You’ve just gotten engaged and you’re on the cusp of one of the best moments of your life when you open Instagram. Suddenly, someone else’s ceremony on a Tuscan rooftop stares back at you, followed by a tablescape that looks more expensive than your car, followed by a floral archway that makes the venue feel like a conference room.
Welcome to wedding planning in the age of social media, where inspiration and inadequacy come in the same scroll.
FOMO during wedding planning is real, common, and if left unchecked, can quietly erode one of the most exciting seasons of your relationship. Here’s how to prevent that from happening.
Understand what you’re actually seeing
Social media is a highlight reel created by professional photographers, styled by a team of vendors, and filtered through editing software. Couples whose weddings look effortlessly perfect online may have been stressed out for months about the same things you’re stressed out about. The flowers that stopped the scroll are probably due to a $15,000 budget that is not disclosed anywhere. The venues you suddenly don’t like your choices are in markets that are in a completely different price range than yours.
This is not to disrespect other people’s weddings. This is to remind you that you’re comparing your entire planning process, budget, stress, etc. to someone else’s best 12 photos.
Discover the FOMO Trap for Queer Couples
LGBTQ+ couples and queer marriages face a slightly more severe version of this. For generations, queer people couldn’t see themselves in wedding photos at all. Now that delegates are on the rise, it can feel urgent to have the most visible, most joyful, and all-encompassing wedding possible, as if their celebration needs to take on the weight of all the love stories that have come before.
it’s not. You need to carry only you to the wedding. If you’re one of those people, celebrate loudly. If you’re one of those people, celebrate quietly. Both are valid. Neither requires performing in front of an audience.
Clarify your vision early
The best defense against FOMO is to be acutely aware of what you actually want. Before you spend another hour on Instagram or Pinterest, sit down with your partner and answer some honest questions. What do you want to feel on your wedding day? What do you want your guests to feel? What two or three things are most important to you? And what is completely indifferent?
When you know your own answer, you have a filter. Someone else’s elaborate seating chart display will no longer be what you need and will start to become unsuitable for you.
Curate your feed without feeling guilty
You can unfollow accounts that make you uncomfortable with their choices. You can mute hashtags during the planning process. It is allowed to take a complete break from the wedding content. This doesn’t mean you aren’t excited about the wedding. It means you are protecting your excitement.
Consider replacing some of the aspirational content you’re consuming with content that actually reflects your life: accounts that feature couples who look like you, celebrations that fit your budget, and vendors from real markets.
Talk to your partner when problems creep up on you
FOMO can turn into silent anger if you don’t name it. If you’re suddenly disappointed in a decision you were happy with last week, try going back. Perhaps you saw something online that planted a seed of doubt. Say it out loud to your partner. A conversation that says, “I saw this and I’m having a bit of a swirl right now” is a much more productive conversation than turning that swirl into a disagreement about eyeballs.
Planning a wedding together is one of the first big collaborative projects many couples take on. How you deal with outside noise is part of it.
The only comparison that matters
At the end of your wedding day, you won’t have to think about Tuscan rooftops or $15,000 flowers. You’ll think about the people in the room, the words you said to each other, and how it will feel when you finally get there, after all the planning, all the stress, and all the scrolling.
Other people’s weddings cannot touch it. Not even really beautiful.
photo credit Priscilla du Preez 🇨🇦 above unsplash
Source: Equally Wed – LGBTQ+ Wedding Magazine and Wedding Vendor Directory – equallywed.com
