Wedding Stress Coaching
2007 Modern Bride Trendsetters and founders of The First Dance, a top premarital counseling and wedding relationship website
Weddings are the most complex event—logistically and interpersonally—that most of us plan in our entire lives. Does any of this sound familiar?
- money is promised and then taken back or given with "strings" attached
- a mother who tries to get her way on everything
- divorced parents who put you in the middle
- a bridesmaid who acts like it’s her wedding
- a groom who doesn’t follow through
- a wedding list that no one can agree on
If you sometimes feel confused about the reactions of parents, siblings, or friends to your wedding planning, you are part of a very big club. Wedding planning may be the most complex interpersonal experience in human life, and yet few of us know where to turn for perspective and sound advice. That’s what wedding stress coaching offers you.
It’s not therapy—you need immediate help for immediate problems, not a big picture look at your whole life.
It’s not logistical help—you have plenty of places to go for advice on menus and music.
Wedding stress coaches are sensible, reliable listeners and guides to help you figure out how to handle your stress from dealing with difficult people—and then to solve the problem. Sure, you can turn to family or friends for support and advice, but sometimes these are the people who are causing you grief! We have creative ways to be in relationship with you.
Why is there so much bad advice out there?
Weddings are an extremely intense environment for families and engaged couples. So many competing notions of etiquette, wedding roles and money come crashing together for the day two families come together to watch a new family be created.
The immediate problems you are facing are in fact part of a larger system. The more perspective you can gain in what is going on the more you will be able to resolve current and future stressors that will come up.
Engagement is the beginning of your marriage and the path can be rough. We look forward to working with you, your spouse-to be, parents, bridal party, or anyone else important in your life.
What about the advice on bridal message boards?
Wedding message boards can be wonderful and they can be shockingly awful. You can ask a simple question and be brutally attacked. You can ask a complex question and get a simplistic answer that doesn't really resonate with your intuition on what you should do.
What about advice from friends or family or my wedding coordinator?
One of the inherent problems with wedding stress is you are likely dealing with not just your own problems, but your problems impact the people in your life. Whether your friends want something that ultimately will help them (either by deciding something they'll like, or just making you resolve a problem so they don't have to keep listening to you complain!) Wedding coordinators try hard, but they can get caught in the middle and have to be very careful since they are hoping to get referrals from you for other weddings. They can't be too controversial and they usually don't have training in dealing with marriage and family therapy.