How Holistic Wellness Practices Can Help During Wedding Planning, Your Big Day, and Onwards

I was the easy-going bride until I wasn’t.

I’d describe myself as a hard worker, someone who values friendships and wanted to have a wedding that was beautiful, intimate, and magical.

Hi, I’m Kimberly Blair, and I’m the Founder and lead practitioner at The Guides Holistic Therapies in San Diego, California. Here’s my story about being a bride who developed a serious health condition during the planning process and how, as a wellness provider, I would have done differently if I could do it all over again.

I’ve heard about those so-called horror stories about planning your wedding, and they even made a movie about it called Bridesmaids that I thoroughly enjoy rewatching to this day; never did I think that this story would apply to me. It got to a point where the stress that led to anger, which led to grief, would all tumble together. I’d walk away from the wedding experience with a diagnosis of a stress-induced autoimmune disease, which led to me taking a leave of absence from work and undergoing radioactive iodine treatment that completely destroyed my thyroid and the relationship that I had with my physical, emotional, and energetic bodies.

Background on who I was when I got married: I was in my 30s, in a completely different career working in the tech industry, and had been dating my then-fiance for two years. We had a platonic friendship two years prior; it's true what they say, marry your best friend. And yes, in case you’re wondering, we made it through the wedding planning process and the big day (and will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year)!

Throughout the wedding planning process, there were moments—some unexpected, some overwhelming—that tested my well-being. Rather than dwelling on the grievances, mishaps, and dramas that seemed to unfold around me, I’ve chosen to reframe those experiences. Looking back, I recognize the need for a more centred approach, and as a multi-modality practitioner with expertise in clinical hypnotherapy, grief counselling, breathwork, reiki, and sound therapy, I’ve developed tools and advice to navigate these moments with empowered ease.

Working with brides and grooms through these unique stressors—often interwoven with the emotions of planning a wedding and the actual wedding day—has been deeply rewarding. Each time I support a couple, I tap into the wisdom I’ve gained from my own experiences, each session completed healing the overwhelmed bride I once was.

My hope here is to offer insight and guidance to anyone facing similar challenges, encouraging them to manage their emotions in a way that prevents the breaking point I once reached—a moment where the stress and unresolved emotions became so overwhelming that I found myself in the emergency room, almost facing a stroke due to cumulative stress, anxiety, anger, and grief.

Now, through my work as a practitioner, I approach these moments with intentionality and compassion. Take what makes sense for you:

Managing Expectations and Navigating Conflict

Let’s get to the heart of the matter and explore the root cause—spoiler alert, it was me. It was my inability to establish and maintain boundaries, assert myself when things weren’t right, and address others when their behaviour crossed the line.

Looking back almost a decade later, I can see a glaring red flag I overlooked: most of my bridesmaids were fire signs. Uh-oh!

What to Do When Your Bridesmaids Don’t Get Along

One-on-One Conversations: Start with individual conversations. Keep them brief, direct, and kind. It’s essential to communicate clearly how their behaviour is impacting you and the wedding experience. Remember, being clear is kind.
Address Issues Quickly: At the first sign of unacceptable behaviour, address it calmly once emotions have settled. Quick intervention prevents small issues from escalating into larger conflicts that you must continually tend to.
Group Discussions: If infighting persists, and it’s safe to do so, bring everyone together for a group conversation. Establish clear expectations for roles and responsibilities, ensuring everyone understands their part in the process.
Setting Boundaries: If individuals continue to push boundaries and ignore your wishes, it may be time to reevaluate their role in the wedding. Cutting ties may be uncomfortable, but looking back, it’s a step I wish I had taken sooner to save time, energy, and heartache.
Empowerment Through Hypnotherapy: One tool I wish I had incorporated earlier is hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can effectively reprogram the mind to approach difficult conversations confidently and clearly. Addressing subconscious beliefs and emotional patterns helps navigate challenging interactions with a clearer, more balanced mindset.

Identifying the Root Cause

Hypnotherapy helps uncover subconscious fears, insecurities, or past experiences that may contribute to avoiding or fearing confrontation. For instance, fears such as rejection, feeling unheard, or a sense of inadequacy can surface during challenging conversations.

