Pre-Wedding Jitters: Is Your Mind Telling You to Bail Out?

You’re about to marry a beautiful Filipina – the love of your life.

You vividly remember the day she said yes as the happiest day of your life so far. But the more you’re inching closer to D-Day, the more your mind gets restless and clouded with questions and hesitations.

Are you really ready to give up your life as a single?

Now, the thought of walking down the aisle feels similar to how you’d think walking down a tightrope is: scary and nerve wracking. It has become something you’d want to back out of even before you’ve started.

This is what you call wedding jitters, or feeling extremely nervous before and by the thought of your marriage.

Why does it happen?

1. Wedding day

You could feel uneasy just thinking of the wedding day. After all, that one day when all of your family members and friends gather can be very stressful.

What if there was a miscount and not enough space for everyone? What if you’d mess up your vows? What if that one annoying family member ruins the whole day? — A lot can go wrong during this day, and most of them you really can’t control.

2. Not having a plan

This isn’t just about the whole wedding ceremony, rather what’s to come after.

You’re now moving into your own house (assuming you haven’t), and building a family. With all this, you need to talk things through with your partner.

Do both of you want kids? When do you want to have kids? Where do you want to live? You have all these things to consider. And if you haven’t talked this through before, it can be a source of pressure and jitters.

In relationships, when you love each other, it can be easy to brush these aside at first under the pretense that “everything will work out.”

But in relationships, here’s an honest dose of reality: More common than not, it doesn’t always work out well. Especially if you don’t plan and prepare for things beforehand.

3. Feeling inadequate or incompetent

Marriage is a huge responsibility. It’s THE stepping stone to building a new life and family.

Once you slip your rings on each other’s fingers, you’re no longer separate individuals, rather a unit. You need to be there for each other, offer each other help and provide for each other’s needs.

Sometimes, and perhaps out of pressure, you might end up thinking and feeling inadequate for your partner. As though you won’t be able to do enough for them, or that you would be completely useless in the relationship.

Worries like these about your future are a few of the most common reasons why people experience wedding jitters.

How do you handle it?

1. Write down your fears, and everything that is giving you stress and anxiety

It may seem like a useless thing to do. But once you read whatever you’ve written, you might realize how small of an issue they actually are.

Not only that, but this will also give you an opportunity to prioritize your problems and work through them orderly. You can also try and list down possible solutions for these.

If you’re having trouble juggling everything – from planning the event to preparing your vows, you can write everything you need to do, consider which one is the most important thing to do and come up with a solution for them.

For instance, you can consider hiring a planner to help you prepare for both the wedding ceremony and the reception. With the free time you’re going to get from this, you can work on making your vows.

2. Designate at least days of the week wherein you and your partner won’t talk about the wedding

For some Filipinos, wedding preparations can last for a month or so. Feeling anxious, stressed and uneasy for that long can break you as a person.

It’s important that you don’t let the process of planning consume you. Have days where you can let go of things, lay your mind off what needs to be done and relax.

A single day or two break won’t be too detrimental to your wedding. In fact, the time you have gone away and taken a breather won’t only let you rest but can actually help your mind come up with more ideas.

3. Ask around for successful couples

If your parents are happily married, or if you know of people who are, you can talk to them and ask them about their own experience.

It’s best to hear about other people’s success because then you’ll believe you can do it too. If they rose above their nerves and still managed to have a successful wedding ceremony and marriage, then you can use their stories to boost your morale.

4. Revisit your relationship with your partner.

You’re moving forward into a new phase of your relationship. It’s going to be filled with a lot of trial and error when it comes to your new responsibilities as a married couple.

With this, things can be very uncertain and intimidating for both of you.

But instead of concentrating on being scared of what’s to come, you can shift your focus to the good things you’ve both been through before. Look back at the things you’ve achieved and issues you’ve surpassed in the past. This will help you realize that you can work through this as well.

It’s absolutely normal to feel nervous or uneasy before your wedding.

After all, you’re taking a big step into your relationship, and things are going to change.

However, you need to remember that just because you’re feeling uneasy now, it doesn’t mean your marriage is bound to fail. In fact, experiencing wedding jitters can be extremely beneficial for you.

Feeling uneasy means you’re detecting that something is bad or missing, whether it’s solely about your wedding ceremony or relationship in general. And figuring out the reason behind this will lead to a stronger and healthier marriage.

Experiencing and dealing with pre-wedding jitters always feels tricky but it isn’t your mind’s way of telling you that you’re making a bad decision. More often than not, it's to tell you that there are things needed to be sorted out before you can proceed.