Stress Relief - Tips From the Bride

We thought that this little guy's face captured what we
were feeling inside perfectly

A Wedding is a stressful event – a happy one to be sure, but stressful nonetheless. As the Engagement wears on, it becomes ever more difficult to separate the good stress from the bad stress. Finally, it’s all just one big mass of stressiness that can really wear you down if you let it.

Below is a list of things I did and things I wish I had done to keep myself sane as The Day got closer.

• Take a day off every once in a while. It becomes harder and harder to not think about your wedding, especially in the last three to four months, but that’s when it becomes crucial. If you don’t pace yourself, you can become overwhelmed and burn out. So, take a day off. Go out with the Dear Fiancé and do something fun and completely non-wedding related. In my case, I collapsed in the Now-Beloved Husband’s comfiest chair and we played video games at his house for a day. But remember, when I say “a day”, I mean a single day. Putting things off for a week will only stress you out more. In this case, Procrastination is not your friend.

• Clean your room. This is one of the ones I wish I’d done. Being a full-time student who worked as a housekeeper three days a week and was in class the rest of the time, I didn’t have much time to pick up my room (not that I would have anyways). The result was a mass of clutter so huge that I could barely see the carpet. Every morning, I would shovel the pile onto my bed so that I could walk to and fro and every night I would shove it back onto the floor so I could sleep. Needless to say, I hated going into my room because it was in desperate need of cleaning and that was just one more thing on my plate. Your room should be your haven. It’s your place to relax and unwind – so keep it as inviting as possible.

• Chocolate. Need I say more?

• Exercise. If you’re not already, start. I don’t mean some punishing work-out designed to get you into the best shape of your life, but rather one that works up enough of a sweat that you feel tired afterwards (that good kind of tired that causes you to sink onto the couch with a sigh and a smile, not the painful tired that leads to stiff muscles the next day). For my part, I did a few push-ups and a couple rounds of sit-ups in my room, followed by some Pilates/Yoga stretches. It was enough to get my mind off The Wedding and that I felt good afterwards.

• Find someone to talk (vent) to. Preferably outside the principal wedding players. Having a completely unconnected confidant allows for a more rational response to rants and prevents building conflict among the people working together to create The Day. The last thing you want is to badmouth a bridesmaid or your mother or an in-law or whomever to someone they have to work with in the future. That just creates more stress as you wonder if you’ll end up playing referee. Even if that never happens, you’ll just feel guilty about it and guilt builds stress.

• A good cry works wonders. I was trying so hard not to be that stereotypical, melodramatic bride that I didn’t really let myself express how sad or upset certain occurrences made me. The end result of that was a brief, but intense, breakdown into tears one evening. The catalyst was relatively small, so I ended up feeling pretty stupid about crying over it, but I did learn that crying does help. So I would say, if you feel the need, go ahead and cry, just do it relatively privately. Go into that nice, clean room, grab a stuffed animal, chocolate, or whatever floats your boat, and have a nice sniffle. You’ll feel better and be able to concentrate on things again.

• Sleep. This is especially important in the last months. Yes, there is a lot to do, and yes, time is rapidly running out. But… staying up til 2am to get a chore done just leaves you tired and drained the next day and, thus, makes you less productive, which means you need to stay up til 2am again the next night to finish a project, and on and on it goes. Before you know it, your sleep cycle is whacked and you just feel drained and grumpy all the time. Not productive. So, if you can do it at 2am, you can do it just as easily at 10 am the next day. You’ll feel more rested and it will probably turn out better. Remember, sleep is not optional.

So there we are. These won’t eliminate stress, but they will help manage it.