Reframing Negative Beliefs: Through guided suggestions, hypnotherapy replaces unhelpful thought patterns like “I’m not capable” or “This will end poorly” with empowering ones such as “I am calm, confident, and capable of expressing myself” or “I can communicate effectively while maintaining my boundaries.”
Rehearsing Positive Scenarios: In a deeply relaxed state, hypnotherapy helps mentally rehearse conversations in a confident and composed manner. Visualizing positive outcomes reinforces your ability to stay focused and calm, even when emotions run high.
Building Emotional Resilience: Hypnotherapy strengthens emotional resilience by teaching you to stay grounded in the face of disappointment. You learn to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively, maintaining self-assurance regardless of how others may react.
Boosting Self-Esteem and Assertiveness: Through affirmations and suggestions such as “My feelings and opinions are valid” and “I handle challenging situations with grace,” hypnotherapy helps build confidence in advocating for yourself.
Enhancing Communication Skills: Sessions focus on enhancing clarity, empathy, and assertiveness, enabling you to express your thoughts in a way that is both firm and compassionate, reducing unnecessary conflict.

Hypnotherapy not only prepares your mind for the specific conversation, but also fosters a lasting mindset shift, empowering you to handle future challenges with confidence and poise.

How To Manage Anger

This brings us to the next point—there is healthy anger, a signal that something isn’t right and a boundary has been crossed, which absolutely needs to be expressed instead of shoved down and taking the hot potato approach. However, what happens when that line is crossed repeatedly by multiple people, causing your ability to manage this emotion to become compromised?

Yelling or reacting with outbursts is not a solution that promotes your well-being, the well-being of your partner, or contributes to the enjoyable, memorable life event you envisioned. Essentially, the stress pathways in your brain become deeply ingrained, making it easier for anger and stress signals to activate.

Anger Hurts Your Health

It’s not just your mental state that suffers; prolonged anger can have lasting effects on your physical health.

Long-term anger can lead to:

● Increased risk of cardiovascular problems

● Weakened immune system, increasing vulnerability to illness

● Digestive issues

● Difficulty falling and staying asleep, which can exacerbate emotional reactivity

Don’t let anger take control of your experience and potentially lead to future health complications. The solution lies in conscious connected breathwork, a practice I deeply wish I had known about during the wedding planning process.

Here’s why it will serve you:

Releases Built-Up Tension: Breathwork helps release both physical and emotional tension that accumulates during the stress of wedding planning, leaving you feeling lighter and more centred.
Manages Frustration: It provides a healthy outlet for processing and letting go of frustration, reducing reactive behaviours, and promoting a calmer state of mind.
Increases Emotional Clarity: Breathwork enhances self-awareness, allowing you to identify and address the root causes of anger, rather than projecting it onto others.
Promotes Relaxation: Deep, conscious breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to calm the body and mind during high-pressure moments.
Improves Communication: By soothing emotions, breathwork fosters better communication with your partner, family, and vendors, ensuring harmonious interactions.

When seeking the right practitioner in your area, look for those trained in conscious connected, holotropic, or transformational breathwork. These specialized practitioners can be rare to find. While virtual sessions can still be impactful, I personally prefer in-person experiences, as they allow for a deeper exploration of the modality’s nuances.

What About Grief?

There’s a powerful quote from C.S. Lewis that resonates deeply with me: “I sat with anger long enough until she told me her real name is grief.” Whether it’s losing a friendship, feeling disappointment, or managing the heartache when a loved one can't be there, grief can touch many aspects of life, especially during significant events like your wedding.

Did you know that grief encompasses more than 40 different life events? It isn’t solely associated with death; grief can arise from a variety of experiences and emotions accumulated over time.

Wedding planning, for many, becomes a collection of smaller grief events—disappointments, unmet expectations, and the bittersweet moments that are often quietly endured. Like me, you may push through these emotions, but it’s important to remember that you have the right to uncover, process, and integrate your grief.

Allowing yourself space to experience and heal these emotions can lead to deeper healing and acceptance during this transformative time. It also allow you to show up to the wedding day, gaining emotional completion around any grief that has come up.

