4 Ways to Deal with Pushy Family Members while you’re Planning your Wedding
While we are getting into the holiday season, you’ll likely be around lots of family that will talk to you about one main thing - your wedding. You may have been avoiding hearing all of your family’s opinions on what you should or shouldn’t be doing for your wedding, but now you’re going to have to deal with them a little more directly in person. Hopefully this won’t cause too much stress to you, but if they know that you’re planning on doing things they don’t agree with, this may be the time you hear about it. While dealing with those pushy family members trying to get you to change to fit their hopes and dreams for your day, here are some tactics to use so you don’t have too rough of a time.
Change the Topic
As nice as it can be to talk about your wedding, the first thing you may want to try to make sure you don’t have to listen to any unsolicited advice is to avoid talking about your wedding. I know this one isn’t the most fun or glamorous for you, but if you’re worried about what your family has to say about your wedding day, it may just be easier to keep your details brief and to talk about other things. Presumably you still have other things going on in your life, so try talking to them about work or something else going on in your lives. If you do still want to talk about your wedding, you can change the specific topic to your reception instead of hearing them insist that you need to get married in a church for your ceremony, for example.
2. Ask them Questions
As you may already know, nearly everyone loves talking about themselves to some extent. You don’t necessarily need to talk about their wedding, but if you ask them some questions about their lives, they will likely stop probing you about your wedding. Try asking questions about how they are doing, work that they are up to, and maybe their kids or pets if they have them. This is a simple way to get the attention off of you and your wedding if you really don’t want to hear their opinions.
3. Blame your Planner/Coordinator/Vendors
If you’re planning on doing things that are different from what your family is expecting or hoping for for your wedding day, you can totally blame me for the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing! It may be easier on you to say “my wedding planner says that this is more popular now” or “my coordinator told us we shouldn’t do that” than to try reasoning with them why you actually are making your decisions. Whatever it takes to make sure you’re enjoying your engagement, I am happy to be your person to “blame”! You can also let them know the education that your other vendors have provided so you have reasons for your decisions. You can say things like “my photographer says that sunset photos need to happen 30-60 minutes before the sunset for the best lighting, so we are having the ceremony earlier so we can still get those photos”, or “my DJ says that 4 hours of dancing is too much time and that we should cut it shorter”.
4. Tell them Directly
Depending on your communication style, this may be higher on the list if you’d rather just start with speaking your mind to avoid dancing around your family and friends. You can keep it brief if it’s not something you usually do and say, “this is what we want to do, so we are doing it my way”. Hopefully, your family can respect your decisions because it ultimately is your day. If you’re also feeling stressed out by talking about planning, you can always be honest about it and tell them that you don’t want to talk about it because it’s stressing you out. If they are asking to help, this may also be a good opportunity to delegate some tasks so they feel helpful and it may actually relieve some stress.
Since wedding planning can be incredibly relatable as many people to end up getting married, this means that people will likely have very strong opinions on what they like and don’t like. Unfortunately while wedding planning, you likely will have many family members and friends that want to let you know what they think you should be doing even if it’s against what you want. Besides physically avoiding the people for your engagement, you will probably be spending some time with them - especially over the holidays. Hopefully you don’t have too much turmoil to get through, but these are some things that may help so you actually enjoy yourself!
If you would like more help to plan your wedding, you can reach out to me at hello@firmlyrootedevents.com. I’ll send you monthly tips and my checklist so that you can stay on track while planning your wedding.
