Planning in Peace: Sharon Naylor's blog to being a harmonious bride at iVillage.com

Yesterday, I posted about my Three Minute Solution on doing your nails as a way to get immediate results and immediate satisfaction with a bit of pampering. Today's Three-Minute Solution focuses on your feet. Most brides think only about the shoes they'll be wearing on the wedding day, saying, "Oh, my shoes are closed-toe. I don't have to worry about what my feet look like." Au contraire! Your feet are very important! Here's why:

* Photographers now focus on the shoes! They love to take hi-def digital images of you slipping your feet into your beautiful, designer shoes...and you don't want your feet to be dry and scaly in those shots!

* You might take your shoes off during the reception, so it's best to have presentable feet that day. People notice the details.

* Your feet will be almost constantly in view on the honeymoon, so consider them as important as your hands or your smile.

I love Burt's Bees honey coconut foot cream. Every night, just slather the beautiful-smelling thick honey cream onto your feet and slip on cotton socks for a few hours or overnight. You'll get baby-smooth heels and toes without having to risk any infections or soreness from a pedicure razor-treatment. Results come quickly from this Three-Minute solution, and you'll feel relaxed and well-pampered by making this part of your evening ritual. Even better: your fiance can give you a foot rub with it. Ahhhh!

A wedding vendor mentioned this one to me: "If you're keeping up with your manicures, you're doing okay." She said she can always tell the frazzled brides because they come into her office with chipped nail polish and bitten-down nails. Now, you don't have to go for professional manicures. You can sit down with the Revlon nail polishes you have in your medicine cabinet and paint your nails and toenails during American Idol. The key is to give yourself a little treat, embark upon a three-minute task that delivers immediate results, and feel that sense of self-love that you made yourself a priority. Plus, don't your toenails look pretty with that bright, vibrant red polish? It's a three-minute gift you give to yourself.

During your hectic wedding-planning season where your wedding is actually another full-time job to add to your already packed schedule, the best thing you can do is take a good hard look at how you manage your daily tasks, how you scramble to get things done on a Sunday night, how you're running from one half-done task to another, and admit to yourself: "There has to be a better way!"

During our 11 months of wedding-planning, I found myself exhausted by busy days of juggling too many tasks followed by days where I would crash on the couch to watch a cheesy movie in the middle of the day. My brain had just had too much. And that was not stress-free living.

So here's what I suggest: for the remainder of your wedding-planning season, re-organize your weekly tasks. Monday is work tasks, Tuesday morning is returning calls to wedding vendors, Tuesday night is returning calls and e-mails to friends (being a good friend yourself and not getting lost in the role of Bride), Wednesday evening is a rest night or date night, Thursday night is wedding tasks, Friday night is date night, Saturday morning is brunch with your fiance followed by two hours of wedding tasks, and Sunday is laundry day and housecleaning. That's just my own example, and it worked fine. I no longer had to stress about household tasks because I knew I could hold that off until Sunday. Tuesday as vendor contact day gave me the freedom to put those jobs out of my mind for the rest of the week.

Try it for yourself this week. Monday is always a good time to start. How can you compartmentalize your life so that you're not juggling tons of plates all the time?

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

It's going to take some adjusting, but you'll soon feel the relief of "I don't have to get to that until Tuesday." Take it from me: this plan works.

Here's a little secret that can help take away some of your wedding stress: on the wedding day, you'll notice the things that go wrong (like someone arrives under-dressed for the formality, or the flowergirl pitches the fit you worried about) but it won't throw you. SO much great stuff will be occurring all around you, so many compliments from your guests, seeing the details of your cake for the first time, seeing your guests dancing and having fun, that the problems you fretted over won't make a dent in your happiness.

Even if your outdoor wedding gets rained out and you have to move indoors, you'll find -- as most brides and grooms do -- that the Plan B brings about very special elements that often turn out better than what you planned.

I know these insights won't take away all of your stress right now, but just be open to the idea that what will go wrong won't have any power to wreck your day.

It's true -- even as a wedding expert with tons of experience in planning and an arsenal of de-stressing tips, I couldn't help but worry about some elements of our wedding day [which was gorgeous, on a beautiful spring day in April]. Even when I was pulled together, I was getting worried calls from family and friends, and my groom had his moments of "Let's just elope!" I did as well. On some days, all I wanted was just to BE married to Joe and skip all the chaos that no one -- no one -- can ever fully eliminate. There are just too many facets to a wedding to ensure a completely stress-free wedding planning experience. The best you can do is handle the stress as it occurs, use the tips here in my blog to help yourself and others through the season of chaos, and remember to enjoy.

Which we did.

But I can report that I worried about some things for nothing. The things I worried about never came to pass, and the things we didn't think to worry about did happen (a crasher, missed photo opportunities, the kids stealing all the tabletop cameras and snapping 300 photos of themselves -- which actually turned out to be a good thing...we have lots of pix to share with their parents!). We can laugh off the snafus, and we laughed them off during the wedding day too, because we weren't going to let anything or anyone steal our joy. That's the best wedding gift you can get: your own ability to experience every moment of happiness on your own wedding day.

Just shrug off what goes wrong, grab your new spouse, and get out on the dance floor. The day goes by so quickly...