Wedding planning is hard – it causes a lot of stress. Even if you’re having a “simple” wedding – it still takes a lot of time and effort to make it happen. It can take over your life if you’re not careful! Here’s what I mean.
The other day I Googled “wedding planning stress,” but the most interesting information was actually in the list of related Google searches:
These are actual searches that people typed into Google. Yikes.
We could all use a break from wedding planning – right?
Even if you haven’t had a complete meltdown, a break from wedding planning might serve you (and your partner) well.
How to Beat Wedding Planning Stress with Self-Care
Self-care is super trendy right now. In fact, NPR just did a story about how millennials are obsessed with self-care! (First of all, how do they know us so well? Kinda scary, right?)
Honestly, I find a lot of the self-care advice pretty annoying and completely unrealistic.
Have you come across these self-care “morning routines”? They go something like this:
- Wake up the crack of dawn
- Drink lemon water
- Read for an hour
- Meditate for 15 minutes
- Do yoga for an hour
- Write a dozen pages in my gratitude journal
- And when you’re done, you can start getting ready for work
Is it just me, or is that a little much? Who even has time for all that?
I’ve tried it, and it ’s not practical at all – in fact, my “self-care morning routine” turned into a long to-do list that stressed me out even more! Despite this, I do value self-care, especially during stressful times – like when I was wedding planning.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m not going to give you 50 different ways to practice self-care – because that’s not my style. Instead, I’m keeping it simple and realistic.
Here’s the ONE simple thing you can do to practice some self-care:
Take the Self-Care Challenge
Here’s the super simple self-care challenge: take a true break from wedding planning. (I told you it was simple!)
This means you’ll avoid any and all wedding talk for a day or two (or however long you agree with your partner). At the minimum, do it for one day – that’s a full 24 hours. For that period of time:
- Don’t discuss wedding things.
- Don’t do any wedding research.
- Don’t answer any wedding-related emails or phone calls.
- Don’t browse wedding topics on Pinterest.
- Don’t do any wedding planning at all.
Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, right? Don’t be fooled. It sounds simple (because it is), but it ain’t easy.
Sounds Easy. What makes this challenging?
First, if you have extra time in your day or if you don’t have any plans for the weekend, you might be tempted to use that extra time to get stuff done for your wedding. But I challenge you to give yourself (and your partner) a break instead. You’ve probably already made plans to knock some stuff off from your to-do list this weekend. You can still do that, of course, but take at least one full day for yourself. Your to-do list will still be there on Monday.
Second, you’ll need to get your partner on board. If your partner has no idea that you’re trying to take a wedding planning break, you can bet that you’ll get sucked into a full-on wedding planning conversation before you know it. Even a quick wedding-related question can quickly turn into something bigger. So get your partner on board and keep each other accountable.
Third, if you happen to be around family or friends, it’s almost guaranteed that someone will ask about how the wedding planning is going. And depending on who’s asking the conversation can go from a quick question to an hour-long conversation about your wedding, complete with unsolicited advice and overbearing opinions.
Think of a few ways to respond to change the subject. One way to do this is to ask about their wedding. This works every time because people love talking about themselves. 😉
Challenge accepted!
I hope you practice some self-care by taking a break from planning your wedding – it’s good for you, and you deserve it!
Leave a Reply