The No. 1 Reason You’re Stressed About Your Wedding: If you find yourself clicking in this blog post on my corner of the internet, it’s likely that you’re experiencing some (or a lot of?) stress within your wedding planning. While there are a number of factors that could contribute towards the stress of planning a wedding, there is one common denominator that threads between each couple planning for their wedding day that leads to unnecessary stress and conflict.
That is: spending more time preparing for your wedding day than your marriage.
Think about it. How much time do you spend thinking about your wedding day? How many hours have you spent on Pinterest or Instagram considering ideas? How many discussions have you had speaking about your budget (which is always a good conversation to have, btw!!), instead of how you approach finances as a married couple?
When my husband and I were engaged, an older, wiser friend gave us this piece of advice. In anticipation for our marriage, for every 1 hour spent talking about or planning your wedding, spend 2 hours talking about or preparing for your marriage. This way, even when the inevitable stressors of event planning come, you will both be grounded in why you want to get married to begin with.
So what does this look like practically? Here are 3 ways to keep grounded (and therefore stress-less!) in your wedding planning.
Go on dates and ban talk of wedding logistics
This is especially helpful as you get closer to the wedding day itself! Go for coffee and ask each other questions that you don’t know the answers to. Prioritize having fun together – my husband and I love bowling as a fun stress release! Dates do not need to be expensive or elaborate, but can be simple moments to remember why you said yes in the first place.
Be intentional about marriage preparation
Marriage is a huge, wonderful commitment. More than signing a legal contract with another human, it’s a commitment to share everything with one another. For this reason, it still baffles me when some couples do not have the important conversations and ask the deep and sometimes uncomfortable questions of each other before they are married.
Many couples nowadays complete some form of a pre-marriage course, usually linked to a local church (although the content is applicable to everyone of different faith and no faith). These questions allow you to talk through important life questions in a fun and relaxed way, for example;
How do you handle conflict?
How do you want to approach managing your finances as a married couple?
What values are important to you in raising children?
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post with 6 questions to ask before you get married. Check this out, or why not book onto a Marriage Prep course near you?
Book a Wedding Planner 
Of course, this one is biased. However, if the stress of planning your wedding is just not enjoyable or exciting to you, that is totally okay. You do not need to become a professional event planner overnight, with no experience in doing so, and also maintaining all other elements of life! Booking a Wedding Planner allows you to pick and choose which elements of planning you’d like to be more or less involved in, and gives space for you to spend more time getting excited for your day and your marriage.
I am a Wedding Planner that helps you to find peace in your planning process. Want to find out more? Read some of my story.
