i don't understand why people think planning a wedding is stressful.

First off, a wedding can test the couple's relationship. For example, he wants a big wedding with 300 of his friends, while she'd prefer an elopement. They may have to make a lot more compromises than come up in day to day life.

Often, the people stress is family members or friends. For example, each of the divorced parents says, "I won't come if the other parent is there." You can love your parents, and still be stressed out by this sort of thing.

Time stress? Choosing another date doesn't always work. You may want to be starting a family in the near future, for example, and want to be married before then.

Plus, it's a big party. People stress out over parties--wanting to make sure the food will be good, the alcohol will be plentiful, the decorations will be nice, etc. Why would you expect them to stress less over a wedding?

I've found most of the wedding planning relatively stress free. We also have a relatively short engagement ( 8 months). Very fortunate to not have the money stress. We are having a modern, yet fun wedding. The focus will be our fun loving selves, good food, and flowing drinks.

The only "stress" I have is some family members not being able to attend. We decided no kids at the wedding except for FH's nephew who will be in the wedding. If I invited all my cousins' kids ( 2nd cousins), we would have over 35 kids.

View Quoted Comment I see. I, myself, don't see any of those things as something to stress over. Like I said, I may very well be the minority.

View Quoted Comment That's a lot of kids.

View Quoted Comment You're telling me! I have 25 first cousins between both sides, and they all have kids!!

Wow! Being older than most people when they get married, most of our friends have older kids who have no desire to go to their parent's friends' wedding. Works for us.

Check back in in a year and a half and let us know if you still feel the same way. I thought wedding planning would be easy. I am a planner by nature, and I am not the type who had a “perfect wedding” idea in my head from an early age. I just wanted to plan a simple celebration with our close family and friends.

But then life happens. My fiancé’s giant extended family happened, leading to a ton of work narrowing down the guest list and calls from his mom to add more people. And then I didn’t invite the right people to the shower so that caused drama. And there are a million choices for everything, and so many things online now that you can never really be sure you chose the right one.

All in all, it is just a big event to plan. There are a lot of people with different opinions and a lot of things that need to happen. Even if you’re not obsessed with getting every little detail right, it is a lot to coordinate to just have everything happen. This has not been a fun process for me, and I frankly can’t wait for the day to be here and behind me so we can go on our honeymoon and live the rest of our lives together.

View Quoted Comment This is my second marriage. I already planned a much bigger wedding with no stress. I don't see how this smaller, less formal one will be any different.

For me it wasn’t specifically the wedding that was stressful. I didn’t care about centerpieces or colors and I hired a wedding planner to make most of those decisions. Family dynamics and learning to set boundaries was incredibly stressful. My now husband and I learned a lot through it though and it made us stronger in the end. But there were a lot of tears last year!

Money is a stressor and making sure everything is done too. It's not cut and dry when trying to get what you want on a smaller budget and not feel disappointment or know you'll regret if you don't have xyz.

There are appointments to schedule and it can be hard to work them out.

Compromise is key with your partner but isn't always easy. Two people can have two totally different visions or what they are or are not willing to do. Hello relationship stress. We personally had stress over last name change. It was resolved but took weeks of quiet uncertainty and some sadness.

There are many components to planning a wedding that can be emotionally, financially, and physically demanding. And other life crap happens along the way because time stops for no one.

View Quoted Comment Families can be stressful without planning. I'm thinking we're lucking out that ours likely won't come even if invited. We're not close with either of our actual families, so it's not a huge deal to us.

Agree with everyone else plus not everyone is the same!! I have an anxiety disorder so someone like me might have a more rough time than someone who doesn't. Also money and family issues can cause alot of stress just because you don't have any issues with planning doesn't mean others don't!!

People don’t purposely plan things in a stressful way.
I have been stressed for many reasons. I am a people pleaser and I don’t like to be yelled at or people to be upset with me. So having people hate the way I do things really upsets me. It doesn’t matter if it’s my wedding, people still have opinions and they have all voiced them to me loudly. Also some people have family paying for the wedding so then the family uses the “well I’m paying for it” card so then they don’t feel like it’s their wedding.
I have had stress of my own family may not be able to make it to my wedding after saying they would be there. My fiancé travels for work and so it’s hard for us to make decisions together.
Not everyone can push out as they may have family they really want there that is sick (I have had this in my family). Or they may have put a down payment and then lost a job and now money is tight but they don’t want to lose out on what they’ve put down.
The people they may not like maybe their own family and they may show up anyways. Or the family member paying for the wedding may say they have to come. I have a bad relationship with my ex-step dad. He now knows where my wedding is and has threatened to show up. That’s stressful.
I am so happy that you don’t feel stress, but others do and it’s not always as simple as do this or don’t do this.

Not to mention I work nightshift and have endometriosis so you also have to think about the persons medical situation life sometimes gets in the way and causes stress

I’m with you. I’m actually really enjoying the planning and am looking forward to helping my sister who will be getting married in 2021. We also have a 2 year engagement to help with the financials, and I’ve always been good at telling other people “no”. Luckily, neither my family nor my fiancé’s family are too opinionated, so that definitely helps.

Were doing many of the things you said as well, however, our biggest stressor has been time. We got engaged in December, he wanted to get married in April, But I was able to talk him into putting it off until October so I would have more time to plan. We both make good money but neither of us have had an extra 10k sitting around ready for the wedding, so, its just been stressful with the time constraints.
I also would have liked to be married already, but knew I couldn't plan the whole wedding in just 5 months.

I’m on my phone so I can’t edit, but I’ll also say that I’m not one to stress much in my day to day life either. I’ll handle what needs to be handled, but I try not to worry about much because it won’t do anything to help the situation. I think having a solution based mindset helps when things don’t go as planned.

I agree with this post 100% Your wedding, your rules, stay in your lane and dont be in a hurry to pull it altogether especially if money is an issue.

I’m with you on this! We scheduled out a little over a year to give us adequate time and funds to plan the wedding and honeymoon we wanted. I have thoroughly enjoyed the wedding process. Has there been a little bit of stress sure but it didn’t make anything crazy. Overall it’s something I enjoy doing. Minority for sure.

I have a little less than a year for my wedding and started planning last October. I am planning little by little every week and every month. To me, so far, wedding planning hasn't been very stressful since I am choosing not to let anything bother me super badly. I am a patient person overall so I can wait to see if this goes on sale or I can give myself time to decide on overall looks carefully and at my own pace.