Balancing Your Wedding Planning With Your Day Job
Planning a wedding is not for the faint-hearted. It requires time, patience, determination and a sense of humour. However, the vast majority of brides are trying to accomplish all of this while balancing an equally demanding secular job on the other hand. For this reason, the line between the two often becomes blurred, getting brides-to-be into a situation in which they spend much of their work day looking on the Internet for ideas and calling service providers at the expense of the company. Apart from the time factor, this is tempting because it is quite easy for us to forget that the company pays for all those phone calls and lost man hours.
To ensure that you get as much accomplished as possible without wasting your workplace’s resources or your own time, here are some suggestions:
- Draw up a weekly schedule in which a task (or two) is assigned to each of your break times. This could be visiting a cake maker during your lunch break or calling to confirm the appointment with your dress maker while you are on tea.
- Control yourself. Do not get caught up in replying to wedding-related emails only to find that you have spent the last two hours doing it. Limit yourself to 15 minutes per day and then get back to the job that they are paying you to do.
- Refrain from chatting to colleagues about your wedding plans. Apart from the fact that, if you are like most brides-to-be, these conversations will become rather lengthy, it also gives the impression that you are, in fact, planning your wedding at work (even if this is not the case).
- If you feel that you are drowning under the weight of your wedding “to do” list, take a day off. Use this time to cross at least half of the items on your list off. If you plan correctly, make appointments with the necessary people and use your time to the fullest, this day can take an enormous weight off of your shoulders and allow you to return to work, focused and productive.
- Keep a picture of your wedding dress in your desk drawer. When you feel the urge to start planning, look at it, indulge yourself in the fantasy for two minutes, then close your drawer and get back to work. This is the ‘nicotine patch’ of wedding planning.
- The few days before your wedding are the most stressful. Not only are you nervous and excited for the big day, but there are also things that can only be done at this time. For these reasons, it is best to take at least the three days before your wedding off. This gives you time to finish those last-minute details and to get some pampering and rest in too.
Although your wedding day may be the most important day of your life, your boss and colleagues may not feel the same way about its impact on their lives or productivity. So, respect the fact that your employer is paying you to accomplish a specific set of tasks and that wedding planning is not one of these. Planning during office hours also means that your secular work piles up, which actually just puts more pressure on you. So, discipline yourself, plan ahead and use your free time wisely.
Photo Credit: rusticweddingchic.com
