Guest Post: 5 Tips For Wedding Planning When You Have A Chronic Illness

My friends are getting married in the summer and as excited as I am for them, I am also selfishly worried about how I will fare on the day. Will I be well on the day itself? Will I cope with a full day of emotions, standing, sitting, socialising and dancing? I hope I will be able to by that point but it got me thinking. I was so fortunate to have been well when I got married. I married Ross in 2012, which was a year prior to my diagnosis of fibromyalgia. I wasn’t symptom free but at that point the good days far outnumbered the bad and I was coping. I still had to be mindful of what I did during the run up to my wedding but at that point my illness did not dominate my life. On the day itself, I was well and was able to push my (at that point unknown) illness to the back of my mind. I began to wonder how I would cope with wedding planning if things were different and I was as ill as I have been recently.

A few of my friends that I have made through this blog and on social media are planning their own weddings. I decided to reach out and ask the lovely Anne if she had any tips that she could share for fellow chronically ill brides-to-be. Anne is planning her own wedding and has some great advice to share with you.

I was privileged to be asked by Donna to write this guest post on wedding planning with a chronic illness. I have written this based on my own wedding planning experience so far and I hope it is helpful to you when it comes to planning your own wedding. On the 10th January this year, the love of my life gave me the surprise of my life and asked me to marry him. It was the happiest day of my life so far, and we’re now in the process of planning a day that will become the happiest of both our lives.

I have fibromyalgia and CFS among other chronic illnesses. At the moment I remain relatively able physically, but have experienced a decline in health over the last year. Therefore we’re not banking on my health being the same as it is now in another 9 months and we are planning with that in mind. What we’ve found though, is that you don’t have to make things feel like a compromise if you go about it in the right way. These are my top 5 planning tips:

01. Keep it simple

We’ve chosen a single venue event to keep the complexity down. It also keeps the travel down. I’ll be staying at the venue the night before. Although it’s not a long journey (just under an hour) from our home town to the venue, staying means there’s no worry about whether we’ll make in time on the big day and I have an evening to get over the impact of the trip. The main advantage of the venue we’ve chosen is that they have a wedding coordinator who helps make sure you’ve got everything done you need to and they’re just at the end of the phone. The golden rule to remember is that a wedding doesn’t have to be complicated to be beautiful. Keeping it simple will mean less stress on the day, and leading up to it, which gives you the best chance to be as good as you can for your moment as a princess.

02. Plan ahead and don’t rush

The recommended timescale for planning a wedding is a year. If you want a summer wedding, be prepared to need longer just to secure the dates you want at the venue you want. That’s just standard advice. From a chronic illness perspective, there isn’t much that needs to be done in a rush if you give yourself a good amount of time. In the UK, be prepared that your venue may not let you book until you have registered your intention to marry at your local registry office. Once you’ve done that bit and secured your venue, the rest is less time critical. Don’t feel that you have to have it all done in the next few weeks. In our experience (and the order we’ve booked things) is booked the registry appointment, venue (including catering but the final menu will be agreed 8 weeks before), photographer, décor, invites. Still to do we have: buying the dress, booking the DJ, ceremony music, flowers, suits and ordering the cake but we know where everything apart from the dress is coming from. On average 6 months before is recommended for the dress, and 3 months for the cake. Bear in mind that a year is typical from the point you decide to plan your wedding. I believe these timescales are perfectly workable even if you can only do one thing every few weeks.

03. Plan in recovery time

If you don’t rush the planning and organising part then you should be okay in the lead up to the wedding itself. But on the day, it’s going to be so easy to get carried away in the moment and pay for it hugely over the next few days. Our venue also has an attached hotel and our room is reserved from the day before so I have a bolt hole to grab 30mins peace as and when I need it. Don’t be afraid to let your photographer and your catering know if you want to have 30mins between ceremony and photos, and/or photos and the wedding breakfast. Remember, it’s your day and what you want (or need) is what should happen. We have a couple of days at home after the wedding before we go on our honeymoon which will be in Florida. This time is planned for rest. We’ve booked seats on the plane that mean I can lay on the floor when I need to, and we’ve got a few days once we arrive for more recovery time before the main part of our honeymoon starts. We also planned for a few days rest once we return to the UK. Allowing yourself the time to rest both at the wedding and on your honeymoon will reduce the likelihood of a severe flare (I’m not naïve enough to think I won’t have a flare but this is about damage limitation).

04. DIY with caution

I’m a crafty sort of person (the artsy meaning, not the dodgy one) and it’s so tempting to get into wedding craft chaos. I’ll come clean now, we did DIY our invites but this entailed a PC, scrapbooking software and a printer. It wasn’t especially physical. And we took a month doing it all. However, that said, my advice is to be sensible with what you chose to DIY. I would strongly advise against any DIY crafting that you can’t get done well in advance of your big day. You only have so much energy and you need a full supply for the wedding itself. I’m not saying don’t do anything DIY, I’m just advising to DIY with caution and plan lots of time to get things done. The last thing you need is to be stressing or tiring yourself out trying to get things finished in time.

05. Enjoy yourself

You can spend a long time worrying about how much you’re going to hurt and what you’re going to put yourself through on your wedding day. It’s hard not to when you live your life with chronic pain but you have to put that to one side once you’ve planned what you’re going to do. It’s the biggest day of your life, of both of your lives, and it’s only going to happen once (that’s the plan). Whatever happens, however I feel, I’m going to enjoy my wedding day. Fibro can take a lot from us, but we don’t have to let it have everything. Happiness helps you cope with pain, and I’ll be ‘coping’ exceptionally well from happiness on my big day.

I have written this focussed towards weddings but the same advice would hold true for any event you want to plan. We have to put ourselves at the centre of what we plan, not because we’re selfish, but because we want to be able to enjoy part of the event ourselves and for a wedding, if you’re the one getting married, that’s kind of crucial!

Photography credit: Graham Brook

About the author:

Anne was diagnosed with CFS in 2010, and fibromyalgia last June after struggling with chronic pain for five years. She writes about her story on her blog at Dancing through Rainbows. You can also follow Anne on Twitter and Pinterest.