5 Ways to NOT Become a Bridezilla

Every woman before they get engaged swears up and down they will NOT be one of those brides on the reality TV show Bridezillas. No matter what you promise yourself and others, you will become a little bit of a monster during your engagement. Here are five ways to reduce or eliminate your transformation into the dreaded bridezilla.

Relax

This may seem like a no-brainer, or you may want to slap me for telling you, but relaxing is one of the best ways to avoid becoming a bridezilla. You won't remember the little things that weren't perfect. Even if big things get messed up, you will shrug it off after a couple months. Allows yourself to relax. Don't stress about getting every little thing perfectly right. Things will get skewed from your vision no matter what you do.

Don't Micromanage

You have all these people at your disposal - bridesmaids, groomsmen, moms, dads, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more. You may feel the need to micromanage every task you ask them to help with. Sometimes you might rip it away from them because they aren't doing it right. Don't do this. If someone wants to be helpful, assign them something that would really help you out. Check up on it when the due date is approaching, but don't constantly badger and correct them for not doing the task they are graciously helping you with perfectly correct.

Listen to Advice

Everyone, and I mean everyone, will want to give you advice during your wedding planning. This can get old after a while, especially when you think you know what you are doing and don't need any help. In hindsight, I realized these people had first hand experience with their weddings and were giving you an excellent look behind the veil of marriage. Take their advice. When they tell you that won't matter, it won't matter. When they say something is going to be difficult once you're married, it's going to be difficult. Listen to their advice and drink it in.

Make Time for Your Fiance

Ironically, it can be easy to forget why you are stressing yourself out and working your butt off. It is so you and your fiance can celebrate your union with friends and family and kick start the rest of your lives. Make some time for just you and your fiance so you can enjoy your "single" life without all of the pressure marriage brings.

Organize

This is the best way to avoid becoming a bridezilla. When you organize your planning, you will be less stressed and therefore less likely to lash out at other people that makes you the crazy bride stereotype. When you check out How to Create the Ultimate Wedding Planning Binder, you will see how to organize your planning to avoid this stress.

What is your best advice to avoid becoming a bridezilla? OR what is the worst bridezilla story you have experienced? Let me know in the comments!

The Importance of Organization and Release of Print Book!

The whole reason I created this blog and wrote my eBook was to help brides become stress-free and how organization is the best way to do that. To give all the new Christmas brides (and soon to be Valentine's brides!) more awareness on how to be stress-free while planning, I have released my eBook in print format as well!

I felt like releasing the book in the print option would allow more brides to take advantage of my advice, and help it appear more often in Amazon searches.

As part of this signal boost for brides, my eBook is FREE from now until this Thursday, February 6th! Please review my book if you choose to take advantage of this free promotion so more brides can get the help they need!

Even if you don't get my book, I want to talk about how important it is to stay organized when planning your wedding. You may think in the beginning you can keep everything in your head or make little notes in your phone calendar. I guarantee you are going to get lost along the way and end up with those movie-quality wedding castrophies. 

It's like when you get your electric bill in the mail and you put it on the table to pay later since it isn't due for a couple weeks. Then more mail gets piled up and before you know it you have the electric company sending you late fee notices and power shut off warnings. You want to avoid this stress and panic for your wedding by staying organized. 

When you choose to keep all your wedding planning information and decisions in your head, it causes your short term memory to fizzle out. Your short term brain's hard drive is full and all processing programs are going to run slow. You know how you get stressed and irritated when your computer is running slow and not acting right? Your brain does the same, causing you to be stressed and anxious.  

• 48% of people experience a negative impact on their personal and professional lives when they are stressed
• 54% of people fight with people close to them (like your fiance!) when they are stressed
• 26% of people are alienated from friends or family members if they are stressed

When you start organizing all of your wedding thoughts, even tiny things such as ideas for centerpieces, your entire engagement period will be so much more enjoyable. You can avoid the horrible symptoms of stress, including irritability, anger, fatigue, nervousness, lack of energy, and the feeling like you could break down crying any second, when you get on top of your wedding planning organization. 

The Latest Trend: Chalkboard Signs

Every few years a new wedding trend will appear. Sometimes it is just the most popular dress style. Others it is a song that everyone uses for their first dance. For the past couple years, the trend has been DIY, simplistic-yet-chic weddings.

I'm going to attribute this DIY trend to the rise of Pinterest as a major influence in wedding planning. Women can now brainstorm ideas for their wedding before they are ever engaged (another great reason to get my eBook about how to create a wedding planning binder - it's never too early to be prepared!).

I was absolutely a victim of this DIY movement. Most of my decor and other wedding ideas came directly from Pinterest. It was so much cheaper to do things myself than trying to pay for stuff premade. Some things completely backfired, like spending weeks creating monogrammed champagne flutes for the guests to take home. No one ended up taking them, even with my note on the table. Now I use my champagne flutes in place of red Solo cups at all family parties. Other things, like my chalkboard signs, worked out perfectly.

