TAKE IT EASY

Three real brides open up about wedding anxiety, and how they dealt with it leading up to their big day.

- Diya Verma

CHETANA GULIANI

Project Manager, Olly Public Benefit Corporation

“Oh lord, I constantly experienced pre-wedding jitters! Unfortunately, social media and Bollywood have skewed people’s expectations for weddings. Today, the focus has shifted to outdoing each other, with too much emphasis on making the celebration unique and unforgettable. My fiancee and I agreed that once our budget was set in stone, we wouldn't make changes. We had been planning for almost two years, so you can imagine the countless trends and ideas we had to resist.

Once I picked my vendors, I unfollowed all major Instagram accounts. And, honestly, it was so liberating not knowing what’s happening in someone else’s world. This helped me keep a tab on my pre-wedding anxiety. If friends or family would lovingly suggest an idea, I’d thank them, but say that if they wanted to see it incorporated in the wedding, they were welcome to pay for it. Plus, my best friend suggested that I have a weekly date night with my fiancee, where we don’t discuss the wedding at all. These two tricks worked wonders for me—a reminder that we need to invest in our companionship and our marriage, to make it worthwhile, because eventually, people will forget the intricacies of the wedding.”