(3/10) Top 10 things to remember when planning a wedding...the less superficial list.

Three of Ten: Wedding planning can be simple if you know what the skilled planner knows.
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As always, what we write below does not apply to everyone.
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Right now, you may not believe that wedding planning can be simple but it’s true. So is the fact that what’s simple is hard. Wedding planning and any project, no matter its size, is simple if you have the time, experience, support and know what's ahead of you. It’s sometimes hard to accept what you learn as you move along because your assumptions will be tested. If it’s not time, experience, or a fear of the unknown getting in your way, then it’s your feelings about what’s happening, or things entirely separate from the project of wedding planning. If you don’t have the willingness to address all your feelings during this noteworthy time, then you are prone to project your feelings onto other things, such as your wedding planning.
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For some of you more than others, the time of your engagement and wedding planning brings up a ton of feelings. In other words, questions, expectations, fears, baggage from your childhood and your present-day insecurities. All normal stuff that is not all about shooting stars and fairy princesses. All normal stuff. You are not odd or alone in this.
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Take planning one step at a time and don’t fling your attention all over the place. Above all, hire help or enlist a levelheaded friend you trust. If you do hire help and your help has done this over 200 times to great success, trust them.
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Simplify your life a little so you can give yourselves time for all the things that come up this year, so that the actual wedding planning is simpler. If you take time for all your feelings, at the end of the road I promise that you will feel more ready, happy, and carefree on your wedding day.
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Don’t fall down the rabbit hole and have a year that is constantly in manic-mode and reassure yourselves by saying, it’ll all go back to normal once the wedding is over because it won’t, not entirely anyhow. If this describes you month after month after month after month, some other things are going on and after the wedding, when you crash, you will be left with the realities that you avoided beforehand.
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The process will be much simpler for you both if you get specific about the intention of your wedding. Yeah, yes, we know you want to celebrate with your friends and family, and for everyone to have a blast. But truly what is your wedding for and what is it not for? Aim your energy at the positive answer and try and let all the other bullshit fall away. Respect your own wedding - stick to your intentions. You are choosing to not just go to city hall for a reason, right? Well, why?

(2/10) Top 10 things to remember when planning a wedding, 2020

Top ten things to remember when planning a wedding, 2020….the less superficial list.

Two of Ten: Wedding planning takes time.

No shit Sherlock you may be saying to me in your head but it needs to be stressed. It’s not the end of the world, if you don’t have all the time in the world, to devote to your wedding planning. It will all work out in the end. Enlist a friend you trust, that listens well. You will need to talk things out often.

You need to plan ahead. Maybe you are handing off your work load to another associate in the office and you should start this process weeks earlier than you planned so that come the two weeks before your wedding, and the week of your wedding, you can truly separate. Additionally, maybe you are going on your honeymoon directly after your wedding. 

I wish this summed up all of wedding related stress but it does come close. Most don’t realize how much time it will take, nor how much time they will want to take when they become inspired. 

It’ll also take more time if you are good at handling detail and if you don’t have the help of a planner. 

Beating yourself up about not having enough time doesn’t help either. This is not the one day in your life that will matter. Have some perspective for yourself. If you are type A you don’t need anymore added pressure. Pressure is already there coursing through your veins when your morning alarm goes off. I know, I’m a wedding planning, I am type A!

With professionals on your side you don’t waste time staring too much at social media, or doing endless research we’ve already done ten times over, or putting any other cart before its horse. 

Perhaps give yourself your own boundaries by focusing on the wedding only at a certain time or on certain days rather than keeping a zillion windows open when you are at work. Let’s not get you fired while you’re engaged. A joke but I know its happened. 

(1/10) Top 10 things to remember when planning a wedding, 2020

Top ten things to remember when planning a wedding…the less superficial list.

If marriage was easy it wouldn’t be so meaningful and weddings so beautiful.

ONE of TEN: Wedding planning will be stressful and complicated because people are involved. 

You may want to pick and choose which people you involve in what pieces of planning. You can tell them only so many cooks are needed in the kitchen for each course. 

You do not need to answer the myriad of questions that others you. Just politely tell them that you have it all under control and you will fill them in, in due time. 

Your colors are none of their business and design typically does’t start with color anyhow. 

For a good portion of you, wedding planning will reveal unhealthy boundaries that you have been putting up with, only thing is now the topic of discussion is as close to your heart as possible. Know what you need and communicate it clearly. Stand by your plans for mental well being, always. 

