Let’s be honest, planning a wedding is not all about registering for gifts and trying on bright white dresses. There’s some of that sure, but there’s also a lot of emails, vendor consultations, seating chart creating, and venturing into the world of joining two families. Not to mention all of the money that has to be spent before it’s all said and done!
All of these nitty gritty details were NOT in that backyard wedding you’ve been planning since you were five. There was a pretty dress, a handsome prince, and your best girl friends by your side-- and that’s about it. While that would be a totally awesome reality, it’s unfortunately not the one that 99.9% of us are dealing with when it comes time to plan a wedding.
Believe me when I say, that I totally get it. I planned our wedding in the midst of running (and rebranding) my business and it was probably the greatest wake up call I could have ever experienced as a planner. I saw there on so many occasions thinking “I can’t believe I’ve been working on this wedding for 10 months and it’s STILL not done.” or “how is it physically possible that this wedding is costing us even more money?!?!”
The biggest thing that I took away from planning our wedding was this-- I was not at all prepared for how much help I would really need! Six months before the wedding had you asked me what I would have needed help with, I probably would have told you that my list would have been totally completed the month before the wedding. I’m a wedding planner after all, clearly I’ve got this. Girl. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Two weeks before the wedding when I still had a bedroom mirror full of Post It note to do’s, I had a reality check with myself and had to realize that while I probably could have physically gotten all of these things done on my own, I didn’t have to. Sure, I wanted all of my chalkboards to be perfectly lettered and all of the napkins to be folded a certain way, it was completely possible that all of these things could still be accomplished with the help of other people. So I pulled up my email and started sending out those S.O.S.’s to my interns, assistants, and family friends and just asked for help.
The next two weeks were still completely jam packed, but I didn’t have to go through it alone. Everything got done, and more importantly-- I got to sleep every night and even had the chance to enjoy the occasional glass of wine with my hubs to be.
Throughout those last two weeks I learned an incredibly valuable lesson that I wanted to bring to all of the brides in my life and that is, it’s okay to ask for help. Maybe you hired a day of coordinator 3 weeks after you got engaged and now your wedding is 3 months away and you’re totally burned out and miserable. Perhaps you thought you could do it all on your own like I did, and then realized that just because you were capable of accomplishing it by yourself, you didn’t have to.
At the risk of sounding completely stereotypical and lame-- hear me out. You only get to go through the season of engagement with the man or woman you plan to marry once. Dating is totally different from being engaged, and being engaged is totally different from marriage. And marriage is (hopefully) for the long haul, while an engagement is terribly finite. You should have the opportunity to completely enjoy the process with your partner, and I just don’t know that you can truly do that if you’re completely overwhelmed with getting everything done before you get down the aisle.
So don’t be afraid to ask for help. Whether it be from a wedding professional, family, friends-- or all three! I had two of my sweet brides call me yesterday asking if I could help them with more than they had originally anticipated with their weddings and I wanted to hug them through the phone because-- absolutely! That’s what I’m here for! And the fact that they realized that they were stressed and unhappy and wanted to change the pattern, so they looked to me to help them that’s awesome. So so awesome.
There are people more than willing to help you, you just have to ask. Take a breath (maybe pour yourself a glass of wine), and know that you are not alone!