In all the months leading up to your wedding, you will have a roller coaster

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of emotions. Some will be wedding highs! You found your perfect dress and it was 20% off, your favorite DJ was available the day of your wedding, everything fell into place at your venue…all good things! But unfortunately, you will inevitably have some lows too. Your favorite, most perfect stationary blows the budget by, well…a lot, none of your top preferred photographers are available, you’ve seen so many shades of blush and cream you want to change your whole color palette just so you never need to see those colors again. How can you make the madness stop? Well, the short answer is, you can’t. Until you say, “I do,” and run through your sparkler send-off none of this will go away. Doesn’t that sound fun?! No? Okay, well in the meantime, here are some ways you can cope:

1. Start a book club

I know what you’re thinking. “Good grief, I’m already juggling 18 million things and you want me to START A BOOK CLUB? Sure I’ll just add that to my plate and hey while I’m at it why don’t I just solve world hunger too?” No, no, no. I’m not saying coordinate schedules with 10 of your closest friends, buy special wine and charcuterie every week, and make sure your house is spic and span. Of course, you’re welcome to do that if that suits you. I’m talking a more intimate club between you and your fiancée. Look through the New York Times’ Bestseller list or find a book that has a lot of buzz around it (preferably not a wedding related story), get a couple copies, and start reading. Get into the habit after work of reading for 20-30 minutes instead of looking at your phone and scrolling through social media. Read for an hour after dinner and talk with each other about what you’re reading. Not only will you find yourself to be relaxing more, but also you’ll have another bit of quality time carved out for your person and grow even closer. Win-win all around.

2. Work out…but ya know, just a normal amount

Close your eyes and raise your hand if you decided to lose 20 pounds after you were gifted your beautiful ring. Open your eyes…ahhh all the brides-to-be have their hands raised. Sweating for the dress has become a common occurrence. I’m a big fan of being healthy and having a routine for exercise and any excuse to either start or keep it up is great, but don’t obsessively start counting calories or getting into your head that every beautiful bride needs to be a size 00. If you are that size, great! If you’re not, great! Healthy is beautiful and putting stress on yourself to lose weight will make it that much harder to actually lose the weight. Vicious cycle right? There’s nothing wrong with adding in another exercise class or another day to your routine, but keep things in balance so you’re stressing about one less thing.

3. Delegate…and trust your peeps

Not everything has to fall on your plate. I’ll repeat that. Not everything has to fall on your plate. Your wedding will be beautiful if you don’t have your hands in every single detail of the day. Figure out what is important to you and keep a hold on those things. But be honest with yourself, figure out something that isn’t important to you and pull an Elsa and “let it go.” And once it’s gone, don’t pull it back, trust your friends and family to be there for you. So if the hotel where you’re staying that night isn’t a big deal to you as long as there’s a bed, have your hubby-to- be book it. If you don’t have a sweet tooth but your person does, let them handle the desserts. If you know full well you are not drinking wine at your reception, let your mom pick out her favorites. While it may not seem like much, every little thing you can let go of will only help you keep stress levels down while you are in planning mode.

4. Set times to unplug

We live in a world where phones, tablets, laptops, iPads, and even watches now are all trying to get us to be looking at them, notifying us of every ping, pop, alarm, and alert we could ever want. How many studies have shown being constantly connected is bad for sleep, health, and overall well-being? Probably a lot. Change your habits during the wedding planning process. Turn off notifications so you need to check e-mails yourself and not be pinged every time something comes through. Have a set time you put your phone down and focus on your person, or heck, even focus on you! If it means physically giving your devices to someone to get them out of your clutches, do it. Not only is this a good practice to get into when wedding planning, it’s probably just an overall good habit to work in your real life.

Feeling relaxed yet? Not really? That’s okay, it’s a work in progress. But even taking one or two of these tips will make a huge difference during planning. And your person will hopefully thank you for taking steps to not become a diva-wedding-planning-zilla!

Summer Jean Photography