While your wedding day will be a time of great joy, the preparations that lead up to it will not necessarily be easy. Wedding planning, at one point or another, tends to create stress. And too much stress, over time, can lead to mental and physical exhaustion: what’s known as wedding planning fatigue or burn-out.
Experiencing wedding planning fatigue is not at all uncommon. Brides magazine recently cited a Zola survey of 500 engaged or newlywed couples: 96% of the respondents acknowledged they were in major freak-out mode. About 40% of the couples said wedding planning was “extremely stressful” while 71% said wedding planning was even more intense than other well-known stressors like job hunting.
For some, wedding planning fatigue stems from high expectations or the challenges of juggling planning with other life challenges and responsibilities. In other cases, fatigue and overwhelming stress are related to bigger and more complex issues.
"It’s a life transition for everyone involved, and with life transitions come identity shifts and a sense of loss of who you were before,” wedding therapist Landis Bejar, LMHC, told Brides. “Meanwhile, all this happens while everyone’s eyes are on you, you’re spending loads of money, and you’re expected to be the happiest you’ve ever been. The culmination of all these circumstances makes wedding planning a pressure cooker for stress, exacerbation of already-strained family dynamics, hurt feelings, and conflict."
While some aggravation is to be expected during wedding planning, it’s important to recognize when the stress seems unending and worse, it is starting to have a negative impact on your well-being. We’ve included some warning signs here, along with some advice for preventing and easing wedding-planning fatigue.
Be on the Lookout for These Signs
How can you tell if your wedding stress is getting out of control? Watch for these red flags.
You’ve developed a “meh” mindset. Wedding planning activities that you expected to enjoy, like looking at dresses, making menu choices, and checking out cakes start to feel like little more than items to check off your to-do list. The joy and enthusiasm just aren’t there.
You’re putting off important wedding-planning tasks. Maybe putting things off is typical for you. But if it’s not, and you find yourself nudging responsibilities lower and lower on your list, it could be a sign that you’re battling planning fatigue.
You’re feeling sick and tired. Ongoing stress can impact your ability to sleep and fight off illness. It can cause digestive issues, impact your blood pressure, and even can cause physical pain.
You’re struggling to focus. The issues described above, and ongoing stress itself, can leave us irritable and make concentrating difficult.
You don’t trust yourself. At work, you confidently make decisions on a regular basis. But when it comes to making a final decision on invitations, hiring a photographer, or holding a wedding after-party, your self-assurance is nowhere to be found.
Those close to you notice you’ve become a bit…unpleasant. Sometimes, it takes someone else to recognize something is off. “You want your big day to be flawless, but the desire to create a Pinterest-worthy ceremony may lead to obsessive attention to detail and controlling behavior,” Nicole Harris wrote for MarthaStewart.com. “In other words, a stressed-out bride may turn into a bridezilla.”
You’re experiencing panic attacks. Common symptoms include feeling faint, dizzy, or light-headed; feeling very hot or very cold; sweating or trembling.
The stress is spreading its ugly tentacles. If you find other aspects of your life are suffering, from relationships with family and friends to your professional commitments, we recommend taking steps to ease your pressure and exhaustion.
Wondering what you can do? Just like the underlying causes of planning fatigue, the best approaches for preventing it—and minimizing it—will vary from person to person. Here are some possibilities.
Arm Yourself for Success
Ian Hardy, a Live Band & Wedding Entertainment Expert at Music8 Agency, suggests setting up a foundation of sorts for your planning to help you prioritize tasks, stay on track, and prevent unpleasant surprises.
Start with a detailed budget that includes every cost you can imagine. You can consult with people who’ve already married or do some online research for ideas. Hardy recommends adding a 5% miscellaneous category.
You can help yourself further by establishing a timeline for your planning tasks with breaks built in, particularly during the days leading up to your wedding. Some people find checklists helpful, too, to keep smaller tasks from slipping through the cracks and give themselves a sense of making progress. Consider organizing tasks by priority with headings like “Musts,” “Would Love This,” and “Only if Everything Else is Done.”
Social Media? Tread Carefully
Hardy also urges brides to recognize the danger of comparing their plans to the ideas and completed weddings they find on social media sites like Pinterest. Doing that tends to amplify pressure to create the “perfect wedding.”
