Maybe I’m the odd one out here but everyone seems to get really panicky and stressed about their wedding plans, surely that spoils the whole enjoyment of being engaged and in love?
I’m not finding that at the moment, doesn’t it just need some good organisational skills? Did you find it stressful? Why did you/are you finding it hard?
Maybe I’ll feel the same soon! x
Tags: love, organisational skills, spoils
Because people want to be stressed. If you don’t, then you won’t……
~ Planning a wedding takes a lot of decision making which i found very stressful because I hate making decisions. Plus most people want everything to be perfect and stress if it isn’t. Trust me if it hasn’t hit you yet it will. ~
I have had one stressful moment and that was when the venue I booked called and told me the owner sold it and they had to cancel! So that was it so far for me but everything else is going good!
It wasn’t very stressful for me. I had 2 years to plan and it went very smoothly. I was told I was one of the most relaxed and organized brides people had ever seen! I kept waiting for the stressful stuff to hit, but it never really did. The only stressful parts were dealing with some people’s unwanted opinions. But overall, it was very fun
Oh, the most stressful thing was actually when a week before the wedding, my JoP cancelled and I had to scramble to find another one! But that was out of my control.
My biggest stress adder is people not calling me back! I’ve only got 4 months till my wedding and my pastor can’t call me back to set up our counseling sessions (I’ve called the church once a week for the past 6 weeks), and I haven’t heard from a caterer that I’d spoken to (doesn’t matter much, because I went with another caterer, though). Is it that hard to make a phone call?!?! Other than that, my wedding planning has been stress-free.
My wedding planning went beautiful and easy. I just wanted to marry my honey forever!
LOL…yes, maybe you will! Nah, my planning was the same way (non-stressful), but I wonder if age has anything to do with it. I got married at age 26 and by then I knew exactly what I wanted (a smallish wedding, but elegant). More importantly, my fiance and I were financially established enough to where we paid for all of it, and his mom gave us $2000 as a wedding present. So this helped us, too.
I also tried my best to organize the wedding in a way that would keep people happy, but I made it clear that certain things were not subject to change. And I just took it from there. Finally, while the day was obviously important to me, I accepted upfront that it wouldn’t be totally perfect - there’s always a snag or two - so I kept my expectations in check on that.
It seems the problems develop when people try to please everyone, or aren’t mature enough to put the wedding day into the larger context of a marriage to someone you love. It’s a celebration of your love - no more, but no less.
There are so many traditions on both sides of the family. Also both families want things "their way" and that makes it hard to accommodate.
The hardest part for me is that we resolve one issue and then everyone wants to re-open and re-negotiate. It’s time to move forward with finalizing the decorations, for example, but I have to spend more and more time discussing and justifying other decisions.
Some "important" traditions weren’t discussed until certain plans were laid. My mother and his sister have both invited people to the wedding, and now our venue is too small. And the wedding is 4 months away.
Also, we’re paying for everything ourselves, so it’s hard sometimes to justify spending so much on small things. So you’re weighing the pros and cons in your mind, searching for alternatives, asking for advice, which sometimes backfires.
I was plenty organized, but I can’t get the people around me to give me the support I need. I ask for input on flowers, I get discussion on dresses. It’s impossible to pry my mother away from the olympics. His mother barely speaks english. It’s a balancing act, and the last thing I want to do is start yelling at people to get them to step up.
Our extended families have not met either of us, so I really want this to be an event that everyone is comfortable with and that they can see we respect both sides and care for everyone. This is no small task.
If my fiance and I were from the same community and someone else was paying for the wedding and I had people willing to stay on track, I don’t think I’d be finding it stressful. But as it is, we’re paying the bills, I’m doing all the work and there are two totally different cultures and sets of traditions to satisfy. It has nothing to do with me not being organized, and everything to do with me not being willing to tell people off.
EDIT: Oh wow, reading over some people’s answers!
It’s VERY important to ME that as many people as possible enjoy the wedding and feel comfortable. I realize this is not important to every bride, but I don’t see this is as being a day to celebrate me, but as a day to celebrate two families coming together.
For this reason, there are a lot of details that I am expected to coordinate between two very different cultures. This is not simply a matter of one family always having fish and another always having chicken. I don’t know these details, and while I’ve been asking for about a year, a lot of them have only been brought to light recently, and I’m stuck between ignoring it (and looking to my fiance’s extended family as though I don’t care about him or his culture) or trying to incorporate them.
I appreciate that not everyone is in my position, and I certainly don’t wish extra wedding stress on anyone else. But that doesn’t mean that other people who are feeling stress are bridezillas.
Everyone I know tells me I need to be MORE Bridezilla-ish.
No one around me seems willing to leave well enough alone. Everyone seems to have another agenda, and while I wouldn’t mind if they were talking about things I need to make a decision on, I don’t have the time or energy to talk and shop for things I already have. And if I don’t comply, they shut off and I’m left dealing with it alone, knowing they as soon as I make a decision, they’ll have 10,000 other ideas that I will be expected to give attention to.
