Wedding Planning Fatigue: How to Stop Overthinking Every Choice

24 Apr

We can see it:

You got engaged 6 weeks ago, you’ve looked at 47 venues, you have 283 dresses saved on your Pinterest board, and everyone is asking you a million questions that you don’t have the answer to and, quite frankly, haven’t even begun to think about.

You're overwhelmed with the amount of choice and now you feel less sure than when you started.

When we have too many choices, it overwhelms our brains and we spend longer feeling scrambled in the decision-making process. Every decision we have to make takes up energy and wedding planning requires hundreds of small (and large) decisions to be made in quite a short space of time.

By the time you come around to choosing napkins, your brain is fried and you’re losing the will to live.

Greenhouse marquee wedding reception with festoon lighting on the trim of the structure. Guests all mingle outside for cocktail hour whilst a DJ sax plays — **But WHY is wedding planning so exhausting?**

The wedding industry is huge - it’s valued at over £14 billion annually - and it’s only getting bigger. More choice = more overwhelming
Not only is the industry massive, but we have such easy access to content. Instagram and Pinterest overload us with visuals, giving us high expectations of what is possible; and often, what you see is either staged or extremely high budget
The devil: comparison. We live in an age where everything has to be perfect and if it isn’t as good as Sandra-from-down-the-road, then we’ve failed
This isn’t something you’ve ever done before, so the processes are all new, there’s lingo you don’t understand and there’s just so many things to think about. It’s like learning to ride a bike over and over and over again
Opinions come flying in from left, right and centre and, if you’re not careful, it can be really easy to get swept up in it

So how do you know if you have Decision Fatigue?

We’ve devised some ways to help you overcome this:

1. Set a ‘Good Enough’ Standard

As a wedding professional, this feels blasphemous; but we can’t expect everything to be perfect all the time.

Let’s talk realistically - your wedding guests will not remember what font you use on your invites. If there’s one you like enough, take a step back, walk away, and when you come back, evaluate whether it looks ‘good enough’.

When designing our client’s print, we find ourselves in the same situation all the time. We’ve stared at our designs for so long that they don’t look right anymore. Yet, we send them over to our clients and they love them. The issue is often in the designer’s eye, so you just need a step back and a bit of perspective on the severity of the situation.

2. Ask yourselves: ‘Who is this for?’

If your answer isn’t ‘me’, ‘my partner’, or ‘someone extremely significant to the wedding planning process’ (who’s opinion you value whilst not under duress), then it’s not worth stressing about.

3. Rule of 3

When we send our clients supplier proposals, we only send 3 options. Any more than that and we’re just overwhelming them with choice and options.

Look at 3 venues, 3 dress designers, 3 DJs. If you still can’t find one, look at another 3. But do not give yourself a list of 12 to start with - you’ll find confusion, not clarity.

4. Couple Roles

By determining roles between you as a couple, you can avoid that drowning feeling. This does not mean one person’s opinion means more than the others’, but it ensures responsibility is shared and the onus of planning a wedding is not on just one person.

5. Decision Deadlines

Say out loud to one another ‘We choose by Sunday’. Then, take 5 minutes to sit down and discuss this decision in turn. Saying these things out loud makes them more real and allows you to process them on another level.

Once a decision has been made, do not reopen it, unless absolutely necessary.