9 Tips to Being a Healthy Bride
1. Practice Communication & Inclusion
My number one recommendation for overall health is to have effective communication with your future spouse and include him in the process! Allocating and completing wedding tasks, spending quality time with your person, taking care of yourself, preparing your heart for marriage, traveling – it takes a lot of time and energy. Maintaining effective communication with your person will help get things checked off of the to-do list, handle sticky family situations, and separate what needs to be done and what is taken care of. This is likely the first big thing that you two are doing as a team, which is the perfect time to start thinking like a team so that your wedding remains the wedding that you and your person actually want. The day is for both of you, act like it! Also your person likely wants to be included and has a few ideas to incorporate that would be meaningful to him.
2. Buy Your Dress to Fit Your Body
Say it louder for the people in the back. Girl - dresses can be altered! What does it serve you to buy your dress smaller and spend your engagement season criticizing yourself? This causes more stress that you won’t fit into the dress, discomfort while wearing the dress, more fittings, more money spent because spanx are probably now involved, less eating the foods you want and celebrating at all of your parties with champagne (see hangry bride in #7), less focus on preparing your heart for marriage and more focus on control/weight loss/self-discipline/perfection. They say that you'll feel your most beautiful on your wedding day, but it's hard to feel beautiful all-of-a-sudden one day when you've spent months being nasty to yourself all over this one day, this one dress. You know what feels good? Putting on a dress that you rock from day 1, eating food that makes you feel good, moving to honor your body, toasting, laughing, spending intentional time with your man, and realizing that the wedding is only day one. Girl, you're going to age like fine wine. And the man that you're marrying already sees that, so it's time you did too!
3. Sleep
Running errands to accomplish all of the things and filling out all of the forms and calling all of the people and sending all of the emails- it's EXHAUSTING. You’ll want to make sure you’re making time for rest. An exhausted, grouchy bride is not a joyful bride.
4. Give Yourself Time & Space for the Important Stuff
Yes, there’s a ton to accomplish during engagement..but engagement is a sweet time and you’ll also want to enjoy that. Remember why you got engaged? Oh yeah, because you want to commit to spending the rest of your life with this person through it all.. that’s called marriage – not wedding. The wedding is just a really awesome celebration, but marriage is wild adventure that we have the crazy privilege to experience. So in this season, you’re not only planning a wedding but thinking about what marriage is going to look like, as a team. That deserves a lot of attention, together and independently. You have to give yourself space & time to be intentional without being stressed out about table numbers. Prioritize the things that matter most, the things that only you can do. Figure out the big stuff up front (venue, date, photographer, catering, etc.) and set achievable, reasonable goals for yourself in figuring the rest out. This is another place where effective communication and inclusion with your person comes in to play – working as a team makes the process a whole lot smoother.
5. Have Some Water
All these wedding planning coffee mugs and fillable forms make it real difficult to reach for my Nalagene. BUT hydration = mental alertness, clear mind, less headaches, more energy, improved physical performance (I'm talking about exercising!) and not feeling blah (in scientific terms.) Plus hydration is so important for glowing skin. Buy yourself a cute water bottle and drink up.
6. Stress-Relieving Movement
I won’t lie, this was not my biggest success during engagement. BUT when I did make the time for joyful movement, it made a huge difference. Some days this is HIIT-style workouts that give me Lizzo-level confidence, some days it’s weight lifting and feeling stronger, some days it’s yoga (I think maybe yoga should be it’s own category?), and sometimes it’s just taking my pupper on a walk. Movement has the power to calm & clear the mind, increase confidence, and increase endorphins all to help you power through coordinating and help you feel your best (mentally and physically) in that little white dress!
7. Proper Nutrition
Girl – FEED YOURSELF. Like real food, real portions. Not 100% raw, vegan, clean, yada yada. It sounds great and promising but lemme let you in on something - raw veggies are tough to digest because they’re crazy fibrous aka you're going to be super bloated and gassy if you're over eating vegetables. Not exactly that bridal feeling. You gotta balance that out. Also, a hangry bride is a not nice bride and a distracted bride that’s thinking about food all day. Yes, please eat lots of fruits and veggies but also eat all of the food groups- carbohydrates/starches, proteins, fruits and vegetables, fats, and dairy. Also, 3 meals a day and toss in some snacks where you need it!
8. Establish a Routine
This list is kinda a lot to do. Throughout wedding planning, I’ve really been trying to nail down a routine. It’s been hard with moving, starting new jobs, getting a pup, traveling, and having new tasks pop up all the time. To the best of your ability, I would strongly encourage you to stick to some sort of routine so that you’re able to use the time you have to the best of your ability. This helps prevent feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, and the sense that you’re doing everything and there’s no time left for you. There is time for you – you're the bride!
9. Breathe
Take a breath. Go on a date, pour a mimosa, enjoy the tedious planning, laugh at the dresses that look ridiculous and make you have weird rolls and dimples, wear the “bride-to-be” sash, dream a little about what your hand will look like with a second ring. This season, the wedding day, and your marriage are what you and your future spouse make it. It will all work out. You are beautiful now. You are worthy now. You are so loved right now. You are preparing for the most beautiful covenant relationship with the love of your life. Girl, that is sweeeet. Soak it up.