Two Ways to Make Better and Easier Planning Decisions

How do you make decisions? From the very beginning of the wedding planning process (or any process for that matter) your decision making style will impact your stress level and your planning success. And as I have discovered, the attitude and time you invest in your choices can make you very happy or very stressed. So the following items are two of the best tips I could offer on how to make decisions as you plan your event, based on my experience so far, and why they will make a difference.

Deciding between linen options!

1) Be as decisive as possible. It is in your best interest to make a decision, stick to it and move on. This isn’t to say you should jump into your decisions because of pressure from your planner, fiancé, and/or family. Nor does it mean you should take an apathetic approach to planning. If there are some items, you really don’t know how to decide on – then wait! But, give yourself a time limit to decide; because the longer you belabor over which salad (or soup?!) you should choose as your first course, the less time you have to keep yourself sane. If you are at all like my fiancé and I, you are planning your wedding between working a full-time job and managing the other incidentals that pop-up in a life (like the leak in the basement or several other friends engagements). The longer you take to make decisions, the longer they will be weighing on your mind; and taking up valuable airspace from all of the other aspects of your life that require your attention. According to Jen Sincero, author of You are a Badass, How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life (which is an incredible book btw), “deciding is freedom, indecision is torture.” By making quick and smart decisions you give yourself permission to plan your day in joy, instead of planning each step in misery. The longer you wait to decide on a first course, photo booth or a signature cocktail, the more stress can build up and take away from what you are really doing: getting ready to start the next exciting chapter of your life’s journey.

One thing that can help you make quick decisions is to use your budget as a guide. If you have an unlimited budget, then shoot for the moon! Get the gold flatware to match the gold ombre cake and the fancy cookies with gold foil from the best bakery in Philadelphia. However, if you are on a budget – like me – think about the items you thought were most important when you first started planning so, you don’t get caught up wasting money and time on the minor decisions. For example, if you are debating over a photo booth and you originally picked your venue based on their dance floor and killer menu options, then do you really want to pay money for an item that could take away from those things instead of complimenting them? Plus, that is one more vendor to be concerned about on the day of. Sometimes less really is more. Channel Paul Rudd’s Surfer attitude from Forgetting Sarah Marshall — “do less!” Your body, mind and wallet will thank you for it later.

2) This is equally as important as number 1; make sure you and your beau are on the same page before you make a decision. Matt and I checked some major items off of our wedding to-do list at our wedding-tasting last weekend which required making a lot of decisions about dinner options. And when it came time for us to make those decisions it was very easy because we agreed on what we wanted before we started the tasting: simplicity for ourselves and classically good food. So, we opted for a variety of awesome appetizers like bacon wrapped scallops, which are easy to eat and drink with. And for our main courses we went with a traditional Ceaser Salad and a surf & turf (with filet mignon and Chilean Sea Bass)! Our guests will enjoy a variety of the best the Windrift has to offer and we won’t need to collect a 150+ entree selections from everyone, win-win! Our wedding coordinator even gave us props for how quickly we decided on each item; And we can proudly say we hold the record for quickest course choices at the Windrift!

Some hors d’oeuvre options – I will take all of the cheesesteak egg rolls, please!

Despite our success, I can see how these choices can become big hang ups for couples. From yummy classic options like Ceaser salad to creamy lobster bisque and New England clam chowder the range of good options is so large, couples could easily get caught up on trying to please everyone instead of just choosing what they both want or even blow their budget on soup and salad for ALL. Worst-case scenario they could end up alienating each other because of disagreements regarding the decisions they make. That can be a one-way ticket to a tortuous tasting event. Going into the process with a united front made the difference between making decisions that suited us both versus ones, which could cause friction – and misery later on.

One-way to limit the opportunities for a disagreement is to write a pro’s and con’s lists for the choices you think you both might get hung up on. And if you run through each of your pro’s and con’s and still are at an impasse, ask an expert. You are hiring a caterer, florist, event planner, photographer etc. for a reason – they are experts at what they do. So don’t feel obligated to have all of the answers. One of the tried and true ways to lighten your planning load (and life load) is to relinquish some control to those who know best! They may think of options that you both didn’t even know existed. For example, we thought we would need to decorate a wedding arch for our beach wedding and we were concerned about the cost. My florist offered me the option to use two palm trees instead which is perfect, not just because it is cost-effective but, because anyone who knows me, understands that palm trees are one of my all time favorite things (alongside sunsets and fireworks) in life. If we hadn’t listened to her ideas or thought we needed to have all of the answers we may never have come up with the perfect option.

