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...

 

Boy, they really know how to work you, don't they? In my many years as a wedding expert, I've comforted brides whose parents have attempted to guilt them into having the wedding *the parents* want, and not what the bride and groom want. And the tactics can be spine-chilling. One of the worst is when parents say, "Well, you never know how long I'll be alive" or "I might not be here next year." It happens more often than you might expect. When parents show their dark side and zing you with a scary guilt trip, how are you supposed to handle that?

I have some steps for you here...

1. You HAVE to do a little self-assessment to see where your parents have programmed you, which fears they successfully hit. Where else in the past have they guilt-tripped you successfully?

2. Now, you have to journal out how those guilt trips felt to you then, what you did about it, and how long you regretted giving in (could it be that you STILL regret it?). Write out all of the ways these guilt trips have hurt you. I know, it seems disloyal to parents to write about their trickery, but hey...if they're going to manipulate you like this, your faults in writing down your feelings pale in comparison.

3. You have to create new scripts for yourself. The words come before the confidence you'll eventually feel when you get some practice at defusing their threats. When Mom says, 'Hey, I might not be here next year,' it would be far better to laugh and say, "Wow, I just saw that same line delivered by the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding." If you call her on the fact that such a line has been used as 'ridiculous' in a comedy, that could drain the danger from it. Or, say, "I wish you wouldn't say such things."

4. Call your parent on the guilt trip. Just say, "Please don't try to push me into what you want by saying such things. We agreed to (x) when we first started talking about the wedding, and that's what we'd like to do."

Part 2 on Wedding Guilt Trips coming soon.

 

You can spin yourself out of control if you look ahead to all of the tasks on your list, try to multi-task the way you've always been able to with great efficiency [newsflash: your multi-tasking skills are going to be challenged right now!], and think about too many things at once.

So keep an organized To Do list, and while it might help you in the early stages to jump ahead and get some of the later tasks done right now, overall you should limit your focus to just one or two Need to Do items right now. Especially if your wedding is weeks or days away. Stay in this moment, do what's essential now, and know that you can handle every tasks when each one's time comes. You'll feel less pressured, more organized and confident, and you won't push your groom and your bridal party to jump all over the map with you.

Just breathe and take it all one little step at a time. Are you looking ahead at too many things right now? Share your story in the Comments, especially if you try this OTAAT (one thing at a time) process and feel a big difference.

When your wedding day gets closer, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the vast amounts of To-Dos related to the wedding AND all of the work stuff, bills and other business of your regular life. Now here's a little secret that has just done wonders for my own wedding preparations...I created an AFTER THE WEDDING file, a cute little pink folder where I've stashed the e-mail printouts for assignments due in May, invoices and bills, correspondence I have to get to...all of the craziness that I'm going to have to handle when I get home from the honeymoon.

I started to feel a little pressured with all of the papers on my desk, wondering 'How am I going to keep track of all of this?' and just placing each paper in the folder gets them out of my eyeline, safely stored away in an organized file, and off of my current To Do list. I don't have to worry about these things at all right now! The effect was immediate -- there is truth to 'out of sight, out of mind!' So create this new folder for yourself, and you'll feel so much better. You can return to planning in peace!

Here's a mistake a lot of brides make: they want everyone to think they're handling everything just great. They slap on a smile, gush about how fabulously everything is going, how happy they are, and it's all about what they want other people to think. It's OKAY to admit that the wedding has you stressed-out -- it happens to everyone, and none of your friends are buying your super-chipper performance anyway.

So here's how you can return to Planning in Peace: send your friends an e-mail saying, "Hey, I'd love it if you'd send me a little e-mail with something funny, tell me what's happening in your world, and distract me from the moments of stress that pop up now and then. Overall, we're doing great, but I do have my moments. You always make me smile, and I love your stories, so keep 'em coming!" That's a great level of honesty, and it's a great gift to allow your friends to lift you.

You've asked for what you need, and no true friend is going to have a problem with that! Just be sure to add on, "but please, no chain letters right now! I'm too superstitious! ;)"

This one is a book that I wrote, and I recommend it here to help you handle the many stresses thrown upon you by the people *around* you: those meddling parents, difficult bridesmaids, demanding guests, and other people who lose their minds when it comes to your wedding. The Bride's Diplomacy Guide gives you scripts on how to talk to your parents, what to say, what not to say, and how to handle mean-spirited comebacks by others. You'll solve your people problems before they really steal your Peace.

