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Wedding planning can be extremely stressful, and can make even the sanest bride go bananas over bunting and antsy about aisle runners. But if you’re spending all your time comparing your wedding to others – maybe your sister’s, or your cousin’s, or a wedding in a magazine – and wondering how you’ll ever measure up, it’s time for a reminder that your wedding is not a competition.

Did you hear me? Your wedding is not a competition.

It can be hard to remember this when you’re bombarded with images of “perfect” weddings at every turn: in magazines, in movies, and now, through wedding blogs and sites like Pinterest.

And on every blog and every magazine, you see the same comments over and over again – “how can I do this? How can I be more like this? This wedding is the MOST amazing, the MOST beautiful, the MOST original!” How often do you think, “I want my wedding to be the best wedding anyone has ever attended.” Do you catch yourself saying, “I want guests to remember MY wedding for the rest of their lives.”?

Maybe it’s time for a wedding reality check.

Remember the Purpose of a Wedding

Whenever you catch yourself getting stressed about the wedding, or comparing your wedding to someone else’s (or a wedding in a magazine), take a deep breath, stop what you are doing, and get away from the wedding organising for awhile.

It can help to remind yourself why you’re getting married in the first place – because you love your partner and you want to commit to him/her for the rest of your life, and you are going to be celebrating that fact with friends and family.

It always helps to bring every decision back to, “will this help us celebrate our union with the people we love?” If the answer is no, let go of that situation and focus on the real reason for your wedding. Spend time with your beloved doing non-wedding things, and reconnect with the reasons you wanted to get married in the first place.

You Have Nothing to Prove

Maybe it’s those girls who were mean to you in high school, maybe it’s a mother-in-law who thinks you’re not good enough, or maybe it’s a jealous ex-lover who believes you’re marrying beneath you. Behind every bride striving for perfection is a person who told her, “you’re not good enough.” And for some reason, a wedding seems the perfect time to prove that person wrong.

But your wedding won’t change anyone’s mind about you – a wedding won’t suddenly make you “cool” or “accepted” or “unattainable”. Your wedding will not stop the backstabbing or the jealousy or the gossip. Having a perfect wedding says nothing about the state of your relationship, or your life.

Instead of perfection, strive for authenticity. The best weddings I’ve attended are not the ones with the most amazing décor or the best hors d’oeuvres. They are the weddings where the guests walk away saying, “This wedding was so genuine and heartfelt. I love how they made their wedding so uniquely them.”

And if anyone leaves your wedding muttering about the sub-par quality of the table napkins … well, that person was not someone you want to please in the first place.

Close the Magazines. Unsubscribe from the Blogs

Do what you have to do to get rid of that sense of inadequacy about your wedding. You are not trying to change the world here. You are not auditioning for “World’s Most Amazing Wedding”. Your wedding does not have to be blogworthy or look like the pictures you see in magazines.

The media paints an unrealistic image of weddings, and they do that because they are trying to sell wedding products. They want you to want your tables to look like the magazines, so they can sell you table runners and centrepieces from their advertisers.

So if you feel yourself wondering if you need to carve more money out of your budget for something you saw in a magazine … stop, put down the magazine, step away from the computer, and remember why you’re getting married in the first place.

Remember, your wedding is not a competition.