Weddings are one of the biggest events that many of us will plan in our lives. Trust me, we’re there! Even though we’ve had to postpone ours for another year I know lots of people are still going ahead or, they’re planning their weddings in a few years.  Weddings – even smaller scale weddings – do tend to take a significant amount of work to plan. It isn’t all too surprising that many people can begin to become stressed throughout this process. There are, however, ways to reduce your stress that you culod try to work into the way you go about things. 

1. Be Kind to Yourself

Weddings have a lot of build up around them. They’re often referred to as “the best day of people’s lives” and people want the pictures to look good and present a perfect day for people now to see and generations to come to look at. But be kind to yourself. There’s no such thing as perfection and you shouldn’t strive for it. Your day will be perfect for you! And, surely the best day of your life was actually when you met the person you’re marrying?

Every single detail doesn’t have to be spot on. Things may not always go to plan. At the end of the day, the focus here is you and your partner celebrating your love. That’s what counts. You’ll be married by the end of the day and as long as that simple goal is achieved, that’s what matters. So, release the pressure. It’s a good idea to get what you deem the essentials out of the way, bought and booked, and avoid obsessing over the little things. Sure, smaller details like table decorations and wedding favours are nice to have if you want them. But they’re not the element that your guests will remember down the line. What everyone will remember is having a nice time and celebrating your love!

2. Make Life Easier for Yourself

A further way to release pressure is to actively make life easier for yourself by organising or accepting help. Hiring a wedding planner can make the world of a difference. Sure, this will be an extra expense, or you may have to take away from a particular element of your big day to cover the cost, but the months of stress that their help will alleviate from you is likely to be more than worth it if you’ve got the budget.

They take on responsibility for your big day and know what they’re doing. Just make sure they have a good portfolio and lots of happy clients behind them. Another option is to use a Wedding Directory that compiles together all of the contacts, stores and service providers you may need to bring your big day together. This will simplify the booking and buying process and will give you confidence that you haven’t forgotten anything. Finally, accept help from family and friends. Your loved ones are bound to want to get involved and many hands make light work!

3. Give Yourself Plenty of Time

If you haven’t booked a wedding date yet, book one further ahead into the future. Give yourself time to enjoy the planning process and to give yourself plenty of time to work with. This will reduce the amount of late nights you have to pull trying to plan your wedding around work, social commitments, familial commitments or other responsibilities. All too many people underestimate the amount of time it takes to comfortably plan a wedding. When you start rushing, this is when pressure starts building up, you start choosing convenient things over the things you genuinely want, and can start feeling stressed. Giving your guests plenty of time is favourable too. Rushed weddings often see some of the people you love unable to attend, because they’ve already used up all of their annual leave from work, or because their childcare isn’t available at such short notice.

4. Do What You and Your Partner Want

A lot of people feel wedding planning stress due to trying to meet others’ expectations as opposed to what they really want. Remember that this is you and your partner’s big day, nobody else’s. Choose the things you like, not what others necessarily want to see. Sure, you may experience some stress along the way. I know we have. But implementing some of the above pieces of advice into your wedding planning process really can help to alleviate the majority of it!