10 Ways to Make Your Wedding Day Less Stressful

1. Try to be early! In our experience, brides that are early stress out less. The main thing that makes brides late is poor planning. If your hair and makeup appointment runs long that is out of your control. What is in your control is planning those appointments early enough to give them room to run over. When everything is late, the whole day is rushed and out of sync. We all have those days. We are late in the beginning of the day and it seems we can never catch up. Do yourself a favor and plan to be early.

2. Let others help you. It can be a hard thing to do. All of your life, you have planned this day out perfectly. Sometimes the bride is so concerned about everything going right that she tries to micro manage all aspects of the day. Most of the time this makes her and everyone nervous. It also puts her vendors out of their element of expertise. This doesn’t mean that she should not care about what happens on her day. This should be done in all of the planning leading up to the day.

Think about it. A bride will spend hundreds of hours researching vendors, meeting them in person, reading wedding books and magazines etc. If you have done all of this and hired real professionals, you should know that you have done a great job and you can relax on your big day. So just relax and let others help you!

3. Plan for mishaps. We have photographed hundreds of weddings, and trust us, small things go wrong. Take solace in the fact that they are small things. Have someone designated as your problem solver. Like an aunt or uncle.

Problems like the flowers are at the reception place instead of the church or someone needs to call the limo service and find out where they are. These things seem small and they are. On the wedding day they can add up and stress a bride out. If a plan is put in place for these things, all you have to do is say, “tell Aunt Claire to handle it.”

4. Make a list for your photographer, DJ/Band, wedding coordinator, etc. Let us explain. It is time for your posed pictures and you get up on the alter and begin. After a few photos you start thinking about the family pictures you want. You start getting real confused. “Where is cousin Mike and Betty? Would somebody find my sister? Did we already take that one?” These are things you should not be worried about on your big day. If a list of the family combination’s are done before hand, you don’t even have to think about it.

5. Peace of mind is worth the money. There are some things that aren’t worth spending the extra money on, and there are some things that definitely are. The best thing you can do is ask yourself what is the most important to you. For some brides it is the photographs, some it is the flowers, others it is the band, video, open bar, etc., (You get the picture.) Whatever it is make sure you choose the professionals you think can deliver.

6. Plan your music. I can’t tell you how many times we have seen brides upset at the music choices that the band or DJ made. It is not their fault. Ok maybe a little. Seriously though, plan out the music you want. Don’t leave it up to whoever to decide for you.

7. Don’t Procrastinate! Y don’t want to wait until two months before the wedding to get everything finished. This puts you behind the eight ball. Some things take time. Dress alterations, bridal portrait for the reception, favors for the guests, etc. All of this leads to unfinished things on your wedding day which leads to stress.

8. Have a schedule for your day and follow it. Trust us, time goes by on your wedding day fast. If you have a wedding coordinator this is her job. If you don’t, who is paying attention to the flow of your day. Example: the band plays for 3 hours, your photographer is there for 4 hours, the reception is booked for 2 hours. You can see that this becomes one of those math word problems we all hated in school. Do you want to be figuring out when to cut the cake and when you should throw the garter during this confusing equation?

9. Do everything that you can before the ceremony. As photographers, we recommend our brides take all of their posed photos with family before the ceremony. (Everything that doesn’t require the bride and groom to see each other.) With our style of photography, this works because we try and minimize the posed stuff so that the natural moments of the day unfold instead of trying to pose people for two hours.

10. RELAX and enjoy your day!! All of your planning, all of your leg work, all of your hard work will pay off only if you allow it.