{Provocation} Leave Some Stuff For the Last Minute
The week before your wedding is generally an insanely stressful time. So you’d think you’d want to have as much done as possible heading into Hell Week. And you do want to be sure that everything VITAL is taken care of well before your wedding, and everything that is even a little important is squared away a week or two in advance. But I think last-minute DIY projects are an underrated tool for keeping yourself sane in the days before your wedding.
Maybe that sounds backwards to you, but think about it this way. In that last week, you’re going to be preoccupied with thoughts about the wedding. No matter how much you prepare, you’ll be stressed. If you have some mindless crafting to do, you’ll have a productive way to focus and burn off all this pre-wedding energy.
The key is to only leave last-minute projects that don’t actually have to be completed, in case you get too wrapped up with inevitable last-minute problems and the built-in family and social obligations of Wedding Week. Try to make the last minute projects fun and easy too, and preferably some combination of mindlessly repetitive but imprecise.
My last-minute DIY savior was decorating the take-out boxes for our cookie table. Collin insisted this was the least essential thing left on the to-do list and should therefore be punted. It turns out he was oh-so-right: all the cookies got eaten at the reception, so the boxes were good for nothing but looking pretty next to the cookies. And they’re not even that pretty.
BUT: the week before my wedding, when I was basically out of my mind with anticipation and nerves, having a big project like punching out hearts from leftover cardstock and gluing them onto hundreds of cardboard boxes was an invaluable distraction.
Even better, this project was easily made collaborative. I dragooned a bunch of friends into my cardboard-decorating, and later on my sister, and without their help I never would have finished. Spending a night surrounded by friends, laughing and drinking beer and listening to music while tangibly getting more ready for my wedding was absolutely worth it for my sanity, even if the finished product was, in the end, totally unnecessary for the success of my wedding.
You can also use last-minute projects as an excuse to GET AWAY from people, if that is what you need. Sick and tired of playing catch-up with your forty-three first cousins and their SOs? You can always politely excuse yourself because you absolutely must be getting home to put some finishing touches on wedding details. Then again, you can always lie to family with that excuse even if you have finished everything ahead of time. But then you’ll just go home and feel guilty for lying your your family and not have any project to distract you from your guilt.
So what do you think: is it reckless and stupid to leave any DIY for the last days before your wedding? Or do you find having tasks to complete helps you with last-minute jitters?
-Robin
I left a few too many tasks until the last minute and it contributed greatly to the stress. I've heard you should treat the Wednesday before your weekend wedding as if it were the big day and have all your projects done before then. I wish I had done that. If you have one project, maybe. But like 10 was a nightmare.
I think that's totally smart. I argued with my mom and fiance for weeks about whether I would make our wedding cake or not because they said "you'll be SO stressed! We don't want you to be under pressure to do anything and melt down in tears in the days before the wedding!" But then I reminded them that hey, have we met, I am absolutely guaranteed to melt down in tears over SOMETHING in the days before the wedding, so I might as well have an actual reason instead of getting mad at a *person* for some stupid little thing. This actually helped convince my mom.
One could argue that that's not the kind of inessential DIY project you're talking about, but it is because cookies, brownies, and peach cobbler are part of our catering package…so if it doesn't get done, we were too cool for cake in the first place, and if you heard different you must've been misinformed.
I am finishing everything by Thankgiving for a mid – December wedding. First because we have to move to our first apartment the first weekend of December, and second because the week before the wedding, I’m going to be baking over 800 cookies and 20 cakes.
That’s plenty to do!!!
My wedding is on Saturday. I did leave couple projects, not necessarily on purpose, to do this week but none are projects that will make or break my wedding. If they don't get done, oh well. I like having this little stuff to pass my days, and I'm sure once the fam gets into town (tomorrow) I won't have much time to craft at all. Honestly, I have way less stress this last week than in the last nine months!
My wedding is on Saturday. I did leave couple projects, not necessarily on purpose, to do this week but none are projects that will make or break my wedding. If they don't get done, oh well. I like having this little stuff to pass my days, and I'm sure once the fam gets into town (tomorrow) I won't have much time to craft at all. Honestly, I have way less stress this last week than in the last nine months!
I did my own flowers, so I spent morning before the day of our wedding doing floral arrangements with my husband, mom, and maid of honor. It was actually kind of relaxing to just play with flowers and watch Easy A with my nearest and dearest. We got them finished, dropped them off at the reception site (which was also a hotel), checked into our rooms, got ready for the rehearsal then partied with friends.
I do recommend getting everything done before the rehearsal dinner though. It was great to just kick back with a bottle of wine and go out with the people who came in from out of town without worrying about wedding shit that needed to be done.
I think if you're like me, this idea is totally awesome. I'm a hardcore organizer/planner, and I actually relax by organizing… everything. So the thought of having a legitimate task to keep myself busy but productive is outstanding. And validating!
Oh I totally agree, I think they even call it occupation therapy or something. When you are stressed, just make yourself busy. And anyway, the week before, no matter how well you planned there will be things to do. We prepared the favors (putting dutch cookies and mini tequila bottles in small cellophane bags, tied with ribbon, etc) 3 days before the day and it was lots of girl fun, while doing in series production with both our moms, my sister, sister in law. It was an excuse to chat and at the same time get the stuff done. WE could only do it last minute anyway because cookies had to be as fresh and the mini tequila flew the ocean from Mexico with my parents, who arrived Wednesday before our Saturday wedding.