Getting ready the morning of your wedding is supposed to be fun, but all too often, stress overwhelms your best-laid plans.
There’s so much that goes into getting ready and there’s a lot pressure for everything to go just right. The pressure is compounded because you have high expectations for the day, which means even little disappointments can feel like catastrophes.
We’ve all seen brides in tears, overwhelmed by the mounting pressures that are on her shoulders, and that is the last tone you want to set on your wedding day.
No matter your budget or your time frame, whether you have a wedding planner plus hair and makeup team, or are opting to do it all yourself, you can have a beautiful and blissful wedding morning.
Here are our tips and tricks to ensure the best start to your wedding day!
1. The Night Before:
Get as much sleep as you can the night before. There’s no magic number. Don’t stress if you planned for eight hours, and are still lying in bed wide-awake half an hour past your allotted time.
Family will be in town. Friends who have traveled long distance to your wedding will probably want to start partying as soon as they land. You’ll feel pulled to be a good host and make their journey worth it. So be accommodating to a point, but then take yourself off, immerse yourself in something that helps you wind down, and go to bed feeling good about your choice, instead of guilty for all the things you aren’t doing.
A warm bath, a good book, some nighttime tea and an aromatherapy humidifier will all go a long way to helping you relax. A humidifier will also help keep even a tired voice healthy and strong for those I Do’s.
If you are too excited to sleep, consider a natural sleep aid like melatonin. Most of all don’t worry.
Relaxation of any form will serve you well the next day. So go for quality sleep even if quantity isn’t in the picture.
2. Proof your “Getting Ready” location.
You’ll want to be the first to arrive wherever it is that you and your bridesmaids plan to get ready.
This will give you a chance to take charge of the room before anyone else comes and claims necessary spaces.
The first thing you should do when you get there is take your dress and all your bridal accessories out of their bags. Hang them somewhere very safe… away from any potential makeup station.
Your dress’s material should breath, and hanging it will allow creases to fall out.
It will also make your photographer’s job that much easier if all the things she’ll want to photograph are preset in a pretty, out of the way location.
Now that you have an area cordoned off for your dress, open all the blinds and see where the most natural light is. Likely, that is where you’ll want to do your makeup.
Makeup that looks good in natural light will look good in any light. You’re the bride. You get to snag the brightest and most truthful light.
3. Have a playlist ready.
This is definitely something to have made in advance. It’s a great way to set the mood for the morning (which takes the pressure off of you having to set it.)
Go for songs that are fun, but be sure to put some relaxing melodies in the mix as well. Depending on the size of your bridal party, there may be plenty of energy and even drama in the room. Having a few tunes that will calm everyone’s jitters is never a bad thing.
Be sure to avoid any songs liable to make you cry, even if they’re happy tears!
Your makeup artist will thank you…
4. Eat Something!
Don’t be one of those brides who feels faint at the Alter. That is just silly.
There are too many things you can’t control, like the temperature of the venue and how warm or cold it might feel in your dress. You’re bound to be nervous and your adrenaline will be pumping.
A good, healthy meal will give you the stamina to be present and enjoy these moments. Skipping breakfast may leave you shaking when you’re trying to exchange rings.
5. Lean on your maid of honor.
By the morning of the wedding, your planning should be done. If you have a team of professionals getting your bridesmaids ready, give your maid of honor the schedule for who is getting what, when, and ask her to corral the others.
Similarly, if you have vendors who need to be paid day of, give a trusted bridesmaid labeled envelopes with cash or checks inside and have her distribute the payments to the vendors.
These are the kinds of details that don’t benefit from having you do them. Instead, taking on too many small things yourself will add up to unnecessary stress, and precious minutes lost on your special morning. Your bridesmaids will be only too happy to be able to do some jobs for you.
You’ve eaten. Your gown and accessories are hanging safe and sound out of the way. Your music is playing, and your maid of honor is behaving as den mother, making sure all your other bridesmaids are on point.
6. The only thing left to do is pop the champagne!
Pour glasses on the low side. You don’t want spills, nor do you want the bubbles going to yours or your bridesmaids’ heads.
Then have a seat in whatever comfy, getting ready clothes you’ve chosen.
Enjoy getting your hair and makeup done, or, if you are doing it yourself, savor these few solitary moments in what is bound to be a packed day.
Most of all, remember that it won’t be perfect. There’s no such thing. The key to a blissful bridal morning is to enjoy what is, not what is missing, or what you’d like to be different.
Someone’s hair will take longer than expected. Someone will get deodorant on her bridesmaid gown. Someone will be under the weather, or irritatingly loud, or overly emotional. So most of all, remember that none of that matters.
That’s the advice my maid of honor, already married many years, gave me on my big day. It was the perfect perspective to help me keep breathing and weather the unforeseeable stresses, because there will be some.
Know that going in. Know that even brides who are consummate planners can’t plan for everything.
Every wedding is its own unique chemistry of personalities and demands. No one has ever done your wedding before, and no one will do one just like yours again.
So the morning won’t be perfect. But it will be yours. And that is cause for celebration. Enjoy it!