Learn to manage wedding stress before the wedding day
Couples getting married and professional wedding planners managing wedding planning jobs confront a predictable set of psychological issues. Normal wedding stress is the most common problem and can occur at any time, in almost anyone involved with planning a wedding or, with the exception of the wedding officiant, participating in the ceremony. Choosing a wedding planning career and becoming a certified wedding planner means learning to become a counselor, not only for your clients, but for family members and friends as well. You’d think that all wedding planner training would prepare wedding consultants for the counseling requirements of wedding coordinator duties. But prior to this wedding planner course, the subject has been largely overlooked. Part of the reason for this oversight in traditional wedding event planner training is that the conventional wedding event planner program is often limited in scope and biased in perspective. At the same time, wedding planning as a career and wedding planning jobs have lost ground to wedding planning websites where the subject of wedding stress is simplified to suggestions for jittery brides about breathing deeply and getting enough sleep to look their best on their wedding day. But the psychology needed in learning how to become a wedding planner goes a lot deeper than tips for brides. How can a new wedding consultant quickly establish trust with prospects? Where should planners physically place themselves and their clients to optimize the outcome of meetings? How can planners support couples experiencing extreme wedding stress without violating personal boundaries? Sooner or later, almost all wedding planning jobs present behavioral challenges. Any new wedding event planner should be prepared to handle these problems before they become disruptive, while managing the personal wedding stress that difficult wedding planning jobs create for every wedding professional. It’s wise to learn how to be an effective counselor to others, and to yourself, when choosing a wedding planning career and learning how to be a wedding consultant.
Wedding Psychology and Counseling Belong in Any Wedding Planner Course
Before now, no wedding planner course has taught the clinical causes of wedding stress, solutions to the most common counseling issues encountered in wedding planning jobs, or the principles of wedding psychology from the practical perspective of a contemporary wedding planning career. Unfortunately, silly stereotypes, simplistic solutions, and unsound advice are still offered by wedding event planner training programs based in the past, not the present. But old-fashioned wedding planning training offers little help in preparing for wedding planning jobs where innovation, diversity, and multiculturalism are the rule rather than the exception. Emerging wedding trends, including the new green wedding, gay marriage, and the growth of the Indian wedding market, are forcing attention on lucrative markets where old stereotypes and stale solutions don’t apply. At the same time, the increasing average age and the decreasing annual number of traditional couples getting married is changing the interpersonal dynamics between wedding event planner professionals and their mainstream clients. It a buyer’s market, and today’s customers are older and more diverse than in the past. So let’s all get real. It’s time to stop blaming ‘Bridezilla,’ treating clients like children, and inviting wedding planning career burnout by ignoring the facts. It’s time to deploy adult counseling skills to prevent disruptive behavior, manage wedding stress, and prepare for the psychological emergencies every wedding event planner will face. It’s time for a clinical psychiatrist to teach the causes, solutions, and counseling skills needed by anyone beginning a wedding event planner career or coping with badly behaved clients in an existing wedding event planning business. Certified wedding planners now have the clinical wedding psychology instruction missing from the wedding planner course curriculum of the past.
Course Video Tutorial: 'A Clinical Psychiatrist Teaches
The Principles of Wedding Psychology and Counseling' (60:46)
Kevin Smith, MD, BCFP, DFAPA, is a board-certified clinical psychiatrist who was chief psychiatric resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and now serves as a forensic psychiatric consultant for the State of New York. For this first-ever presentation on the subject by any wedding planner course, New Wedding Planet engaged Dr. Smith to analyze the subject of wedding psychology from the perspective of a clinical counselor and physician. To produce this course video tutorial, Dr. Smith led a private two-hour seminar for a carefully selected wedding event planner group with professional wedding event planner certification. Each participant submitted questions based on challenging psychological situations encountered in his or her wedding event planning career. Dr. Smith researched these topics in depth and organized his answers by category. He carefully details practical steps that will equip professionals to recognize, categorize, and cope with the causes of wedding stress, manage common behavioral issues, and diffuse the difficulties, disruptions, and dangers encountered in some wedding planning jobs. The course video tutorial has been edited for length.
Learn 12 essential elements of wedding psychology and counseling:
- The five fundamental principles of wedding psychology
- The five life changes that cause the greatest personal stress
- The importance of empathy in establishing trust and supporting clients
- How to set up your office and arrange seating to eliminate invisible barriers
- How to predict and manage future behavior by exploring the past with your client
- How to enforce boundaries in client behavior through your contract and fees
- How to ask open-ended questions to gain new information and test old perceptions
- How to avoid the anxiety of unmet expectations by documenting and revisiting objectives
- What dreams mean and how to help clients understand theirs
- 10 questions every couple should discuss before their wedding day
- 23 ways to control anxious behavior by an overstressed bride
- The 'ERASE' method of managing disruptive wedding day behavior
