How to Manage Wedding Stress, According to a Pro
It’s an unfortunate reality that wedding planning is beyond stressful. In fact, according to a recent Zola study, 96 percent of recently engaged or newlywed couples admitted their wedding planning was incredibly draining. If you’re one of those couples who has considered eloping to Vegas in the midst of choosing your ceremony florals, we have good news: There are plenty of wedding stress-busting resources that are way more within reach than you may realize.
Mental health pros Lisa Perez, LCSW, and Christina Pierpaoli, MA, and PhD student in clinical psychology, fill us in on how to manage (unrealistic) expectations and how to ignore the pressure to make your wedding the best day of your life. Keep scrolling for all of their tips.
1. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. You might hear this all the time, but it couldn’t be truer when it comes to wedding planning. “Take a good close look at yourself as an individual person and what pressures and expectations you place on yourself daily — even before you were a bride- or groom-to-be,” says Perez. “Do you tend to be regularly critical toward yourself for your appearance? Do you have a tendency to want to overly please and appease others for fear of judgment or rejection? Do you have a hard time being flexible once you set a plan in your mind for how things should go? All of these internal anxieties can rear their ugly heads out if we are not careful and leak into making something that is supposed to be planning a fun celebration awfully distressing and unpleasant.” Once you’ve done an internal check-in, make it a habit to talk to your soon-to-be spouse to be about these feelings that come out regularly during the planning process so you can reassure one another and keep an open line of communication. It’ll start you on the right path to practice for marriage too.
