You just got engaged to the love of your life and you’re both excited to start planning the wedding of your dreams. But how do you plan to handle wedding planning stress that inevitably will come in some form?
Let us guide you through it with eight simple tips to prevent or handle the added strain that may come along with creating your perfect wedding day.
FIND BETTER WAYS TO COMMUNICATE
With wedding planning, there’s a lot of information and conversations that need to and will happen, but if you’re communicating with each other ineffectively it won’t help handle wedding planning stress at all. Making sure you’re both being conscious of the way you communicate with each other will make it much more enjoyable to talk about all the things.
At all times, you should always be listening to truly hear your partner not just listening to speak. Understand your partner’s thoughts, feelings, and try to put yourself in their shoes if they might bring up things that differ from what you had always envisioned, after all, it’s not just a day about you but rather a day together as a couple.
Some things to keep in mind would be:
- Stating observations instead of interpreting what you heard.
- Expressing your feelings instead of just thinking about them.
- Making sure your needs are known and their importance to you.
- Don’t make demands but rather make requests with the reasoning behind them.
FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU EACH WANT
In the tip above step three suggests needing to find what both of your needs are and expressing why they’re of importance to you. This is crucial when planning a wedding for both of you combined, you might get lucky and find that you’re on the same page about the things you want.
Odds are you won’t get that lucky about everything, that’s why this step to wedding planning is absolutely essential at the beginning and all the way throughout the process.
Say you really want to have the lushest greenery and floral arrangements throughout the entire wedding day, ceremony, and reception. But your partner could care less about decor and only wants to have a full open bar with the best DJ you could find.
This will come up the entire time you plan your wedding, there will be things big and small you will want but your partner could care less about. That’s why it’s important in the beginning to figure out together what big elements of the wedding are the most important wants for each of you and if they’re not the same making sure to work together to find what is obtainable within the budget or any other restrictions you make come upon.
Establish a decision-making process
Some decisions might be simple, but others, like booking the venue or vendors, are much bigger and can be harder to make a final decision. To handle wedding planning stress when making a decision you should establish a system as a couple to finalize big and small choices.
Booking the venue or vendors can be extremely stressful with so many different options, which means the first thing you need to figure out is the way you plan to research or find your choices. Taking to the internet and using local resources for both vendors and venues or even other online resources to read reviews, view packages, and narrow down your options can be the best way to begin.
From here, once you have all the information and have compared them, choose three to meet with to get a better idea of their companies, services, and pricing. After you’ve met with your top three you can make a final choice based upon everything you’ve gathered online and in-person with them.
Using this process with all venues or vendors can relieve a lot of stress, but not only does this work with big choices but it also can be applied to other parts of wedding planning like choosing invitations or flavors of cake.
Decide where and when you should be wedding planning
You’re engaged, you want to show everyone the ring and tell the whole world you’re getting married – and the whole world will ask you about the wedding all the time. What you don’t realize is that this can take a toll on your relationship, it can feel like wedding planning is taking over and you talk about nothing else.
This is why it’s important to lay down some ground rules about where and when you’ll talk about wedding planning with each other. Sometimes though, there are exceptions when things need to be handled immediately and maybe can’t wait for another time.
Setting boundaries on spaces you’re allowed to discuss, such as no wedding planning at the dinner table or on regular date nights you’ll avoid the topic of wedding planning, will give you both a break from the added stress. Even specific days and times to set aside for wedding talk can allow you both some peace of mind on days off or the weekends.
Photo by TheDatingRing
Plan wedding date nights
Suggesting making set times and days to handle wedding planning stress is great but you might be wondering when the best time to do so would be and still have regular dates out together. There should be a good mix of regular dates and days of the week where wedding planning isn’t really a topic of discussion, but there can also be planned dates or special days where you set a time and place to do only that.
Making wedding planning date nights help you still have fun together, get out of the house, and have a set time and space to go over anything that hasn’t needed attention right away or, set goals and plans for what you both want to accomplish next.
These date nights could be anything from grabbing coffee together and bringing your wedding planning book, to a nice dinner, or even something bigger like a staycation.
Stay on the same page as each other
Not everyone will always agree with your choices or dreams for your special day but making sure to stay on the same page as each other will help you eliminate confusion with anyone involved in the process.
There will be a lot of opinions from family and friends when you talk about any wedding planning you may have done or plan to do, this can lead to added stress with your partner. An easy way to avoid this or minimize it is to not stray from the things you and your partner have discussed, you can certainly take other opinions or ideas into consideration. However, don’t plan or change anything you both have already discussed with other people or it will begin to add strain to wedding planning.
Organize yourselves with a wedding planning book
One of the hardest parts about wedding planning, if you have little to no experience with it or you’re not getting the advice from a local planner, is keeping everything organized. This is where having a wedding planning book, binder, or folder can be extremely helpful and minimize the stress of losing ideas or forgetting important things you need to check off the list next.
There are plenty of places you can get these or even make your own. Whatever style makes you feel most organized while still bringing fun to the process is what you’re looking for, or if you’re truly lost and looking for one with more guidance, buying one that has helpful tips and checklists throughout might be something to look for.
Here are some you can buy straight from Amazon:
Gold Marble Wedding Planning Diary with pockets and online support
The Budget-Savvy Wedding Planner and Organizer
Complete Wedding Planner and Organizer with checklists and pockets
These help you store anything from your guest list, decor inspiration images, vendor contacts, to pricing or package information.
Make rules for talking about wedding planning
Last but not least, we’ve established when and where to talk about all things wedding and added special things you can do to make planning together a better experience. What about when NOT to talk about it or ground rules for how to talk about it with each other?
Finding a few days a week where wedding talk is off-limits, with exceptions, where you can just enjoy your partner and talk about other parts of your lives together or separate will help give you a needed break. Once you set those days, try to stick to it as much as possible even if you’re beyond excited to talk about something with your partner. Sometimes your partner can begin to feel like they’re missing out on the other parts of you they fell in love with.
If you know one of you loves to text about everything and the other is maybe less than ecstatic about it, you can set a ground rule for only wedding talk in person. Other things like this may arise while you start planning and discussing but it’s never too late to find that the way you’re communicating or planning with each other isn’t working out the best. This is when you want to look at how you’re currently doing it and have an honest conversation to work together to set some more ground rules that will make the most of your time and resolve the issues.
Whether you’re newly engaged or halfway through the wedding planning process you probably didn’t realize just how much stress something full of so much love could bring. There are plenty of ways to handle wedding planning stress, our eight tips are only just a few, find what works best for you and your partner and help you turn the stress into something enjoyable.
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