The Lazy Genius Podcast - #205 - How to Lazy Genius a Wedding

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

First things first, you do not have to be planning a wedding to find this episode relevant. This is one of our Lazy Genius Brain episodes where we practice applying Lazy Genius principles to a specific area, even if it isn’t personally applicable. Think of it as getting your reps in how to think like a Lazy Genius. And if you are planning a wedding, well you are in luck. It’s a win for everybody. Helpful Companion Links Find all of the Lazy Genius principles in my book, The Lazy Genius Way (affiliate link). Instagram is where I hang out the most online, so I’d love for you to join me over there @thelazygenius. Our Lazy Genius of the Week is Andrea Buck with her Decide Once gift wish list habit. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 205. How to Lazy Genius a wedding. You do not have to be planning a wedding to find this episode relevant. That is an important place to begin. This episode is one of our lazy genius brain episodes where we practice applying lazy genius principles to a specific area. even if the area is not personally applicable. We're getting in the reps, right, of how to think like a lazy genius, of how to make our brains more teed up to know what principles best fit in a certain situation. And if you are planning a wedding, you are in luck. It is a win for everybody. So in this episode, we're going to walk through all 13 lazy genius principles and apply them specifically to planning a wedding. But the bigger goal here is to practice. Let's jump in. Okay, where do we begin with anything lazy genius? We begin with naming what matters. Always, always. Your plans, your systems, your choices will be less effective if you don't know what matters to you. Now, for sure,

some of us have a hard time naming what matters. But the more you practice in specific situations, even imaginary ones like planning a wedding, you're not going to have, you start to notice what matters to you overall. So start with naming what matters most. Now for planning a wedding, what matters most is probably pretty layered, right? And there are a lot of things to choose from. So what happens when you don't know where to begin? What happens when so much could matter that it's paralyzing? We have started doing this more recently on the podcast, but when you are trying to figure out what matters, try this very simple three-step process. Name what could matter, then what does matter, and finally, what matters most. It is literally just a process of elimination, but it is so, so helpful. So if you are planning a wedding

or doing anything really where the options of what could matter are extensive, and obviously that is very true of a wedding, write down on a piece of paper all the things that could matter. flowers, food, music, photography, the experience of your friends and family, having as little stress as possible, keeping certain family members away from each other, staying in budget, flying people in, the whole thing, having a certain feel, having your wedding in your grandmother's backyard, and that is like no exceptions. So many things could matter. But if you let all of those things matter equally without having any kind of distinction, you will lose it. This is one of the main reasons wedding planning is so stressful. We make everything matter when it

really cannot. So name what could matter and then cross some things out, right? When you look at it all listed out, it's often easier to see what's less than important. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that you ignore those things altogether unless it feels clear that you want to. But really, it's all about prioritizing. We have to name what matters most in order to know how to make decisions that fall in line with what we ultimately want and need. So make your big list of what could matter and start to narrow down to what does. And then you do that hard work of naming what matters most. What one thing is going to direct the ship during this wedding. It will make all the difference. Now, before we start applying the principles, one last thought on naming what matters.

Always ask that question. Always ask what matters most. Every time you're faced with a decision about your wedding that you're unsure about, ask what matters most. If your big picture priority is to stay in budget, that cannot be your only answer to what matters most because you still need to know how to spend the money you have, right? You still need to prioritize within that broader budget priority. And that's the case with a lot of broad priorities, right? Another example, let's say what matters most is that everybody has fun at your wedding. That is like your big thing. Everybody has fun. You're going to obviously pay attention to budget and logistics and all that stuff, but the main point is fun. That's the driver. All right. So now you're at the bakery choosing a wedding cake.

Okay. When you keep that fun priority in mind and you keep asking yourself what matters most here for the cake or whatever it is. You have a clearer vision for even what cake to choose. Is it a nostalgic flavor combo? Like, is that fun? Should the decorations on the cake be really fun and whimsical? You're likely not going to choose, for example, like a classic lemon cake with sugared roses because neither lemon nor classics are generally seen as fun. Now, does that mean a classic lemon cake with sugared roses is bad? No. In fact, that might be the perfect cake. if you want the style priority of your wedding to be classic. But if fun is your priority, it helps direct the ship even in detailed choices,

like what cake you eat. Or if you eat cake at all, you might do wedding pies or ice cream Sundays or something completely different, but incredibly fun. When you name what matters, right? You are in such a better place to make even detailed decisions. Okay, now let's practice applying some principles to your wedding. Again, even if you're not planning a wedding, practicing these principles, it is never a waste. It is never a waste, even if the topic is not in your life right now. All right. So the first principle, decide once. I could pause for 10 seconds,

