Stressed and excited at the same time? Welcome to wedding planning.

One minute you're excitedly talking about your first dance, and the next you're wondering quite how a conversation about table arrangements has become so complicated!

Wedding planning is a funny old thing. There can be so much joy in imagining the day, choosing all the little details and thinking about celebrating with the people you love. But alongside that excitement, there's often an enormous amount to organise, plenty of decisions to make and, occasionally, a few opinions you weren't expecting.

You might find yourself feeling wonderfully excited about your wedding one day and completely overwhelmed by the planning the next. You might even experience both feelings in the same afternoon.

And actually, when you think about everything a wedding brings together, it's perhaps not surprising that it can feel like such an emotional experience.

Why can wedding planning feel so stressful?

Something I find particularly interesting about wedding planning is that, although we're talking about organising one event, there can be so much more going on beneath the surface.

We're bringing together families, traditions, money, personal values and expectations, sometimes ones we've carried with us for years without giving them much thought. Add in the practicalities of planning a large celebration, and there's quite a lot for two people to navigate.

You might both be equally excited about getting married, but have very different ideas about what the wedding itself might look like. Perhaps one of you has always imagined a big celebration with the whole family, while the other feels much more comfortable with something small and intimate. One of you might love the traditions associated with weddings, while the other is excited by the thought of doing things a little differently.

Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong. What interests me is often where those preferences come from, because our feelings about something like a wedding can be connected to experiences and expectations that go back much further than the engagement itself.

One psychological approach that offers an interesting way of exploring this is Transactional Analysis, or TA, which looks at how we think, feel, communicate and relate to one another.

A little psychology behind the wedding planning

In Transactional Analysis, there's a concept known as ego states. It sounds rather technical, but the idea is actually quite accessible.

TA describes three ego states, known as Parent, Adult and Child. These aren't labels for someone's personality, and they certainly aren't about being mature or immature. They're a way of understanding different patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that we might experience in everyday life.

And I think wedding planning gives us some rather lovely examples of how these can show up.

Of course, we're not neatly operating from one ego state at a time, and the examples above aren't fixed rules. The same conversation might involve several different responses, and TA is simply one way of becoming more curious about them.

For example, you might feel very strongly that a particular wedding tradition needs to be included, even though you've never really considered why it matters to you.

Perhaps it's something you've grown up seeing at family weddings, or an expectation you've absorbed over time. Equally, you might feel a wonderful sense of excitement about choosing the music, planning the celebration or imagining everyone together on the day.

Then, of course, there's the practical side of things. Someone needs to work out whether the budget stretches to that extra course at dinner!

What I like about this way of looking at things is that it gives us an opportunity to notice our responses without immediately deciding that they're good, bad, sensible or unreasonable.

Sometimes there's something interesting to discover simply by asking ourselves where a particular feeling might be coming from.

Finding the enjoyment amongst the wedding planning stress

I think one of the things that can get a little lost during wedding planning is the enjoyment of it all.

There are so many practical things to think about, often alongside work, family commitments and everything else going on in everyday life. Before long, conversations can become a running list of things that need booking, confirming, paying for or chasing up.

Within Transactional Analysis, our Child ego state is associated with qualities such as playfulness, spontaneity and creativity. And when I think about weddings, those are some of the things that can make the experience so special.

There's something lovely about seeing a couple get excited over a song that means something to them, a funny little detail that nobody else will understand or a moment they've imagined sharing together. Those things might not be the biggest decisions on the wedding spreadsheet, but they can carry a great deal of meaning.

It's also worth remembering that there may be times when neither of you feels particularly enthusiastic about another wedding conversation. When so much of your time together is focused on planning one event, it can be easy for the wedding to become the main topic of conversation.

Perhaps there are evenings when you'd much rather go out for dinner, watch a film or spend time together without having to make a single decision. There's something rather nice about remembering that you're still the same two people who enjoyed spending time together before there was a wedding to organise.

Whose expectations are we carrying?

This is probably one of the areas I find most interesting.