This is stressful, and I honestly don’t know what else I could do to cut the stress, except for telling them all off and doing whatever I want, which is not my personality. This doesn’t mean I’m a bridezilla or bad at planning or a drama queen. It means I’m a nice person who cares about those around her who has a big, difficult task to do, with no real support.
I watched my boyfriend’s sister go through a year and a half of wedding planning, and in her case, what made it so stressful was everyone else’s expectations of the event. Which food to serve, which church to have it in, even what dress she was to wear - all of this was commented on, endlessly, by everyone in her family. And not everything they said was nice.
Which is why I plan on eloping. Less planning = less stress (I hope).
I had a bridesmaid issue and some rude guests but the actual planning of the wedding was quite easy and fun.
Mostly because they have never done it before. In other cases, they are simply drama queens and excruciatingly exacting or impatient (which is why the term bridezilla was coined).
I found very little of the actual planning to be stressful. I am highly organized and kept all my necessary plans organized. I dealt with all vendors myself and kept track of payments, payment schedules, timelines & deadlines in a wedding spreadsheet that I made.
THAT was the easy part.
My stress started two days before the wedding when all the out-of-towners started showing up and I didn’t have a free minute to eat without someone calling me for help.
My stresses:
I planned for a year and a half, printed maps & directions and included them in the save-the-date cards and the wedding invites. I had 1 bridesmaid call me and tell me she didn’t read the invites or the e-mails I had sent her and so she needed me to tell her the timeline of where she needed to be and when so she could take notes over the phone. I had guests calling me to say they needed directions to their hotel or from the hotel to the church (all of which I had printed and put into the invites & save-the-date cards).
On the day of the wedding, my fiance & I went off for 1/2 hour of pictures by ourselves first and asked the wedding party to finish dressing and join us at 1pm at the park for photos (park was 2 blocks from the church). I told AT LEAST 10 people where all the attire was for those who hadn’t gotten to the place yet and those same people were told the directions to the park (2 blocks away) we asked them to make sure everyone got dressed and to make sure everyone knew where they were going. Out of 10 people - NOT ONE could remember to make sure my ringbearers both had their clothes, I had 1 mismatched & tie-less ringbearer for all my park photos. NOT ONE of those same people told anyone that showed up after my fiance & I left the directions to the park and we had to waste half an hour of photographer time directing those who were left behind on how to get the 2 blocks to the park.
I had asked everyone involved in the wedding (bridesmaids, groomsmen, ringbearers, flowergirls, ushers & readers) to arrive early - be dressed & ready at 1pm for photos - and to stay at the church afterwards for some additional photos. I had 1 usher & reader (a couple) who showed up just in time for the ceremony and left immediately after to go to the reception so I have no formal pictures with them in it.
I had a groomsman & flowergirl use their GPS instead of my printed directions for the reception and they got lost so they held up the introductions and dinner being served!
I was so stressed out because I had done everything I was supposed to do and I tried to prepare everyone that needed to be there for me and I felt like crap. I felt like these people were all thrilled to party, but couldn’t show up on time, couldn’t be dressed in time, couldn’t remember anything I had asked them to do (and it really wasn’t much - show up & be dressed).
The part that stresses me out is the financial aspect. We’re on a very tight budget, but getting married very close to NYC where things are grossly overpriced. Between working extra hours to make it happen, and doing 10 tons of research to get the best deals - it’s a little stressful. I also had some family stress, which I think is common. Some people weren’t cooperating with our wishes, or following through with their verbal commitments, so learning how to get over that and still enjoy the planning took a lot of patience.
I honestly feel like if someone was paying for this for us though, it would definetly be a breeze.
Hope that helps!
Planning our wedding was fun for the most part, but the last few weeks got stressful… the last week in particular. There was just so much to do. Getting married never worried me, it was just planning the wedding that made me a basket case.
But I’m stress-prone in general, so I wouldn’t judge by me.
I agree. I don’t understand either. I find it very relaxing and enjoyable to plan it. Me and my fiance have been together for over 6 years and engaged for around 2 years now. We decided a couple of weeks ago to get married in June this year and we have most things, well major things like dresses, venue, rings, photography, dinner etc planned now already!
Everything is just working out perfectly. There are only a few minor things to sort out now and then I can just relax until June. You could say that I have my perfect small and intimate wedding planned in 2 or 3 weeks lol and I am only 18. I say if an 18 year old can plan a perfect wedding in that amount of time, anyone could.
I think that being organised makes things a lot easier.
Dealing with all the different vendors is stressful. It’s stressful that EVERYTHING is your responsiblity and if you don’t do it, nobody else will. Your family and friends have their opinion on how you should do things, and that gets very annoying. I guess it’s hard to explain - you have to live through it to fully understand what it’s like.