Planning your wedding day is one of the most stressful times in your life. You are expected to run a full scale event for LOTS of guests. You are expected to negotiate contracts, source suppliers, manage the running of the day and finalise a guest list… it’s a full scale operation. Put this together with the fact you are about to commit yourself to another human being for a WHOLE lifetime, you can see why things may start to get a little stressful.

Often the bride takes the hit when it comes to wedding stress, egged on by the media, the term Bridezilla starts getting banded about. ‘Don’t be a Bridezilla… don’t turn all Bridezilla on us… uh oh here comes Bridezilla. If you have been planning your wedding for a while… it won’t take long before someone brings this word to your attention!

Dictonary.com defines it like this:

Bridezilla:  A woman whose behaviour in planning the details of her wedding is regarded as obsessive or intolerably demanding.

It’s not suprising that we want to avoid the term when it comes to our own wedding… but when it comes to planning a successful wedding I think there needs to be a bit of Bridezilla in all of us.

I’m not suggesting you start taking your inner bridezilla to the extremes and start bossing everyone around and losing the plot over every detail…. we have all seen episodes of ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ where the bride to be starts to have a HUGE meltdown about the wedding day…. and it’s not pretty! I have come across all sorts of ‘Bridezillas’ over the years including the bride who lost it with her bridesmaids when the wrong wedding car turned up to the bride who shouted at her new husband when the DJ played a song she didn’t like.

There are however many aspects of the Bridezilla personality that are key to planning a successful day. A Bridezilla ensures her day is planned to perfection… every little detail is thought about and nothing is forgotten. There are schedules for everything, and everyone knows what they should be doing and when.

So I suggest we flip the negative Bridezilla traits around and look at it this way:

Bridezilla – A bride to be who is SO passionate about her wedding day, that she works hard to make sure every detail is correct, and everything runs smoothly.

So here are the elements of your day where I think being a little bit Bridezilla will help your day run smoother…..

1. The wedding budget

A Bridezilla will do everything in her power to make her day perfect and will ensure her budget is closely monitored. Sitting down and planning a rough budget spread sheet before you start booking elements of your day, will ensure you can achieve everything you want to! Using your head before your heart at the start of the wedding planning journey will help make your day better, and take away the stress of finding last minute cash to pay for things.

2. The wedding guest list

Choosing guests for your wedding can be stressful, especially if you have pressures from family members about who SHOULD be invited. At this point I think it’s ok to be a little bit Bridezilla… it’s your day, and it’s important that you and your husband to be share the day with people you want to be there…. not just people you feel guilty about leaving out.

3. The table plan

I once went to a wedding with NO table plan… it was a lovely idea, they wanted the day to feel informal and people to feel they could sit anywhere. What actually happened was total chaos!! If you were slow to sit down you ended up with all the tables partly full… and so groups of 4 people had to split up and sit on different tables… in fact there ended up being more people than chairs! Carefully planning your table plan will take the stress away from your guests on the day. Planning can mean you can put like minded friends together… or avoid putting people together that don’t get on. You know your guest list better than anyone else… so you are perfectly placed to orchestrate the seating plan.

4. The vision

Many brides have been planning their wedding for years. Pinterest stats show that many women start planning their wedding on Pinterest before they are even engaged. A Bridezilla won’t rest until her wedding day is perfect. You know what you want from your day, so don’t settle for second best. There are so many wedding suppliers out there, suitable for a wide range of budgets. Don’t just book the first person you meet, do your research.. ask around..  make sure you get the perfect choices, to help your vision become reality.

5.    The schedule

A large scale event with multiple suppliers and tight time scales needs a schedule! Handing out a schedule to your wedding party may seem like the ultimate Bridezilla moment… but it goes a long way to making everything run smoothly. A written schedule can cover off what everyone needs to be doing and when, in one easy document. On the day you don’t want to be worrying about who is collecting the button holes or who is going to help with your dress in photographs. Writing everyone’s tasks down, and giving clear instructions on what is happening at what point during the day will ensure your day runs smoothly… and is stress free for you! I am not ashamed to say that I had an 8 page schedule for my own wedding day… covering off every moment from the day before, right through to the evening when we left. The schedule covered everything from who would bring me a piece of cake during the photos to what time the first dance would happen. If you would like a copy of my wedding schedule to help you plan your day then you can get it for free from here: 

So I think it’s time for us to be proud of our inner Bridezilla moments… and not be afraid to plan our day to perfection! If all of this sounds like a total nightmare, then perhaps you should consider hiring a Wedding Planner who can do it all for you. Contact me at becca@engageweddings.co.uk and I will send you details of some of my favourite wedding planners.

What has been your most Bridezilla moment? Let me know in the comments below!