We all grow up with different experiences of family, relationships and celebrations. Some of us come from families where traditions are incredibly important. Others may have grown up with a much more relaxed approach to big occasions. And some people may have quite complicated feelings about family involvement for all sorts of reasons.

When two people begin planning a wedding, those different experiences can suddenly become part of the same conversation.

Imagine, for example, that one person feels very strongly about involving their parents in certain decisions, while the other finds that quite difficult to understand. On the surface, it might seem like a disagreement about who gets a say in the wedding. But underneath, there could be two very different experiences of family, independence and belonging.

Looking at this through Transactional Analysis, we might begin to notice some of the messages and expectations we've carried with us from earlier in life.

And I think there's something really valuable in that curiosity.

Sometimes we discover that a tradition means a great deal to us because it connects us to our family or our childhood. Other times, we might realise that something we've always assumed was important doesn't actually feel particularly meaningful to us now.

Neither discovery requires us to change anything. It's simply an opportunity to understand ourselves, and perhaps each other, a little better.

When you both see things differently

Even couples who usually find it easy to make decisions together can discover that wedding planning brings out some quite different priorities.

One of you might be particularly conscious of the budget, while the other is thinking about making the day special for family and friends. One might enjoy having everything organised well in advance, while the other is perfectly comfortable leaving certain decisions until a little later.

And sometimes, what looks like a disagreement about a practical detail may have a much more personal meaning.

For someone who has experienced financial uncertainty, for example, spending a significant amount of money might bring up feelings that go beyond the wedding budget itself. For someone who places enormous importance on family relationships, the guest list might carry a particular emotional significance.

Of course, we can't assume that we know what's behind another person's feelings. Two people might have exactly the same preference for entirely different reasons.

But I wonder whether there's something interesting in approaching these moments with a little curiosity. Rather than concentrating only on the decision in front of you, there might also be an opportunity to understand why it matters to each of you.

That doesn't mean every difference of opinion becomes a deep psychological conversation. Sometimes a table plan really is just a table plan! But occasionally, those everyday discussions can tell us something about how we each experience the world.

A few things you might enjoy talking about together

If any of this has made you curious, there are some lovely conversations that can come out of wedding planning itself.

• What part of the wedding feels most meaningful to each of us?

• Are there any traditions we've always imagined including, and where do those expectations come from?

• What has surprised us about planning together?

• Are there parts of the wedding that feel particularly important to our families?

• What have we enjoyed most about this time in our lives so far?

  
  

There aren't any particular answers to look for. In fact, sometimes the most interesting part is discovering that your partner has a completely different perspective on something you'd never thought to discuss before.

Remembering the relationship amongst the arrangements

Wedding planning can be a wonderful, exciting and occasionally rather stressful time. It brings together so many different parts of our lives, and it's understandable that we might experience a whole mixture of feelings along the way.

I don't think the way a couple plans their wedding tells us how successful their marriage will be. Relationships are far too individual and complex for that, and wedding planning is only one experience amongst the many that two people will share.

What I do think is that this period can offer some really interesting opportunities to get to know one another in different ways.

You might discover something about your partner's relationship with money, their experiences of family, the traditions that matter to them or the things that make them feel particularly excited about the future. You might even learn something about yourself that you hadn't really considered before.

And while there's a great deal of attention on making the wedding day special, I think there's something equally lovely about giving a little attention to the relationship at the centre of it all.

Because amongst the flowers, the food, the guest lists and the seating plans, there are two people preparing to share a life together, and that's a rather wonderful thing to be curious about.

A little space for the conversations that matter

At Twogether, we see marriage preparation as something positive to enjoy together, rather than something couples turn to because there's a problem.

Our psychologically informed programme creates space for six guided conversations about different aspects of your relationship, from communication and family to money, values and the future.

There's no particular way your relationship needs to look, and we're certainly not here to tell you how to be a couple. We're here to offer a thoughtful, supportive space where you can explore the things that matter to you, with the support of a Professional Relationship Expert.