“Creating a Pinterest mood board with your style and vision for your wedding is a great idea. It helps you clearly communicate what you have in mind to your vendors,” Hardy wrote. “The problem, however, is that you have to know when to stop. Once you get what you need, stop searching. You will always find something that looks better, and how many times can you change your mind?”
Try to Find Approaches that Work for You
In a blog for Offbeat Bride, Ginny Bartolone wrote that she found detailed planning tasks like creating schedules and lists helped her keep excessive stress at bay. But, she acknowledges, that strategy was a good match for her personality and mindset. Others may find non-planning tasks much more restorative.
“It may sound backwards—planning to avoid planning stress—but for me, I couldn't just throw up my hands, walk away from what needed to be done and call it a day,” Bartolone wrote. “Instead, it helped immensely to simply redirect that planning energy into something that reminded me of the celebration ahead. And setting a schedule of the wedding day itself reinforced the fact that my fiancé and I still had control of how well we took care of ourselves throughout the experience.”
Additional options could be:
-Using stress-busters, from time with your pet (or a borrowed one) to breathing exercises
-You knew this was coming: prioritizing self-care. This can have a huge impact. We get it, when you’re busy, it gets tougher to get enough sleep at least seven hours a night), eat right, drink plenty of water, and exercise. But neglecting these areas only makes you more susceptible to the impacts of stress.
Decisions, Decisions
Sometimes, Lauren Rodrigue wrote for Wedding Wire, wedding planning fatigue is rooted in the many, many decisions that must be made during the planning process.
“Where should we hold our wedding?” “Buffet dinner or plated?” “Band or DJ?” When you first start planning your wedding, you’ll be doing some rapid-fire decision-making that you might even find fun (especially if you’re Type A!),” Rodrigue wrote. “But as the months roll on, you’ll probably come down with a case of decision fatigue.”
Rodrigue suggests working breaks into your planning process and delegating small tasks to trusted helpers.
Also important, she said, don’t forget that not all wedding decisions will have the same impact. Focus your efforts on a few key things that matter to you, and try not to invest too much mental and emotional energy in others.
“Of course your wedding decisions are a big deal, and I’m not saying you’re nuts for caring,” she wrote. “But aside from the big ones, most of these decisions you’ll make during planning will turn out to be a lot less noticeable to you and your guests on your big day.”
Working With a Counselor
If you are already struggling with exhaustion or burnout, you don’t have to carry your burden alone.
We strongly encourage you to share what you’re experiencing with your loved ones, including your partner. That can help prevent misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and even more stress.
The people close to you can be a valuable source of support as well, but counseling may be an even better option.
“The best way to address any wedding-related anxiety, as well as prepare for your wedding day, is to meet with a trusted professional, whether it’s a therapist, a member of the clergy, or another source,” clinical psychologist and author Ben Michaelis, Ph.D., told Brides magazine.
“It’s incredibly useful to have a safe place to address your emotions that is separate from your everyday life,” he said. “A close friend can be wonderful, but if you’re expressing any feelings of doubt or concern, those will follow you because your friendship will continue into the future.”
Here are some additional measures that can help you ease wedding-planning fatigue.
Take a break, and do things you enjoy. Spend time with your partner or friends. Give yourself some “you” time for something relaxing, maybe a walk, taking time to lose yourself in a book, or getting a massage.
Give yourself permission to be down. You likely are feeling pressure to be upbeat and excited as you plan your big day, but being engaged doesn’t mean you’re shielded from negative emotions. If an engaged friend told you they were down, anxious, or feeling blah, you wouldn’t berate them; you’d try to express support. Why not extend the same grace to yourself?
Trim decisions and tasks from your list. Marie Kondo is known for encouraging us to declutter by discarding belongings that don’t “spark joy.” Maybe you can take the same approach to your to-dos. If you find that creating unique, theme-based centerpieces for each table at your reception is fun, a challenge you’re enjoying, stick with it. If it’s not, delete it from your list and move on to other things.
Hire a professional wedding planner. If this option is within your budget, you may find it tremendously liberating. That’s not to say you will have eliminated all of your decisions and responsibilities, but you will have a reliable expert sharing the load and providing valuable guidance.
Feeling stress and fatigue is not everyone’s wedding planning experience, but it absolutely does happen.
You can take steps to keep it to a minimum, but if you experience wedding planning fatigue it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. We encourage you to take these feelings seriously and to address them sooner rather than later.