You can never get enough reminders of the simple steps it takes to experience more happiness in your life. Somehow, in the hectic pace of our lives, we forget to appreciate how much we have, the people we love, how good things really are. So pick up my next recommended book Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill, and find out the little shifts in mindset that you can make now, to be happier with what's already going on around you. Isn't it amazing that we *forget* to be happy?! This book has some Buddhist insights, so keep that in mind as you consider this book for your reading shelf. Again, you might find a gem of insight, even if you're not Buddhist.

The second book in my collection of Recommended Reading is one that I'm enjoying right now...with so many thoughts and To-Do's swirling in my head, the title of this one caught me right away: Instant Karma. This is just a collection of quick little acts you can take to get your mind off of the wedding, do something nice for someone else that only takes a moment, correct your own course, and have a little bit of fun. I'm just flipping it open and smiling at the suggestion I land on, and while some of the karma suggestions are confusing (buy a handbag on eBay instead of paying retail?), this is a fun little book to have around. It definitely gets you in the Now.

Today starts a new series of books that I recommend for returning you to Planning in Peace. As with any book, you may find a gem or two that stays with you, or you will be profoundly educated and able to shift yourself away from worrying and stressing about every little thing. These are some of the books that I found helpful as my own wedding approached, and it's my hope that they bring you some relief as well...

Starting with book #1, I'm recommending Five Good Minutes in the Evening, which gives you a bunch of great little ideas for chilling out, connecting with your sweetie, removing the stress of the day, transitioning into rest time, and sleeping better. This is one book in the Five Good Minutes series, which I also recommend. Even with a time crunch, you have 5 minutes to try something new and potentially relaxing, right?

 

You can't control the weather, of course, but many brides and grooms find themselves compulsively checking the Weather.com site to see if it will rain, snow, be cold or be unbearably hot on the wedding day. We all want that perfect day...and the report in that little square, projected as far as 10 days away, can either elate us or send us into a spiral of despair. No one can predict the weather totally accurately, as Mother Nature has a mind of her own.

But what you CAN do is create alternate plans to ensure that your day will be covered and comfortable no matter what. Talk to your site manager about how quickly the outdoor ceremony setup can be moved into the ballroom. At my own wedding site, I know they can magically transport everything indoors in 45 minutes, and then have the ballroom with all fully set tables arranged during the hour of the cocktail party. If we can't take photos outside, I've picked out sites at my home and at the reception hall where the backdrops indoors will be perfect.

When you imagine your plan B fully, and will be happy with whatever may happen that day, you eliminate the stress of watching the storm clouds and clicking on weather sites like your life depends on it.

You have to give a little to get a little. If you're in a situation where an in-law has requested something for the wedding that is slightly different than the way you envisioned it, why not make a little change so that you're both happy? It'll be worth it in the long run if you make every effort to include his side of the family, whenever it's a detail or a plan that doesn't eliminate what you really want. Case in point...my future mother-in-law wants to enact a traditional Polish ritual of presenting us with bread, salt and wine as symbols of good luck. But in their family, this ritual is done when the bride and groom walk into the reception. Looking at the entry celebration, that's when everyone's introduced into the room, and Joe and I have our First Dance. It would wreck the whole entry moment to do the bread, salt and wine thing right away. So, here's what we came up with...we'll be introduced into the room, we'll dance our first dance (to 'At Last' by Etta James), do the parents' dances, and THEN she can do the bread, salt and wine thing before the Best Man's toast instead of after the toasts as we had originally planned. She doesn't have to be nervous about her presentation for long, it's done at the start of the reception, and everyone's happy. It just takes a little bit of shuffling to get an in-law's traditions into your day, and everyone can continue Planning in Peace knowing that their most important rituals are included.

At some point, the fairy tale bubble bursts. You thought this was going to be a time filled with every dream coming true, agreeable parents and loved ones, every plan coming together without a hassle. It was supposed to be all rainbows and rose petals. And then [insert sound of screeching tires] a friend says she can't make it to the wedding, the church won't allow videography (what?!), the tulip crop froze overseas so they won't be available, your hairstylist has another booking that morning and you have to find someone else to do your Up-Do. Every bride faces these unforeseen problems, and every bride is at a crossroads:

Do I let it get to me or not?

Think about the law of averages. You have literally hundreds of elements to your wedding day. It's more realistic that some things will go wrong than that nothing will go wrong. So when your bubble bursts, and you see that you haven't been granted some kind of Cosmic Perfection Blessing, you're now in a GREAT position to work more rationally on your wedding plans. You won't be thrown by the next snafu...and there will be one...you're not operating under an unrealistic mindset that everything should go your way. Some things are just out of your control, so you get to find that solution and move on to the next fun part of your planning.

It's a good thing when the bubble bursts. You're finally a 'real' bride.

