Finding Your Anchor in Wedding Planning (What You Want vs Others’ Expectations)

It’s no secret that wedding planning can be crazy stressful. You have in your mind one perfect day but, when it comes time to get down to it, you are forced to balance your dream with your partner’s dream with each of your families’ expectations with a realistic budget with the potential judgment of friends… The list goes on and on and, even though most of the stress is caused by being in our own heads, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.

The easiest fix? Find your own anchor in the wedding planning storm and remember this is your day. It doesn’t matter if your sister had 1,000 guests and you only want a handful. If your mom has a Russian ballet theme already picked out in her mind, or if you’re the fifth of five best friends to get married and so you think they’re expecting something grand. The only thing that matters: What do you want and what can you do?

Find something essential to focus on. Is it a theme, a color, some small detail you’ve always imagined? Whatever it is, hold tight to it and let that be your guide. If you want a thousand yellow daisies, plan around that, and when your aunt mentions she thinks roses would be more appropriate, hold even tighter.

If you can afford it, a great way to avoid even getting dragged into the mires of other’s expectations is to hire a wedding planner. They will hold your budget, your ideas, your thoughts, your everything and will be virtually immune to the wants of others. Once the idea stage is out of your hands and set in motion, it is much easier to avoid the dissenting voices, simply because it is blissfully out of your control.

If you can’t afford a wedding planner, let that mantra still hold true! Collect your ideas and wants and start the ball rolling right away. The further along invested in actuality you are, the less you’ll be even physically able to make changes and you will be innately protected from diverting your route.

Everyone else is white noise and your big, central idea is your anchor. Let the rest of the planning branch from that and – aside from those restraints you can’t fight against (budgeting, time constraints, etc.) – allow the only voice of criticism to be your own or your partner’s.