What if this project is a tool to reveal all that you need to learn to deal with, so that you can both have a wonderful life together? For some more than others, this is a period of great transition. 

Maybe your families are very different. Maybe they don’t know each other well yet. Maybe they don’t even like each other. Maybe you are from two families with different religious beliefs, even different holidays. You spend money differently, your childhood homes looked vastly different. 

This is all just part of life and it isn’t going anywhere after the wedding. You can derive so much good stuff from planning your wedding. Instead of resisting, sit down together and identify what is really going on and how you both feel about it, and how you are going to deal with it as a unit now and in the future. 

Remember you both are your immediate-immediate family now. 

Maybe you are doing yourselves good to seek help? And to that I say, people who get help are people who are continually learning…they are the winners, they are the ones that don’t break.

If marriage was easy it wouldn’t be so meaningful and weddings so beautiful. 

Some of you may not like what I write above. That is okay. Not everything above applies to everyone and by writing what’s above I am surely not stating that I know it all. Don’t be naive, old fashioned, simplistic and judgmental - those that divorce are not irresponsible or bad people. You and I both know that upwards of around fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Marriage is not a mistake if it does. And divorce is not a mistake. I know I am not suppose to ever use the D word. I am a wedding planner. I am suppose to be all sunbeams, superficial fairy dust and overly girly. Eye roll. We all have to go where we have to go, to learn what we need to learn, however challenging. Life is one continuous experience and we are all headed to the same place. Certainly though, we’d all love to learn a bit faster, and spend less time struggling and more time loving.

MY YEAR END TOP 10 THINGS TO REMEMBER - 2020

The last year has been such a gift and I am grateful that I have been in healthy position in all senses of the word. I know that all the people reading this cannot say the same, especially those in the event industry. Oh there were blows, believe me, but perspective was sustained and silver linings appreciated. Without discrediting the hardships that others have endured in 2020, I do know whatever happens to you happens for you. This is my saying of sayings 24/7 and has been for years. You have to turn your circumstances on their head, facing you, like a box of paints standing still, waiting for you to either be reactive or create. You may have to feel a ton of shit but hard feelings don’t hurt you, they only make you stronger - it’s not feeling them, holding them, hiding that will.

Some years I post my top ten things to remember and sometimes I keep them to myself. Going all in for 2020-2021. I am in love with life and all it has to offer and all I have to offer it in return. Maybe the snow is making me glow this week - I am SO pumped.

Check back before the thirty-first, as this blog is one of two installments for New Year’s End. In the next I will tweak this life hack list and deliver you some of my subjective wedding hack lessons.

1. Whatever happens to you, happens for you.

2. Where your attention goes, energy flows, and that energy compounds and so becomes your life. Another nice way of saying, ‘the entirety of your experience will be determined by the quality of your mind’. (I meditate daily. I don’t know how I ever managed without!)

3. It’s wise to drop all stories so that you can first see things as they are. First you have to realize where you are holding stories, bringing them into rooms with yourself and other people. How are you perhaps enabling another person’s story because it serves your own story? Then when you drop them all, you realize just how much ‘okay’, ‘validation’ and ‘enough’ there truly is for everyone. 

4. There are no problems as long as there are solutions. The only problem is that you have yet to find your way to courage. 

5. Boundaries isn’t a bad word and they serves the other people as well. 

6. Long term goals are more generous than short term goals. One day it will be okay if you piss people off in the short term because you are going to create, achieve or do something that will benefit them more tomorrow. 

7. Being interested is a lot more loving, trustworthy, genuine and productive than trying to be interesting. 

8. Time and health are all we have. That is a sobering, scary and strengthening one to digest fully and reread daily on a sticky note posted to your front door…not that you should be going anywhere in 2020 except for a good long walk but you know what I mean. 

9. Show up to connect, rather than control or coerces to power.  How can you know what you are going to offer next when you have not digested what the other person has sent your way? Living generously and well is just like the craft of acting, living right in the moment. Acting powerful or being defensive is not going to protect you from anything but move you farther from you goal. The only protection from anything you will ever have is your ability to face things head on, without defense, soft. 

10. Resistance is the only pain…Another common way of saying the same thing as above. So true. And there is no BUT, only AND. 

As always, ignore my dyslexic grammar. I think pace and personality are more important anyway.

I love and forgive you 2020 just don’t come back here again.

XO

Ashley D.