Don't make the peace-wrecking mistake that many brides make by assuming that their grooms' delays on working on wedding tasks is disinterest. At any stage during the wedding plans, and especially when the big day is just weeks away, many grooms feel a ton more anxiety than they readily admit. And their way of dealing with it might be to wall off a little bit, take a day or two before making a seating chart with you...because they're nervous.

Grooms tell me, "I didn't want to tell her that I'm nervous because SHE'S nervous right now, and I don't want her to over-react and think that I don't want to get married." Grooms say that their stressed-out brides can get a little creative with their worries, and it's 'safer' to just self-protect by doing tasks when they feel more pulled-together.

So if your groom says, 'not tonight, honey,' just take it at that. Don't read in hidden meanings of castrophes, and don't attempt to 'cure' your groom of his nervous feelings by grilling him to share his thoughts and thinking that you can snap him out of it. We all have to spend some time in the soup of anxiety, and your man is no different. This wedding is greatly on his mind, so allow him the peace of mind in a delay. It's the most loving thing you can do.

Showing appreciation is a top tool for Planning in Peace.

After all, you have a big wedding team of parents, bridal party members, helpful relatives and friends, and vendors who are working hard (and often spending lots of time and money) to create your Dream Day. Some of these people might be spending way more than they can spare just to be there for you. So they deserve a nice Thank You call or e-mail in the middle of the planning stages, just so they know you're grateful for all they're doing.

Problems can brew when these people think you expect them to do all of this for you, that you don't feel the need to say thanks. That's when egos get in the way, feelings get hurt, people assume you're all about Me, Me, Me. After all, when's the last time you called just to say hello? Lately, you've only contacted them when you want something for the wedding. If this is making you cringe, when you think about how long it's been since you called as a friend or a sister, you're not alone! All brides get super-hectic in their lives, and they often forget to connect on a non-bride basis. So make some time tonight to send a little thank you e-mail, or call to see how your friend is doing, how her vacation was, how her kids are doing in school or in softball. With all that you have on your plate, it'll mean the world to your loved ones that you're thinking of them.

When the wedding plans pick up speed, and you're in full-out details mode, you're bound to be a little overwhelmed. It happens to every bride. What happens to many brides -- and I hope to prevent this happening to you -- is an overreaction to parents or friends calling you with reminders to check with the florist about your order, or to call a relative to find out their guest's name for the place cards. Many brides flip out over this, interpreting these calls while in their frazzled state as 'pushing me' or 'insulting my intelligence.' Not so.

In the vast majority of cases, these moms and friends are just trying to help. They know you have a lot on your plate, so their intention is to say it and 'be safe,' trying to rescue you from a forgotten little detail. They're not trying to run your wedding. They just have a wish to help out, and this is their way of doing it.

I've found myself getting tense when my own loved ones call with a reminder to check on something or call someone. But then I remove the drama from it, and realize that they're just trying to help. I do the same thing myself, when I remind my fiance of something he's already taken care of, and I just laugh and say, "I'm just trying to keep on top of everything." I meant no harm or insult, of course. The same applies to your loved ones.

So if you feel your shoulders bunching up when your mom or mom-in-law-to-be calls with a reminder, just exhale and drop the insult you read into it. Several moms have told me that they KNOW the brides are on top of the planning, but they'd rather just say something than risk a disaster on the wedding day because they DIDN'T say something earlier. It would hurt to know they could have been a help earlier on.

What are your stories about people who are calling often to help out? How did you change your mindset about them? How WILL you change your mindset about them now that you've read this?

Even if someone did something incredibly insensitive or selfish regarding your wedding plans or your life right now -- which hurts all the more while you're in this heightened emotional season -- it's really best for YOU if you can find a way to journal out your feelings and find a way to release what they've done. It does you no good, and in fact hurts your health, to hold a grudge. Do you really want to be this stressed out over something you couldn't prevent and can't change?

Forgiving is the best course of action. Now, entire books have been written on the subject of forgiveness, and in all of them, you'll read that forgiveness is not saying what they did is okay or giving them the freedom to kick you in the stomach again. It's a gift to YOURSELF, permission to let go of the hurt, so that you can proceed with caution when dealing with them in the future (such as not confiding in them about the wedding plans).