and every single person listening would come up with a different way to apply this principle. And that is why we love them. That is why these principles are fantastic. Obviously, for all of these, I'm going to share just a couple of ideas, but the point is seeing the principles through your own eyes, not mine. This is not just like a list of ideas. This is a way to see, right? We're all going to see it differently. Okay. So decide once is just making one decision, one time and then letting it carry you so you can stop making decisions. A couple that come to mind for a wedding are a wedding color palette. It can be like a super simple way to narrow down your choices by knowing that if something is not in this palette, you just don't even consider it, right? You could also just make a list of things that you

choose now if you're going to do or not, you know, like engagement photos or thank you cards or having a live band at the reception or having an open bar or doing a gift registry at a bunch of different places, as opposed to one centralized registry. A way to decide once is literally to just go ahead and decide, yes, we're going to do this stuff and no, we're not going to do this stuff. Like just knock out whatever decisions that you can. That is the beauty of that principle for any situation. The next principle is start small. This feels very important for a big thing like a wedding. Go ahead and prioritize the categories like we just talked about when we were talking about naming what matters. That could be a really helpful way to start small. Even if it's not in your like traditional wedding planning book,

you can, what's another way to start small? You can ask your folks like if they're paying for your wedding, what their budget is, or if you know, you're paying for the wedding, you figure out what your budget is. That's a great way to start small. You can pick the month you want to get married. Not like a specific date yet, but maybe you just narrow down to the month. Start small the entire time, really. It is just the best way to not get overwhelmed. Always think, okay, I can start small. I don't have to figure all this out right now. Start small. Third principle, ask the magic question, which is, what can I do now to make life easier later? And obviously you can substitute any word for the word life that it's relevant for your situation. So what can I do now to make the wedding day itself easier or later?

You can hire a coordinator for the day, right? What can you do now to make stuffing wedding invitation envelopes easier later? Go ahead and pick a date for that. Plan a movie night where you hang out with your pals and you do it all at the same time. What can you do now to make choosing a dress easier or later? go ahead and get your measurements done, narrow down your budget for the dress. Get on Pinterest and make a board of what you do and don't like of wedding dresses. What can you do now to make the schedule easier later?

I will share a quick personal story for that one. So I got married when I was 20 years old. This year will be our 19th wedding anniversary. We are very happy. I do not recommend getting married that early though. Anyway, even as a very perfectionistic 20-year-old, I still knew that I needed the day to be really smooth. I knew that if other people were not stressed, I would not be stressed and I would have a better time. So I made a wedding weekend schedule. I loosely

assigned times to things. I reverse engineered all of it, all the details, like who was going to take the flower arrangements from the ceremony location to the reception location and when that should happen. I thought through every detail I could. I put it all on a timeline. And then I highlighted the parts of the schedule that were relevant to each person and I gave them their own schedule. So everybody had the same schedule, but they all had different things highlighted. It helped everyone know what was happening, what was expected of them and when, where everyone else would be. And I'm not kidding. The day went off without a hitch. It was the best thing ever. It's like one of my greatest achievements. But I only did that because that mattered to me. A stress-free day was like top priority. So I magic

questioned the smoothness of the day with a highlighted personal schedule for everyone that I did an advance, right? Quick sidebar. This is again why principles work better than a list of bulleted ideas, right? If I told you to have a highlighted schedule for everyone, but the result of that does not matter to you, all you see is another task you're supposed to accomplish, which is not helpful, especially with a wedding where there are plenty of tasks to choose from. You don't need more. You don't need me to tell you how to plan your wedding. We are here right now to help you think about how you can plan your wedding, right? Because you're the only one who can. And that's true for all kinds of situations. You're the best person to figure this out. We're just talking about tools

that can help you do it in a way that centers whatever matters most to you. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, I got to pick up the pace. I'm so sorry.

Principle number four. Live in the season. The season of being engaged and planning a wedding is busy. It just is. Accepting that helps a lot. To help in that season, some things will have to be let go, right? Maybe it's a season of more takeout because you're busy. Or maybe it's a season of making more food at home slowly because you are busy.

And the cooking helps you settle from the overwhelm of all the planning, right? You name it. Whatever you need to help you live in the season, do it. But pay attention to the fact that it is a season. And it won't always be like this. Principle five is build the right routine. Remember that a lazy genius routine isn't about the five steps you do in a certain order, but about where you want those steps to take you. A routine is an on-ramp or an off-ramp to something specific. So for example, you could create like a little routine for when you're entering planning mode. You could play a certain song, like going to the chapel or something. You could get a specific latte or tea that is your special planning drink and you will always remember that is your special

planning drink. You can have a mantra where you just remember why you love the person you're marrying or you remember that your family has good intentions and sharing all of their ideas with you and you breathe out the resentment that is trying to settle in because of all that pressure and all those voices. A routine is literally just knowing what energy you want around something and then making a choice that leads you to it. Principle 6. House rules. What are some rules you could put in place that will keep things from falling like a house of cards? Some examples. Don't ask the couple any logistical questions on the wedding day. Done. You know? Have a desisting.