As Alex McClafferty so eloquently states in the Forbes Article, 5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Decision Making, “decision making can be difficult because you become too personally invested in how a decision will make you look and feel.” So making decisions as you plan can be very emotional for you and others involved in the process with you. It can also make each choice seem much more important than it is. If you start to get overwhelmed remember: planning this event is not the end of the world, if anything it is just the beginning of the planning for you an your fiancés future. Have fun and don’t forget why you are doing this all to begin with (and it’s not to go broke and bald from stress). Your wedding is about the love you want to share with all of the people who you love. And if they truly care about you, your linen/floral/food choices won’t matter to them anyway. They will just be excited to spend the day celebrating one of the most amazing gifts life has to offer!

Matt and I – remembering to have FUN!

The Case for Gold Flatware – Day 365

I often strive to be perfect in other people’s eyes, or at the very least, not disappoint them. This perfection complex invades everything I do, from typing an impeccable blog post, to being an exceptional friend, dog-mom, sibling, co-worker, and fiancé. So, of course, this complex is alive and well in my wedding planning. And I realized its influence while I was having some casual drinks a few Saturday nights ago.

My fiancé, Matt, and I were at a PHS pop-up beer garden in Philadelphia with another couple (who are coincidentally newly-weds, and were recently married at an exquisite resort in Mexico). While the discussions of our work and daily lives carried on, the inevitable “wedding planning” topic came up. The conversation started the way it usually does, with the typical “how’s the wedding planning going?” I took the opportunity to bring up my newest table decoration idea – gold flatware!

I’ve had quite a bit of experience on the not-so-glamorous side of weddings, as I had spent a few years catering weddings after college. I cannot tell you how many expensive flower bouquets ended up in the garbage at the end of the night. With this in mind, I made the resolution early on in my planning that expensive floral arrangements were out of the question. So when I stumbled across the gold flatware during one of my wedding themed Pinterest pinning-sprees, I felt this was the answer to my prayers! I was totally enamored. How different! How ornate! This would be a perfect alternative to ridiculously overpriced flowers. Without any hesitation, I saved several flatware Pins to my “Wedding Planning Board;” confident that I would make this happen for my big day.

I had been contemplating how to turn my exceptional idea into a reality for days. So, now that I was out with a couple of wedding veterans and my fiancé, I was thrilled to share my idea! Unfortunately, upon revealing my grand plan, I felt instantaneous regret. At first they thought I was kidding.  Once they came to the realization that I was dead serious, their expressions made me feel like I was planning on offering them sardines instead of fresh water salmon. Even my own fiancé even played a part in crushing my dream, “Won’t that be too expensive? And do you think the Windrift even offers that,” he proclaimed. I made an attempt to regain their confidence in my vision. I even joked and said, “even if no one else has gold settings, we all will, I don’t care how it looks!” They could see how set I was on the idea and tried to offer some sage advice; perhaps people could bring them home as their wedding favors! Despite their attempt to salvage the idea, I could feel my gold-plated dreams slip through my fingers, and shatter like glass. What I had originally envisioned being the perfect idea, was now slowly degrading into nothing more than a pipe dream.

As the conversation shifted and the night ended, I was left contemplating the impact of the décor discussion. I intrinsically know the intent of these wedding conversations are not meant to fill my mind with uncertainty. Yet, somehow the end result is unavoidable: Any idea, which isn’t met with immediate enthusiasm, I immediately doubt. Everyone who has planned a wedding typically encourages me not to listen to what others think and just “do you.” Nonetheless, I still feel a longing for people’s approval deep inside.

After this particular conversation, I found myself worrying about my weddings future and my future, with thoughts like: There are so many decisions to make, what if I make the wrong one? What if I decide on something and something better comes along? If I can’t make a good decision about something as simple as table settings, should I even get married? Then right before I jumped off the deep end into an existential crisis, I remembered something very important: all of these doubts are just thoughts – nothing more, nothing less. I will have tons of them over the next 365 days. And whatever decision I make from them, in all reality, really doesn’t matter too much to anyone but me. In 40 years (which is hopefully how long I will be married) no one is going to remember if the colors of the bridesmaid’s dresses are an exact match to the calligraphy on my wedding invitations; no one will remember (or care) if I have gold or silver flatware.

