Weddings & Life Podcast with Taylor Nicole, a podcast by Denver Wedding Photographer,
Taylor Nicole Photography

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Are you getting married? Well we have opinions about that. Opinions about your venue, your date, the time of your ceremony, the length of your veil, your bridal party and color scheme. When you see each other and whether or not you give a welcome speech upon entering your reception. Who are we? Oh you know… EVERYONE. Literally everyone has an opinion about your wedding day and plans. Your mother, your mother in law, your siblings, your friends and probably even your cashier at target has some sort of opinion to offer you. Now some of this advice will be more helpful than others. This is probably the first wedding you’ve planned, and you don’t need to plan alone so sometimes advice and experiences will be helpful to hear, but not everyone’s advice is equal and not all advice is helpful. So this episode is full of tips and tricks on how to handle all the unsolicited advice you will receive about your wedding day while you plan.

Let’s dive into all things unsolicited advice.

First let’s make a distinction between advice you ask for and what you don’t ask for

• if you ask your friend what her experience was like having a first look, or a church ceremony followed by a venue reception that’s one thing. She has had a specific experience with her own wedding that you would like to know and base your plans around how that went for her
• That is much different than a distant relative telling you that it’s only right to have a church ceremony and you must invite all of your relatives.

So feel free to ask for help and advice or to hear other’s experiences whenever you want to! I think this is a best kept secret when it comes to wedding planning. Sometimes you feel like your event needs to be completely unique and that by asking friends about their vendors/parts of their days you might be copying. But personal experiences and referrals are priceless, especially when it comes to vendors. A good word about a vendor your friend used and loved will go a long way to helping you feel confident in your decisions too.

How to understand which advice to take seriously–

• weight the advice or opinion by the person giving advice. Stranger in grocery store probably shouldn’t have as much say over your wedding as your parent.. or maybe they should haha but make a mental hierarchy of who will have more say in your wedding plans.
  • Example, if your parent is paying for the wedding, or a portion of the wedding then their opinions might matter a bit more than if you’re paying for it yourself.
• Does the advice given apply to your wedding plans? Ex. If someone gives you the advice of including something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.. that could actually apply to your wedding plans. If you want it to. 
• But if someone strongly insists that they want their son to be your ring bearer and you weren’t planning on having ring bearers or they aren’t actually invited to your wedding in general then that’s obviously not the most relevant (Actually that sounds like a tricky situation haha I hope that isn’t real for any of you listening)

What to do if you disagree with someone who’s opinion/advice matters to you?

• If this advice is coming from someone you care about and maybe someone who has more of a say in your wedding day, consider your fiancé in these decisions too. Maybe take a step away, talk it through with your fiancé first and then come back to the advice giver and see if you can reach a solution.
• If your fiancé is who you are disagreeing with try to see if you can get down to the heart of their opinion and the heart behind why you’re disagreeing with it. That will help you reason where you’re both coming from and hopefully how to resolve the disagreement and continue planning.

Next, how to dismiss advice, avoid advice, or make the most of the unwanted advice

• So this is where I make my mistakes with unwanted advice… usually I hear their advice and jump right into why that doesn’t work for me or with my plans. Sometimes I can make that person feel bad or my rejection invigorates them to feel the need to really explain to my why I should consider what they’re saying.
• My goal for you would be that you can be respectful, gracious and also not be walked over or treated poorly in these situations.
• So my first tip is to listen to the person giving you the advice and gently thank them for it. Unless it was fairly obviously rude advice then I would just walk away from that however you can.
• You don’t have to commit to all advice given to you, or opinions offered to you. You can admit that ‘you haven’t planned that just yet’ or just be vague. ‘We have plans along those lines’ or ‘we will look into that’ 
• Another way to slip out of committing to everyone’s advice is to find a scapegoat. ‘Oh my photographer has that part of the day planned out for us’ or ‘Our wedding planning is handling that part of our decor’ Hopefully these are semi-true if not true statements and it excuses you from forced group planning around someone’s advice.
• Lastly you can try to gently change the subject, something along the lines of ‘I feel like all I talk about is weddings lately, I want to hear about you, how has your job been recently?’ Ect. 
• Next, you can try to get to the heart of their advice by asking clarifying questions like ‘how did that impact your wedding day?’ Or ‘did you do that? How did that go for you?’ Truthfully people really just like talking about themselves so they will probably lay off the intrusive advice if you just take a moment to ask them about their own experience.

I hope this helps you start to navigate the multitude of opinions formed around your wedding plans. Remember to lean on your fiancé and your loved ones while you’re planning your wedding. Sometimes you will need an ear to vent to and other times you may need to hear a differing perspective and adjust yours.

xo,

Taylor Nicole