Tuesday Tips: How To Catch That Much-Needed Beauty Rest the Night Before Your Wedding

Photo by Feather & Stone Photography

Tomorrow is the big day! You’ve been dreaming about it for years, and planning it for months. Now that your wedding day is on your doorstep, you’re probably feeling a mix of exhaustion, anxiety, and excitement. But if you find that you just can’t get to sleep, there are a few things you can try to get your body to go to sleep.

Some relaxing options include journaling, creating a calming environment for yourself, and meditating.

You should try to create a comfortable environment for yourself as much as you can, even if you're in an unfamiliar hotel room. Find yourself an essential oil, pillow spray, candle or lotion that has a calming scent. Some scents that are found to be soothing include lavender, chamomile, bergamot, jasmine, rose, and sandalwood. Adding just a hint to the room will help your brain chill out.

Also, you should try and turn the heat down in the room you’re staying in. Scientists recommend keeping the temperature between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit when you’re trying to sleep. The rapid decrease in temperature can help to trigger your body’s natural impulses to sleep when it’s cooler.

It may also help to put a physical barrier between you and all of the wedding stuff that has yet to be done. Just putting it in the closet instead of having it on the nightstand could help you get that much needed beauty sleep!

If that isn’t enough to help you get catch some Z's, try grabbing a piece of paper. Journaling is an incredibly useful exercise when you can’t get your thoughts to stop racing long enough to fall asleep. Pull out a piece of paper - which can be anything from a leftover invitation to an actual notebook to the hotel stationary - and write down everything that’s going through your head. Put it all down, even the ridiculous stuff that you know isn’t true, and get it off of your mind until you can do something about it tomorrow.

You should end this exercise by writing down all of the good things that have happened today, and the things you’re excited about for tomorrow. After all, it’s supposed to be the first day of the rest of your life. You should start off at a high!

If you’re still struggling to calm down, meditation might be something that will help you. Meditation is useful for easing anxiety throughout your whole body and has been found to be incredibly effective. You can even do it from bed! A memory foam mattress that conforms to your body may feel particularly cozy for meditating.

For those who haven’t tried meditation before, The New York Times has a guide. Meditating can help you to focus on your breathing or the movements of particular parts of your body to bring your mind to the present.

Deep breathing exercises are a major component of meditation and help calm all of the physical effects of our anxiety, from tight muscles to a racing heartbeat. It can also help you get better sleep once you can fall asleep.

If you still can’t get to sleep, try talking to your partner about what’s causing you anxiety. That’s part of the reason you’re marrying them!

What's In Our File: Maria + Oscar

You may have caught a couple of snaps on our Instagram of our couple Maria and Oscar's wedding day in Palm Springs, but before we share a little more from their wedding we thought it might be fun to take you behind the scenes!  

One of our favorite ways to get the design process started after we've met with our couple is to create a vision board.  Vision boards help us develop our concept and share with our couples the key elements that we would suggest using to really create a one of kind personalized unique design for their story.  Each couple gets their own board, and like snowflakes - no two are alike! 

Maria and Oscar's love story is one for the books.  Ten years after dating briefly in high school they reconnected, dated for seven months and knew they didn't want to spend any more time apart so they secretly eloped!  They kept this secret for five whole years before finally sharing it with their friends and family.  We really wanted to capture that romance on their wedding day, so we decided to mix elements that played to Maria's love for both her whimsical and bohemian side while also giving a nod to the desert landscape where their wedding would take place.  To bring the romance, we loved the idea of mixing moody deep shades of burgundy and wine watercolors with earthy tones and textures layered upon clean creamy whites.  Adding just the right amount of elegance to their table settings, we were inspired by gold metallic elements such as goblets and flatware and suggested custom Moroccan fabric runners that could add an additional depth to the design!  For our dessert loving duo, we had big plans for this course at their wedding that gave a nod to their love of sweets and Oscar's career as a police officer.  Can you guess where that took us?  

We can't wait to share how we incorporated even more personal elements from Maria and Oscar's love story into their wedding day.  Be sure to check back soon!

Real Wedding: Timing is Everything

We are so honored to have Noel and Cameron's beautiful day featured on Style Me Pretty today! Their wedding was a timeless, romantic affair in a palette of blush and grey, draped with foliage by Toast Events and captured dreamily by Diana McGregor. One of the things Cameron adored most about Noel was her impeccable memory. We wove this theme of memory and time throughout all the details at their wedding. At the sign-in, guests left a favorite memory of time spent with the couple, next to a sign reading, “I walk down memory lane because I love running into you.” Guests found their seats among hourglasses of all shapes and sizes, in front of a “timing is everything” backdrop we created in-house.

The mother of the bride orchestrated the perfect surprise with a confetti cannon timed just right during their first dance to “That’s All” by Michael Bublé. After an evening of delicious dining, heartfelt speeches, and refills from the Italian soda bar, we sent off the sweet couple with a sparkling exit to their getaway car. We’re so happy these two found each other at the right time – timing really is everything!