Everything I decide on isn’t going to be a perfect 10 to every guest, nor does it need to be. The day is about the love I share with my partner, not impeccable peonies. Perfection doesn’t make the love I share with my partner any less special or meaningful. Besides, even the best decisions don’t always go as planned – a bridesmaid could get sick, the weather may not cooperate and about a dozen other imperfect scenarios could play out! So for all of you future brides out there who, like me, find yourself worrying about planning the perfect wedding, I will leave you with the wise words of Baz Lurhman:

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t,
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t,
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the “Funky Chicken,”
On your 75th wedding anniversary,

Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either,

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s…

 

– Editing courtesy of Kimberly A. Howard

The Bridezilla Trap, Day 375

One of my biggest fears during wedding planning is becoming the dreaded Bridezilla. A Bridezilla is so eloquently defined by the Urban Dictionary as, “one ridiculous spoiled bitch, that thinks she is the center of the universe because ‘her show’ a.k.a her wedding, is 18 months from now.” It is not just an American TV series; Bridezilla behavior is a real life phenomenon that ends engagements, friendships, and divides families. We all have heard the horror stories: “Bride smashes grooms phone because it rings during rehearsal ceremony; “bride asks for MOH to handed her grapes so, she won’t mess up her makeup” and my personal favorite; “bride demands bridesmaids contribute towards her $10,500 wedding gown, after she maxes out her budget on Egyptian cotton linens.” Yikes.

So, this made me question, what is it about wedding planning that turns even the mildest mannered ladies into egocentric, obsessive, attention-starved monsters?

To answer that question, I needed to travel back years, even decades. I needed to go back to when girls are innocent, impressionable and perhaps awkward, early adolescence. You see, the seed is planted during this stage of life. There is no specific occurrence that that starts the germination process; it could be as a flower girl in an aunt’s wedding or when she first witnesses a woman dressed as a beautiful bride on TV. However, the underlying message that triggers the process is always the same and it goes something like this; someday you will grow up and be a princess for a day. It will be on a warm, sunny day. Everyone you love will be there and they will all be fixated on you. And when the day ends, you will ride off into the sunset with a hansom man – your prince. Basically, the day will be like a perfect dream. At first, girls don’t realize this message had an impact. We continue through adolescence, the teenage years and college. Maybe we even date a few guys and have a high-school sweetheart. Maybe we right their first name with his last name in our spiral notebooks. But what we don’t realize is that message, the seed that was planted so long ago, was silently being fertilized during this whole process and grew into several sprouts.

How do I know this? I know because, over half of women will have a wedding planning Pinterest board, well before they are ever engaged. I know because, some single women shop for an engagement rings. And I know because, there are the late night talks with girlfriends about what the dream wedding dress will look like.

Now you may be saying to yourself, just because I have a pre-marital Pinterest board, doesn’t mean I will become a bridezilla…and that is probably true. But, the fact cannot be ruled out, women are set up from girlhood to believe their wedding day should not only be special, but perfect. The concept of a perfect wedding day is embedded in our culture, taught to us unwittingly by some of our parents, and enforced by a billion dollar wedding industry that wants you to believe your day can and should be perfect. And that is a lot of pressure. Especially since, most things in life – like the weather, others behavior, financial burdens, are out of everyone’s control.

So, when the moment finally happens and the love your life asks for your hand in marriage, everything that you have thought about for decades floods in your mind faster than a tidal wave on the banks of the North Shore, flooding every crevice and synapse in your brain; all because the possibility of the “dream” just got real. Only now you start to realize that prefect may not exist. There are financial restrictions, time restrictions, and hell, even legal restrictions that will prevent you from having the magical day you believe your fairy tale wedding is made of.

In conclusion, blaming a bride for being an unreasonable abhorrent bitch is easy. Questioning how she got there, not so much. Is there a bride gene that lingers under the surface when we are born jut waiting to be activated? I have no idea, but I highly doubt it. What is more likely, is there is a cultural seed that is planted early on in life and fed a steady diet of fertilizer, until it finally sprouts unexpectedly when we start wedding planning. As for me, I am going to do my best to keep my head on straight, for the next 375 days of planning. And I am really going to try and enjoy the process. I might have my moments, but I hope I remember what is most important – the life I am about to create, with the love of my life.