Budget For Stress Relief
No matter how much you plan and prep, the last few weeks before your wedding are going to be a stressful time. You have to hound the RSVP stragglers, confront the dizzying logic puzzle of the seating chart, brace yourself for final-balance payments, all while surfing epic waves of emotion. Stress is inevitable. So you need to budget time and money for stress relief. Here’s my chillaxation game plan:
YOGA
[Photo from lululemon's Flickr photostream]
When a Groupon for two months of Bikram yoga popped up two months before my wedding, I felt like I’d won the stress-relief lottery. Yoga gets hyped to a preposterous degree as a the ticket to a healthy body, a peaceful mind, and a rockin’ bod. I’ll be honest: I’m not a True Believer. I have to suppress chuckles when the instructor tells me that the Cantankerous Goose posture or whatever will balance my endocrine system. That said? I can’t deny that yoga makes me feel better. And from a time-management perspective, you can’t beat the efficiency of combining exercise and meditation.
Now, let’s face it, yoga is pretty bougie and class prices reflect that. The $40 I spent on my two-month pass felt like a lot of money to me, and that was allegedly an 87% discount (I just wasted a few minutes staring at my studio’s complicated price schedule trying to suss out that math, but then I realized I should be reserving all math brain energy to sort out why we have eight more guests accounted for than meals in our wedding spreadsheet). But if you can find a deal or a good donation-based studio, or even if you are able to set aside some money for a few full-price classes, do it. For one thing: having an instructor correct you and suggest modifications is incredibly valuable. Secondly, there really is something extra special about hot yoga. Sweating buckets recharges your body’s batteries for some reason. And maybe your air-conditioner-free apartment feels like a hot yoga studio, but the conditions aren’t optimized the way they would be at a class. Finally? Laughter is a great stress relief too, and at any yoga studio you will hear some hilariously pretentious gems about energy and flushing out toxins and such nonsense.
Don’t fret if you can’t afford that, though. All you really need is a mat (I stubbornly attempted to practice yoga on my carpet for months before discovering that yoga mats stop you from slipping. Yoga is way more fun when you don’t land on your butt every few minutes) and an internet connection. YouTube “yoga” and you’ll find an embarrassment of educational riches.
MASSAGE
I know it sounds like I’m drinking the yoga-freak Kool Aid (which I’m guessing is coconut water), but stress has a way of collecting in your muscles. Getting a massage is not just about getting that imaginary metal spike in your neck to take a hike, it’s about getting emotional tension out as well. So I will be getting a massage the week of my wedding, to loosen up, to let go of some emotions, and to get away from everything for an hour. If you can, set aside the time and money for this. If you can’t afford it, beg and bribe your partner into giving you a massage. Of course, some fiances, (COUGH Collin COUGH) are lazy massage-givers who think an entire back rub can be accomplished in three minutes, but maybe you are one of the lucky ones marrying a certified masseuse.
“GOO”
“Goo” is a term my friends use to describe lovey-doveyness. We usually use it in a teasing but secretly envious way. What I’ve found in these recent stress-tastic weeks is that goo is the cure for wedding angst. Whenever I feel like my brain might melt or my heart might explode because of the latest planning drama, I shift my thoughts to how much I love Collin. His smile and the way he mumbles “I love you” to me in his sleep and the way he gets so excited to eat the fancy dinner he’s cooking he does a little hip-shaking dance in front of the stove. And then I feel tremendously better. Partially because it’s relaxing and fun to be unashamedly in love, but also because it reminds me why I’m planning a wedding in the first place. At the end of all this, I get to be married to Collin! And that is so awesome, it deserves a big celebration like this wedding. Stress that is undoubtedly worth it is somehow not so stressful.
What are your pre-wedding stress-busting tactics?
-Robin
