions seem to start rolling from friends, family, and even strangers. Dealing with all these questions and unwanted advice can be stressful, especially when people want to suggest you do things differently or they don’t agree to your plans. Since you can’t stop the questions and advice from coming the best thing you can do is have a prepared response for both. It’s also a good idea to discuss what you’re willing to discuss with others ahead of time with your fiance. For example, if you don’t want to discuss your future plans with family have a response ready explaining to people that it’s a private discussion for you and your fiance.
How to Best Deal With Wedding Planning Anxiety
No matter how prepared you are you’ll likely deal with some level of wedding planning stress and anxiety. Since you can avoid it completely, it’s a good idea to equip yourself with some ways to manage it. This might include being open and honest with your fiance about what is troubling you, asking for help when needed, and also being willing to take a break from wedding planning every now and then. It’s also a good idea to let go of the idea of having a perfect wedding and accepting that some things may go wrong. You can’t control the weather for example, so instead of worrying about whether it will rain create a backup plan instead for photos.
Taking a break from wedding planning and going on a date night or hanging out with friends will also go a long way to reduce wedding stress. Even though you might feel pressured to do everything at once you’ll be surprised to find that you will actually be more productive when you force yourself to take some breaks.
Finally, remember to think big picture. Your wedding day is important, but it is still one day. Don’t put so much pressure on the day being perfect that you find yourself unable to be present and enjoy the road leading up to your marriage. The big picture here is your marriage and life together, so be sure to stay focused on that.
