My poor brides. I switched computer back on last Thursday and one by one the emails arrived from brides who had just woken up in 2010, panicked to bits that they were now in the year of their wedding, rather than thinking it was a year away.
We made sure that before Christmas that we carried out as much preparation as possible so that they could relax and enjoy the holidays without worrying about the wedding plans. And they did, and we switched off too, but it is amazing what a difference a number makes in the subconscious of a bride to be. 2010 has set off alarm bells all over the place. Once I named the condition, and let them know that all of my 2010 brides had woken up suffering the same symptoms, the light went on again and they started to relax.
I am the greatest list writer in the world, I couldn't live without my lists. I find that things you need to do can go round and round in your head without actually getting anything done if you don't write it down. This is exactly what happens to my brides, and all brides I am sure. I am so bad with lists that I scare my poor husband to death. A few weeks before Christmas between wedding planning and arranging to transport the family to Ireland for two weeks, there was a lot to organise. Add Santa shopping online with delivery to my sisters house in Ireland, there were a few sleepless nights and a bit of panic. I woke up at 5.30 am one morning and decided "no more", I am taking back control. I sat at my laptop and wrote down everything that was flying around my brain. As I wrote I could feel myself starting to relax. When I looked at the list, I realised that I didn't have to do it all myself and started to re-assign tasks to my husband. The list was now two lists and I relaxed some more. Then I broke these down into tasks to be carried out each day, and what was formerly a foggy brain was now a structured time managed to do list. Imagine the shock my husband got when he logged onto his email to find the list of instructions I had emailed him for the next week. He is not a list maker and called me a "scary cow!". Scary or not, lists are my thing and I find that they are a great way for brides to be to keep themselves calm.
This is why we work with an event summary. All of our brides should by now have received a draft of their event summary. This is in a list of all items for their wedding day which generally begins the day before the wedding with the rehearsal. It shows the order of the day, broken down by time of day and what will happen, where they should be, who the supplier is and what the detail is for that particular item. With every new supplier or change that we make along the way, we update the event summary and send a copy to our brides. It helps them to visualise the wedding day from start to finish and it is also a great method of finding out if anything has been overlooked. It might be as simple as a button hole not counted or an incorrect meeting point for guest transport, but when we send the final draft and our couples have approved them, it means that on the wedding day, even if they can't see us, the couple knows where we are and what is being carried out in the various locations.
When a wedding is in another country, the feeling of not being in control is very strong for most couples. We advise that they write a regular list, weekly, fortnightly, depending on how much time they are giving to their wedding plans, and send us regular emails with the questions that are playing on their minds.
I hope that this post will provide enough advise to cure the symptoms of bridal Januaryitis. If in doubt, give me a call.
