Ten days before our wedding — on my 24th birthday — Danny and I headed to Disney World. This was back when Disney was doing their amazing (and thus, of course, discontinued) “Florida residents get in free on their birthday” promotion. So I whipped out my driver’s license and got an “It’s my birthday!” pin, and Danny pulled out his wallet and bought a ticket. Then we spent the entire day exploring the Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house, getting caught in the rain on Tom Sawyer’s Island, poking around the shops on Main Street, and pretending to be scared in the Haunted House. What we didn’t do — not once, not a single time during the whole day — was talk about our upcoming wedding. We called it our wedding-free day.

It’s important to take a breather from the wedding every so often. It’s also hard. Early on in the planning, it’s also easy to rationalize, “We’re enjoying this and we’re excited about it, so why should we ever take a break, even for one night?”Here’s why: You know how much I love air popped popcorn? A lot. Like, a lot-a lot. I could eat it every night! But what would would happen if I really ate popcorn every night? The first couple weeks it would still be my favoritest snack ever. Perfectly buttery and salty and warm. After a couple weeks, it would get kind of boring. And if I kept forcing myself to push forward and continue eating popcorn every night after that, pretty soon I would resent it. It would go from being that fun after dinner treat that the dog loves to share with me to a form of punishment. The texture I loved would suddenly seem like cardboard, and my tongue would feel puckered from all the salt.

So you see, if I think we all need a break even from popcorn, we definitely should remember to take a breather from wedding planning before it gets overwhelming.

Because, trust me, at some point, you will probably think it’s overwhelming.

Schedule wedding-free date nights so you and your intended don’t feel like the wedding is the only thing you share in common these days. Schedule wedding-free girls’ nights so your friends can catch up on what else is going on in your life — and you can catch up on their lives without reminding them every few minutes that something made you think of your wedding. (I’ll admit, I may or may not have been guilty of that one.) Schedule wedding-free family get togethers so your family has some tangible proof that you care about seeing them even if interviewing vendors and orchestrating your rehearsal dinner aren’t involved.

You know how some dieters have their splurge day, where they can eat anything they want as long as they adhere to a strict set of food guidelines the rest of the week? This is the same thing, only with your wedding, and in reverse. It’s the opposite of a splurge day. And if you schedule wedding-free days every so often, I promise you’ll have a much happier, healthier wedding planning process!

~ Laura