People do crappy things. It's a fact of life. But the mistake you make is in marinating in your own anger. So write out your thoughts [better to get them out of your head!], avoiding analyzing the person, and replace that anger and hurt with appreciation that you don't have this kind of trouble with more people, or that your spouse-to-be had your back during the altercation. There has to be a positive in this somewhere. Even if it's the freedom from having a hurtful person 'get you' again in the future...then you can move forward into Planning in Peace

Normally, advice about fighting stress includes staying In the Moment, not getting ahead of yourself. But if you have your honeymoon booked now, you can fight off wedding stress moments by visiting the website of your resort and clicking through all the gorgeous photos of the ocean in that bright, clear blue, or the tropical flowers on the grounds, the hammock by the beach, the tropical pool and hot tub. It's perfectly okay to transport yourself into those scenes and imagine walking on that beach or cavorting in that ocean with your sweetie, dining in that amazing restaurant, dancing under the stars in paradise. Sometimes, you need to take a little Bliss Trip to remove yourself from the pressures of now and almost feel that warm sun on your shoulders, plan for those massage treatments that sound so indulgent. You'll be there soon. Honeymoons are also rewards for getting through the hectic wedding planning season!

If you don't have your honeymoon booked, check out the iVillage Weddings honeymoon resort lists to see those photos as well. You might just find the perfect honeymoon spot, like we did! We booked one we found on that list!

Connect with your fiance for a date night right now. When the wedding plans get rolling, it's easy to lose touch with your relationship and take your fiance a little bit for granted [that's what a lot of grooms complain about -- that their brides are 'all about the wedding.'] So prevent any fights or hurt feelings, and recharge your romance, by planning a great date night for the two of you. It can be all-out, such as dinner at your favorite restaurant, with the two of you all dressed up. Or it can be a relaxing date night at home, with order-in food, comfy pajamas and a funny movie. Now would also be a great time for an 'I Love You' card, thanking your groom for being so wonderful and for making you so happy. A little bit of connection now goes a long way for Planning in Peace in the weeks and months to come!

It happens to almost every parent...they start off fine, communicating well with you, listening to your ideas, staying within the boundaries of what they're planning and helping with -- and then they start to slide, Little by little, they get more demanding, a little more entitled to their ideas, a little more difficult. So stop that downward spiral with a gentle reminder of 'I'm really enjoying sharing the planning with you, Mom. I was just looking back through my notes from when we discussed what you'd be working on, and I remembered that the favors are actually his mother's job. I just didn't want you to do any extra work or waste your time researching those." That's all it takes to correct their course. Start off with praise, and then move into that gentle correction where you express that you're just looking out for them.

Remember, parents aren't trying to wreck your day. They just get a little over-excited and go a little too far. When you take a second to rein them in now, you prevent bigtime stress from getting mad at them for over-reaching their boundaries AND mad at yourself for being a doormat and not saying anything.

Are you having trouble returning your parents to normal? Share your stories in the Comments, and I can help!

As the bride, you probably expect that you should have everything in the wedding the way you and the groom have planned it...but little things keep getting thrown out of whack. Like a bridal party member who can't get into town until the wedding day. Or a particular kind of flower not being available for your centerpieces. And at this time, these things become VERY big in your mind. You forget how much you ARE getting your way and focusing on these snafus way too much. I've done it myself. It's just something the mind does on its own...but you can reverse it so that it doesn't overtake your entire wedding planning process.

First, STOP saying you don't get anything you want, stop talking about these problems to everyone, and stop ruminating.

Next, look to the proof that you ARE getting 99% of what you want for the wedding day. Look at the e-mails you've gotten from the bridal party members who will be there on time. Look at the 400 other kinds of flowers you are getting. The guests who ARE coming to the wedding. I've created a special file folder of positive e-mails I've received from my friends, relatives, guests and vendors -- a 'Good News' file if you will, and I read through them whenever someone lets me down or a plan goes awry. I AM getting most of what I've imagined for my wedding day.

I've always said 'the bad stuff is louder.' So don't give it a megaphone. Little things are going to go wrong, and some people are going to let you down, and sometimes those things affect other things in the grand puzzle that is your wedding.

You can save your mindset and return to Planning in Peace when you set yourself up with a positive file that shows you how fortunate you are to have so much going well. And when the groom hits the wall with a let-down of his own, show him your file so that he can adjust to the right perspective as well.

Sometimes you just need a black-and-white (or blue-and-white, as the case may be) reminder that SO much is going your way, and you're very fortunate for all of it.

I always thought that I didn't have time for games, with so much on my plate as my wedding approaches, but let me tell you....spending a few minutes a day playing video games is *not* a time-waster! It's a lot of fun, it exercises your brain (especially if wedding stress has you a little bit mind-fried right now), and it removes you from wedding world. Which is always a good thing for your ultimate sanity.

Right now, I'm playing the Make Me a Supermodel Memory Game for a while every day, and I'm having a blast with it...because I watch the show and know who these people are. [Fun factoid: I was taping a TV show right across the street from where they were taping the very first episode, so I've seen these beautiful people in person!]

