Your wedding day. The best day of your life. If it all goes to plan.
It's notoriously a time when women can turn into the dreaded Bridezilla and husbands-to-be can get tied to lamp posts.
We've heard from one bride and groom, who are less than a month away from their big day, about the stresses each of them have encountered in the lead up to their wedding.
The bride – Caroline Wilson, 31
It's June 2016, I've just got engaged and we're wanting to get married next spring. Crumbs. That's less than a year to organise a wedding.
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For someone who had never been one to plan their dream wedding in their head since they were a kid, this was a blank canvas – and one I envisaged to be stress-fuelled for most of the way.
So with one month left to go until the day all my family and friends keep telling me they can't wait for, here's a run down of the stresses I've encountered.
Who to invite – Stress factor 9/10
This was a huge stress. Your venue tells you that 60 guests are included in your day package – any more and you're talking an extra month's rent per head (or so it felt).
Though 60 seemed perfectly doable at first, once you add up each side of the family, spouse and kids included, plus just your closest friends alone, you find you're already there.
So then it's that awful discussion about who makes the final cut and who doesn't. Not fun.
Wedding list finally sorted, the job of organising the invites seems like a minor task. Wrong.
I ordered mine online, but trying to come up with adequate wording, listing all the menu choices, contemplating how to go about asking for a gift and then doing it all two twice for the separate day and evening guests was stressful.
Then they arrive and the next job is to contact all your guests for their addresses (zzz). Once done, I have the mammoth task of putting all the pieces of card for the invites together wrapped beautifully in a piece of lilac ribbon and decorated with tiny pearl sticky things. This took a whole day.
When they were done and ready to go, I thought they looked brilliant. "Can't wait for people's reactions," I said to Nathan. No one reacted.
As I am finding more and more, however beautiful you think the place names and candleabras look for your wedding, no one will notice – I NEVER take note of anything like that at weddings, so why would anyone else?!
Flowers – Stress factor 6/10
This consisted of a simple trip to the recommended florist and picking out what flowers I wanted. I don't know the different names for them, I just asked for lilac and cream and they said fine.
The only stress about organising wedding flowers is the price. For someone who only ever buys bunches of tulips or daffodils from the supermarket, these are very, very expensive. (And no one will care what they look like).
The hen do – Stress factor 2/10
There was very little stress involved for me here as it was all organised for me. Surprisingly, for someone who doesn't like being the centre of attention, being dressed up as a Spice girl in the middle of Butlins didn't stress me in the slightest (quite the opposite actually!)
Hair and makeup – Stress factor 7/10
My hair is no stress at all as, conveniently, my hairdresser is one of my best friends. So other than having to travel 300 miles back to my home town of Margate for my practice run, this is a breeze.
Makeup-wise, I'm doing it myself, which means a fair bit of planning. I need to find the perfect foundation, lipstick, highlighter, blusher, the list goes on…
Then I need to have a practice run and take photos of myself inside, outside, with flash, without flash, to make sure I don't have a glowing white face – or an orange line round my neck.
The dress – Stress factor 2/10
Believe it or not, this was the most stress-free part for me. I got my dress in the first shop I looked at. It wasn't the most glamorous of wedding dress shops (there were no tears or prosecco) but there was such a huge range of dresses, there was no way one of them wasn't going to be OK.
And to make it all the better, mine was a brilliant price. OK, it's still the most expensive dress I've ever worn by an absolute mile, but as wedding dresses go, this was reasonable.
The groom – Nathan Hemmingham, 37
I've just popped the question and she said yes… Phew!
And there's nine months still to go before the wedding – loads of time, sweet!
Apparently, there's a lot of things we've got to get organised and the next few months are going to be quite stressful, according to my bride-to-be.
Best man/usher – Stress factor 2/10
I knew without a second thought who would be my best man and an usher. Simple, my best mate will be the best man, my second best mate will be my usher. Done, that's the first job ticked off. This is easy.
Suits – Stress factor 3/10
Now I have got to get suits organised for me and my groomsmen. Simple, one trip to a suit hire shop, where I pick my design, and that's that done.
Don't have to do anything now until two months before the wedding, loads of time. Sweet, another job done. This is easy.
Who to invite – Stress factor 4/10
Nothing too taxing yet… Hold on, we've got to do a list of guests. No problem, I'll just write down everybody I have ever met and hand that to Caroline. Then I'll go to the diary and tick off another job well done.
Slight problem, apparently my list is too big, in fact, it's that big the venue doesn't actually hold that amount of people. I now have to trim a few people off this which shouldn't take long, just cut from the bottom upwards – problem solved!
The entertainment – Stress factor 2/10
It's my job to book the magician/mind reader that we quite liked the look of at the wedding fayre we went to.
Well, I say magician, he actually got half of his tricks wrong when he was demonstrating to us, but we still booked him.
Slight problem, he doesn't remember me or have our date written down when I text him to remind him of our booking at the fayre. I thought he was a mind reader? Anyway, luckily he still has that date free and we're all booked and good to go.
Grooming on the day – 1/10
So on the big day itself, I've got a lot to think about. I have to cream my bald head and comb my beard, then put my suit on five minutes before I am due to go down and meet everyone. Should be OK.
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