I recently talked on my InstaStories about exercise, and how tangentially that related back to wedding planning (check my ramblings out here in my highlights, if you want the original source material!). Basically, I was thinking about how I, as a typical type-A person, suffer from anxiety and I’ve recently been using exercise to help manage my mental health, keeping me feeling good and happy.

I was then thinking about all you poor couples out there - brides and grooms who are so often marketed to about how you’re going to LOOK on your day. How to lose the weight for your wedding, fit into the dress, all that bullshit (including this recent NY Times article that sent me into a rage spiral). And not only that, but what items you’re going to have at your wedding that can be photographed and then blogged about. What the centerpieces will look like. What the venue looks like. Looks, looks, looks, looks, looks.

Which brought me back to feelings (cue “feelings…”). At The Plannery, as much as we care about how things look and that your florist or event designer is doing what they should and everything looks as you want it to look, what we actually care about, and what I consider my JOB - is that you feel good. Our main priority is how you feel, NOT how you look. If you’re feeling calm, relaxed, stress-free, able to have fun and in the moment then I have done my job.

And so though how you feel is what I believe sets us apart as wedding planners, that’s really hard to Instagram. I don’t have a lot of pretty pictures to show you what feeling good on your wedding day looks like (though I certainly can try, and sometimes the awesome photographers I’ve worked with capture just that!). But I’ll just ask you to step away for a moment from the social media, the wedding magazines and blogs, the mood boards (though we do love ourselves some mood boards), and think about this question that very few people ask you: how do you want to feel on your wedding day?

And then hire people who will make the process of planning a wedding, and your actual wedding day, feel really damn good.