Which games are on your home computer? You might not even be aware that you have a collection of free games, or 20 minutes of free trial time with games like Polar Bowling (a polar bear on a raft that you bowl with) or Tropix (a monkey who swings from tree to tree). Sounds ridiculous? Play a few games and see if you're stressed afterwards. And from here, see if your fiance would like you to join him on some of his video games. The couple who plays together stays together. Go get 'em!

While watching a re-run of Project Runway, I heard Tim Gunn explain a wonderful analogy to a contestant who designed a jacket of questionable taste. I'm paraphrasing here: "Have you ever walked into a monkey house and noticed how bad it smells? But after a while, it's not that bad, and after an hour, you don't notice it at all? And then someone else walks into the monkey house and immediately notices how bad it smells? Well you have been living in the monkey house." This is probably the greatest number of times I've ever used the word 'monkey' in a wedding post, but the story is brilliant! You can be in a situation that an outsider senses is bad, but you've gotten so used to it that it doesn't even affect you anymore. With weddings, you might not notice how bossy your sister is, but all of the other bridesmaids are complaining about it. Your groom might think his mother is the sweetest woman in the world, but you've noticed a lot of barbed comments coming from her. So here's an important tip for Planning in Peace: accept that your perceptions may be from 'living in the monkey house' and so might other people's! You might see your sister's bossy behavior as 'the way she is' and your groom might not even register his mom's tendency to treat you like an adversary.

So your first step to returning to peace is this: just solve the problem, without delving into diagnosing or trying to change people. If your bridesmaids say your sister is out of control, that's what they're experiencing. So that's the problem to solve. Remind your sister that your friends don't work for her, so please be a little bit more diplomatic with her requests. If his mom digs the claws into your back, figure out how you can continue to work with her without requiring your groom to change his entire opinion of her. He may be in the monkey house right now, and it would be nothing but frustration to try to get him to see it your way.

Focus on the solution. Can you communicate with his mom via e-mail if phone calls upset you? Can you stop giving your sister small tasks and just handle them yourself? As the bride, it's up to you to discover the workable solution for your experience now, and leave the bigger family issues to the future. 

Have you ever spent an afternoon with a complaining, miserable friend and felt completely drained after you left them? Most of us have had this experience, where you feel like you need to take a shower to get all the misery off of you.

The opposite is true of spending time with positive people. When you're with them, you feel wonderful, laughing and focusing on the positive things that positive people focus on. And when you leave them, you feel energized and light. These are the people you need to seek out and spend time with right now. Who are your most positive people? They might be an acquaintance at work whose desk you can stop by for a chat, or a cousin you haven't talked to in a while, a friend you can call, a neighbor. It doesn't have to be an all-day visit...just a few minute will recharge you.

Just make sure you don't become the complaining, miserable person who drains them! This isn't a time to talk about wedding stress or difficult people. Let the positive person talk, and soak in their great vibes. This is one of the best things you can do right now, no matter how far away from your wedding you are. And when you get within a few weeks, seek out *more* positive people, even if you're chatting with the mail carrier who's always smiling, or talking with someone behind you in line at the post office. Positive people are everywhere.

You probably have a super-detailed checklist of wedding planning tasks in front of you, and you know your schedule of what needs to be done when. But there's an entirely new set of Must Do's that you have to take care of: planning dates with yourself.

By this, I mean you should schedule Well-Being events like going for a massage or manicure, having lunch with a friend, going to a museum by yourself, staying in on a Friday night to watch your favorite television show, whatever is fun and relaxing for you.

I say 'schedule' because when things really get hectic with work and wedding planning, you can easily forget to take care of yourself, recharge, relax and laugh. So make it a Must that you'll plan Only You events from now until the wedding. If you're months away from the big day, you may need one once every month. If you're weeks away, do one or two a week. I'm just 2 months away from my wedding, and I'm booking massages and going to movies on my own. I need it, and I'm refreshed afterwards.

So what's on your Date wishlist? Going to a new restaurant? Having breakfast by the ocean? Going to an art gallery to see a display? Many of the best Dates are FREE, so you don't have to worry about breaking your budget. Just get out of your routine and fulfill the creative side of you.

If you're doing this now, share your best Date ideas in the Comments.

 

Sometimes, escaping your world and your wedding is the perfect way to remove stress and get back to You. A great read with engrossing plots, hysterically funny characters, and just beautiful scenery from another world of nature is the perfect prescription for a Rescue.

I'm 2 months away from my wedding, invitations are out, and things ar