Finally, I get to share with you that I'm now a blogger on brides.com!

This has been in the works for a few months, and I'm thrilled to announce my first post just went live.  I'll post all forthcoming weekly blogs here.

Visit brides.com and learn "How to Deal with Bad Wedding Ideas in 3 Easy Steps."  And do the 3 steps!

A brief note from Allison:  

I'm excited to launch this new series -- Dear Newly Engaged Me, written by brides themselves -- about their own experiences of being engaged.  These are intimate, personal portraits, and most brides ask to remain anonymous.  If you'd like to contribute, email me!  

Thanks to Dear Me: A Letter to My 16-Year-Old Self for the inspiration.  Please check out this wonderful site and book.

This first Dear Newly Engaged Me is written by a 31-year-old bride. We worked together via Skype weekly for four months leading up to her wedding. 

I'm getting married in eight days. I feel good -- great, in fact.  Excited. Happy.  Certain.  And very, very busy with last-minute details.

But it wasn't always that way for me during this 18 months of being engaged. Not by a long shot.

Engagement IS a romantic time of life -- choosing a ring, planning your dream wedding, imagining your future stretched out before you.

It's a stressful time for engaged couples as well.

Many engaged couples report more fighting and less sex.

Why?

Everyone feels compelled to comment on whether or not you’re a good match.  

I’ve worked intimately with brides since 2002, and I’ve identified 5 typical sources.

If you and your fiancé were planning your wedding in a vacuum, just the 2 of you, it would be a piece of cake:  You know what you like, you work together, you can deal with your budget.  But that’s not what's going on here.  Most brides have not one but 2 Moms inserting their strong opinions.  So decisions become a delicate diplomatic dance.   It’s tedious and exhausting, belaboring every detail.  

Solution:  You and your fiancé define for yourselves 3 non-negotiables each for your wedding – 3 things each you are unwilling to compromise on.  Make sure you get those things, done perfectly, and then be willing to be influenced on the rest.  Especially if parents are paying.

You go home with a husband with the power to make life-and-death decisions for you, a new branch on your family tree, and (possibly) a new last name.  Your wedding is NOT just a party.  

Solution:  Everything about your wedding feels overwrought and bigger than it should be because, well, it is.  For example, the stress you feel when you can’t find the right bridesmaids dress isn’t totally about the design and color of the dress.  Psychologically, you’re also working through how you’re going to “fit” all these important women into your new, unknown, married life with you.  Be aware of the deeper levels always going on. (Read also: Why it may be healthy to obsess about your wedding.)

You're coming face-to-face with the end of your single life and identity as a single woman; the end of your primary family identity being “daughter”; and the end of the simpler dating days of boyfriend and girlfriend.  Each of these endings can cause emotional turmoil as brides process their feelings about these major identity changes.  

Solution:  Give yourself time and space to just feel.  Reflect.  Journal.  Acknowledge the passing of time, the change in identity, the growing up that is going on.  Mourning is background music playing in your mind right now.  Let it become foreground music occasionally to work through it.

Bride S.C. from Australia, who worked through her engagement anxiety and engagement depression with me, here on her very happy wedding day.

Keywords: #weddingstress, #bridestress, #whyweddingstressful

Before you can blink, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is over, and there's talk about sales, buying and holiday shopping not just ALL Weekend but culminating with Cyber Monday. 

The wedding industry complex is the bride's equivalent of Cyber Monday and it's enough, as one writer put here in her blog, to make you "want to gouge your eyes out." (From A Practical Wedding)

But your wedding planning need not be so intense.  

I can help you put it in a new perspective. If you or someone you know is about to get married and feeling overwhelmed by all consumerism of wedding planning, call me!