Grieving the Loss of Friendships: As your life changes, friendships may shift or drift apart, leaving you mourning connections that once felt solid. During my wedding planning, I had an experience where bridesmaids were infighting the majority of the time, and at the last minute one of them decided to drop out, leaving me disappointed with the situation because of all the time and energy spent on trying to diminish the drama between the two of them. The friendship took a hit, and we didn’t speak for years, so it has taken years to rebuild our relationship.
Loss of Sense of Self: Planning a wedding can feel incredibly overwhelming, as it’s easy to lose sight of your individuality amidst the expectations and demands of others. It can become overwhelming and confusing when everyone seems to have an opinion about every detail. For myself, I struggled with setting clear boundaries and allowing others' constant input to feel overwhelming rather than empowering.
Grieving the Change from Being Single: Even in the excitement of commitment, letting go of your single identity can bring up feelings of loss or nostalgia.
The Absence of Loved Ones: Whether due to distance, estrangement, or the loss of a loved one, the grief of not having certain people present on your special day can feel deeply heavy. I remember a bride whose maid of honour became pregnant and couldn’t fully participate, and grieving her absence was an essential part of the process. For many clients, the loss of a father who won’t be walking them down the aisle is a heartbreaking reality. Navigating this grief in a healthy and supportive way is crucial if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Grief Over Unmet Expectations: If things don’t go as planned or the reality of your wedding differs from your dreams, it can spark sadness or guttural disappointment.

The Wedding Speech

The fear of public speaking is so prevalent that studies show people fear it more than death itself. In fact, according to research, public speaking is ranked as the number one fear, with death coming in at seventh. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that approximately 73% of people experience some level of anxiety about public speaking, ranging from mild nervousness to full-blown glossophobia (the fear of public speaking).

Enter Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)—the language of the mind, where connections between thoughts and behaviours are explored. I like to think of the subconscious as your quiet ally, and utilizing NLP tools is like calling upon that ally to serve you during moments of need, such as a wedding speech.

One of my personal favourites, and a tool I use regularly with clients, is the NLP anchor—a resource state associated with physical touch, like the left thumb and index finger. By intentionally creating positive anchors, you can access feelings of confidence, calm, or any desired emotional state you wish to bring to your wedding speech.

This modality can be facilitated by clinical hypnotherapists either in person or virtually. It’s a powerful tool that can be maintained, or ‘stacked,’ by reinforcing the anchor with consistent use, strengthening the connection between the anchor and your desired emotional state. Remember, an anchor only works if you use it.

Think of it like training for a marathon—if you only practice once or twice before the race, your performance will likely suffer. The same applies to training your mind and using your anchor. Trust me, it works!

Overall Health and Wellness

One of my all-time favourite practices dates back centuries—traditional Chinese medicine, with its profound wisdom in addressing many different health challenges through acupuncture. After undergoing radioactive iodine treatment, my endocrinologist prescribed 13 medications daily to manage my symptoms. Thirteen pills a day served as a constant reminder that my body had betrayed me, that I was sick, and that I could no longer rely on my own strength. I was grieving and angry.

It was during this challenging time that I tried acupuncture for the first time. Living each day with that level of medication and emotional weight felt unbearable. I also explored fire cupping to detox my body, releasing both the physical and emotional toll it had endured. Within a month, I returned to my endocrinologist’s office for routine labwork, and she was astonished to see my levels improving dramatically. When I shared that acupuncture was the primary intervention, I was fortunate to have a Western doctor who acknowledged its value and encouraged me to continue alongside the medication management she provided.

In time, I reduced my medication from 13 pills a day to just three.

This experience deepened my belief in the power of acupuncture, and I wholeheartedly encourage anyone reading this to research acupuncturists in your area. Acupuncture can address a wide range of concerns—stress, grief, anger, overthinking, pain, fertility, beauty, and much more. While community acupuncture settings are cost-effective, my personal experience has shown that one-on-one sessions provide the most advantageous results. In a private setting, you receive individualized attention tailored specifically to your needs, ensuring a more thorough and impactful session.

***

Reflecting on my wedding journey and encouraging a reframe of the experience years later as I write this article, I realize that without facing these significant challenges—like losing my health—I wouldn’t be where I am today in my career. I wouldn’t have jumped off the tech industry path and faithfully pivoted into serving others within the holistic wellness realm.

The wisdom I’ve gleaned from these experiences, including navigating a less-than-ideal wedding planning process, has shaped my ability to support others through their own challenges. My hope is that this insight helps you navigate your own wedding experience with intention, ensuring your needs are met and that those around you are supportive and understanding. This is your time to experience joy and create beautiful memories. If challenges arise (spoiler alert, they probably will), addressing them early on allows you to focus your energy on creating one of the most memorable and joyous days of your life, without sacrificing your wellness.

So, as you plan, remember to breathe it all in, let go of what doesn’t serve—cherish the moments, appreciate all the intentional effort, and take time to absorb the beauty of the wedding day as it quickly unfolds. And if you’re anything like me, it felt like a blink of an eye, and it was over, take the pauses, take it all in, move slowly, gracefully, and joyfully.