You’re a bride…or a groom. It’s your big day, tensions are high, nerves are raw and so many people are hustling and bustling with excitement. You arrive at your wedding venue to start getting ready, and you peek at the reception space, discovering that the napkin color isn’t quite what you expected. At the same time, one of the bridesmaids realizes she forgot to bring the jewelry everyone planned to wear and your mother is frazzled due to hosting family from out of town. You may or may not have a coordinator, but either way, a bit of panic falls over you. “What other unexpected mishaps or craziness might happen today?!”, you ask yourself. From this point on, all you can think about is what’s gone wrong, what details someone missed, and if your coordinator has taken care of finding a solution (or worse off, your family has to deal with it and is stressed as well!). You snip at your family and friends, you burst into tears, or you’re unhappy the rest of the day because what you’ve dreamed of for so long somehow just doesn’t seem perfect.

Unfortunately, this is often the mindset of the modern day bride or groom as their wedding day ensues.

For months, or even years, many couples dream of their “perfect” wedding planning journey and carry some form of expectation into the celebration day whether they mean to or not. While the dreaming and hopefulness of what this will be isn’t necessarily wrong, if it is taken to an imbalanced level or is misunderstood from the beginning, it can turn into a mindset that can be detrimental to you or your family’s enjoyment of the entire thing.

I wish I would have written this blog a while ago to share with all the sweet couples that had good intentions going into planning the wedding and experiencing that day…

We don’t know what we don’t know unless someone brings it to our attention.

We’ve been through enough planning and wedding weekends to say one thing for certain: To most fully enjoy this process and day from beginning to end, you must recognize that inevitably some things WILL go wrong.

As a planner, this sort of makes me cringe, but as a human, I know that it is absolutely the truth. Yes, having a planner, designer, coordinator, and other amazing professionals helping bring your wedding day together will keep the likeliness of things going wrong to a minimum. I, too, want everything to go as planned and will do my best to make it so, but because we are all human, miscommunication happens and sometimes unexpected things might take place no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

But the question is: Is it really worth letting any of it ruin my entire day? — The only ONE that I might get to experience during my entire life?

NO. Trust me, it’s not.

It’s not worth missing out on all the beautiful moments that do go right…the moments you have with your friends and family…and most importantly, the moments you have with the one you love and will marry on this day – no matter what goes “wrong”.

Not that the details don’t matter or what you’ve always dreamed of isn’t important. It is! And it may hurt or be disappointing if something doesn’t go quite as you had expected. But from day one in the planning process, I encourage you – train yourself to keep low expectations and take the mishaps in stride. This process is unique to you and your fiance. There are so many people and factors involved, and that means things naturally may not always go like you think they will. That might be a good thing if we choose to see it that way.

So as you walk forward in this season, I encourage you to open your hands wide as best you can to the unexpected, the changed plans, and the mistakes. And may they become less of a distraction and more of an opportunity to grow and embrace these unique moments with your significant other. Either way, it will be a perfect day simply because you get to celebrate a new season with each other and those you love.