Butterflies charging about your belly, feelings of faintness, a hint of nausea, sweaty palms and a lingering 'full of fear' factor are all on your most wanted list when it come to your big day, whatever kind of day that may be, right?!...
WRONG! Whatever the occasion; part of our service is to ensure that you go into your special event feeling great, enjoying it from the off, these things (may) only happen once and we want you to remember it for all the right reasons and not all the wrong feelings. With this in mind we thought we’d offer up a few hints and tips to help you to keep your zen;
1. Outsource...EVERYTHING!!
Take the finding, booking, gathering and displaying out of your hands and place it in the palms of a professional; something that takes you a week (or two) will take a wedding planner a couple of days, they won’t be fitting it in around another full time job, school runs, school plays and all that other ‘stuff’, they’ll have the best contacts and be able to negotiate the best prices.
2. Reduce your rush.
When it comes to locking in your itinerary for the main event; be generous!! Give yourself and others a little longer than expected, room for error, for spills to be cleaned, for traffic to be bad and, most importantly; to enjoy the moment.
3. Self-care for sanity.
In the week before your event we highly recommend clearing your diary as much as possible and scheduling some much needed down time. Take an extra yoga class that week, have a massage or soak in the bath with your favourite book, it doesn’t matter what your ‘thing’ is, it just needs to happen. Going into your special day feeling alive, well rested and full of energy is so important when it comes to ensuring that you avoid those negative feelings. This is so often overlooked! When in the planning stages this should take as much priority as the Prosecco count.
4. Breathe and stay in the present.
Avoid letting those panic inducing pondering’s take a hold. We highly recommend a couple of nifty ‘I’m not letting this get to me now’ tactics; have a designated safe place and a note book and pen to hand. Your safe place can be indoors or outside, it’s just a little bit of calm away from the hustle and bustle of your gathering, a place for you to remember how special it is to be surrounded by all of your nearest and dearest, how everything really is ok and that this moment is to be enjoyed. It can also help to quickly write down your worries and concerns, look back over them and then laugh out loud when you realise that they really aren’t worth your attention or any additional wrinkles; seeing our snowballing thoughts out loud is a great way to rationalise with them.
5. Let go of perfection.
You’re never going to please everyone all of the time and neither should you want to, life likes to throw curveballs at us and have some faith that everyone will be having such a good time they won’t notice the minor mishaps that you do. Before the big day accept that you’ve done all that you can, people are there to celebrate not criticise and should anything not appear as you’d imagined you can always get your planner to sort it (because you did read tip number 1 right?...).
We hope that this post helps just a little and we’d love to hear any additional ideas you have around how to stay calm in different situations so please do comment with them below.