Pinterest is full of pictures for this beautiful, simple-yet-chic chalkboard trend. For years before I got engaged, I pinned these beautiful chalkboard signs as a simple decor option. The problem was you either had to learn excellent calligraphy or hire a professional sign maker to accomplish this look, neither of which I was willing to do.

Then I found this pin that taught me how to do my own chalkboard signs. You buy chalkboards, stencils, chalk, and a chalkboard marker (found at your local arts and crafts store, like Michaels) to create these signs. Sharpen your chalk to a point and use the stencils to trace the letters you want. Fill the blank space with the chalkboard marker and Voila! It looks like you had an expert calligrapher create your decor.

Of course, no DIY thing on Pinterest will ever go perfectly. I couldn't find the chalkboard size I wanted anywhere, so I wandered around Michaels until I came up with a alternative. I bought a four pack of canvas prints, black chalkboard spray paint, cardboard scroll frames, and blue spray paint.

I used the black chalkboard paint on the canvas to create an authentic chalkboad look. I then spray painted the cardboard scrolls to match my wedding color and hot glued it to the canvas. I didn't have the right size pencil sharpener to sharpen my chalk, so I made do and simply used my chalkboard marker over the actual chalk. I luckily found some chalkboard markers that contained all of my wedding colors (blue and fall shades) to make my boards more colorful.

I made a ceremony program sign instead of printing out a bunch of paper programs, an I-Spy camera game that I got off Pinterest in case guests got bored, the website and code to share photos from the wedding, and a fun little "History of Us" sign with significant dates from our time together. All of these ideas I got from Pinterest. I also made some smaller chalkboard signs out of silver serving trays explaining the desserts, guest book, and signature drinks.

I was extremely happy with my signs, but if you want perfection higher a calligrapher. It was trying at times, especially wrestling with my unsharpened chalk, lining up each letter of my stensils, trying to make everything fit, and forcing just a little bit more color out of my markers. As you can see, I used my very best cursive on some parts of the signs because I was fed up with the stencils. Overall, I love my chalkboard effect and would recommend this DIY project to anyone.

From now until Sunday, February 2nd, my eBook "How to Create the Ultimate Wedding Planning Binder" will be available on Amazon Kindle for only 99 cents! Take advantage of this amazing price while you can!

Wedding Day Essentials: The Emergency Kit

When I was writing my wedding planning eBook, I briefly mentioned the emergency kit in chapter ten. It is one of the random miscellaneous things you need to stick in there, but it is also very important. While I didn't use everything I packed in my emergency kit, I was definitely happy that I brought the things I did use. You never know what you are going to need that day.

There are many different emergency kit lists online, but all of them seemed a little incomplete to me. I opened maybe 12 different blogs that had emergency kits listed, trying to find one that had new items for consideration. Each person's emergency kit will be a little different, so I recommend you do some additional research and find blogs that have complete kit lists that fit your needs. I designated the items on my list by bride, groom, and both. Some things I packed in my kit that could be used for both and I kept sending my Maid of Honor down to the boys room to see if they needed anything from the kit.

Bride

Tissues
Hairspray
Lip Gloss
Concealer
Mascara
Powder
Comb
Deodorant
Curling Iron
Bobby Pins
Nail File
Perfume
Baby Wipes
Chalk (to color in any strange stains on your dress)
Contact Solution and Case
Extra Contacts
Scotch Tape
Straws (so your lipstick doesn't get messed up drinking a water bottle)
Hand Gel
Tampons/Pantyliners

Groom

Comb
Deodorant
Lint Roller
Cologne
Inhaler
Hair Gel

Both

Cuticle Scissors
Safety Pins
Sewing Kit
Bandaids
Mints/Gum
Ibuprofen
Allergy Medicine
Tide Stick
Mouthwash
Eye Drops
Phone Charger
Chapstick

I also used Pinterest for research on my emergency kit and other miscellaneous ideas that didn't seem to fit anywhere else in my binder. I found things like the idea to drink champagne and orange sorbet the morning of the wedding instead of the classic mimosa with orange juice. I also found a very helpful blog post that gave a tip to spread baby powder on your thighs before you put the dress on so your legs don't chaff when you inevitably sweat.

I love Pinterest because just typing in "wedding" in the search bar will give you hundreds of pins full of inspiration, advice, and tips you never would have thought of. All of the little tips I collected went into my Gifts and Miscellaneous folder on my binder. To see what else you need for your binder, or how to effectively build one, check out my book on Amazon: "How to Create the Ultimate Wedding Planning Binder - And Other Helpful Wedding Planning Tips"