designated question answerer instead. That is not the couple. Ask your friends and family to ask you, like close people who are involved in the whole process, have them ask you, hey, would you like to hear an idea I have about this thing rather than just giving you ideas about things that you might not want, right? Maybe you have a house rule where the same person is always in charge of one particular thing, like bringing the wedding planning notebook to every appointment or bring in snacks or whatever it is. Principle 7. Put everything in its place. Maybe you have a designated room or area in your home where all wedding things go, like forever and always. That way you're not wondering where you put something, right? You could just put everything in one place. You could put everything like all the planning stuff in a singular

notebook or in the head of your wedding planner that you hire. That is a great way to put everything in its place. You can also, you can also put expectations in their place. Are your expectations? Are your expectations kind of out of bounds? Are they unrealistic? Are they not being honored? Put those in their proper place of importance or even unimportance. Principle eight, let people in. Weddings are like the letting people in Olympics, you guys. Like you have to ask for help. You have to share your stress. You need to have friends to vent to. You need to have friends to celebrate with. And I just want to encourage you to not ever feel weird asking a friend for help outside of weddings even don't ever feel weird asking a friend for help unless that friend obviously does not like respect your boundaries or is toxic or whatever which

you know you're probably not really asking them for their help anyway but like across the board don't feel weird asking for help even if it's you know it's like not like for example okay this is the example comes to mind when I got married there were a couple of friends who I loved and I wanted them to be part of my day somehow. but they were not close enough to be bridesmaids, right? That's kind of the tricky thing, is if you ask people for help, but it's not like the quote unquote top help, are they offended? Well, here's the thing.

Cause and I wanted small bridal parties. I only have four bridesmaids. So I had these two friends. I asked them if they would bring me and the other bridesmaids, smoothies from our local favorite smoothie place, the juice shop, if you're local, you know about the juice shop. They did. And it was so fun to see them before the ceremony.

Like they hung out in the room with us for a while with me and the bridesmaids. We all got to eat something so we would not faint because the wedding was at 2 o'clock. You know, and it's not like we're having a big lunch or whatever. Sometimes we just let things like that keep us from asking people to help because it just feels like a task. And also do they feel bad because they're not bridesmaids? But these two girls would never have expected to be my bridesmaids. I know that for sure.

But they were buddies and it was fun to have them be part of that day. They were the smoothie crew, right? It was fun. It was very simple, but it was still super special. Let people in. Let people in. Principle 9. Batch it. This is doing the same task all at once, right? So stuffing wedding invitations is an obvious way to batch stuff. You don't do it one at a time. Writing thank you notes all at once could be helpful. Putting together, you know, wedding favors and stuff like that. If you're doing those, you could batch running errands, even making decisions. You know, like you keep a running list. Whoever is sort of helping you keep track of what decisions that you have to make for your wedding.

You just keep a running list and then like every couple days or at one point during every day or whenever your interval needs to be, that's when you make your decisions. You don't just go in and out, in and out, in and out of making all this decisions. You could save whatever task. You don't want to spread out any task at all. And you just do it all at once. principle 10 essentialize this is naming what matters and then getting rid of what's in the way of that so for planning a wedding you might essentialize the people who are giving input in decision making i don't know maybe you have too many too many cooks in the kitchen maybe you have extra photos on your Pinterest board you were like pinning like crazy wildly wildly pinning photos and now

you have so many that are not really part of the story anymore but they're in the way of finding the ones that you do need. So you could just sort of get rid of some of those. You can essentialize those. Maybe you need to essentialize your energy because you're suddenly trying to optimize every single aspect of your wedding and you need to let efficiency go in certain areas, right? What matters and then what is in the way. Get rid of what is in the way. Principle 11. Go in the right order. The right order is always, name what matters, calm the crazy and then trust yourself with what needs to come next. This is actually like just a really good check-in principle when you're starting to feel overwhelmed.

When things are feeling crazy, you can use this for everything. Just go in the right order. Go, okay, what matters right now? What matters right now? Name that thing and then say, how can I calm the crazy that I'm feeling? What one thing can I do to calm the crazy that I'm feeling? You don't have to fix everything. You don't have to address everything.

Just calm the crazy. Once that crazy is calmed, then you can look and have a more calm way of looking going, all right, what comes next? And then trust yourself with whatever you choose. Principle 12. Schedule rest. Plan it in. Take days off of wedding planning. Try and have an off ramp. Even from your honeymoon, I think, when you're resting at home, like if you do go on a honeymoon, maybe you have like a cutoff time at night, like as you're planning your weddings and stuff when you're doing all your wedding stuff. Maybe it's like once nine o'clock hits, shut it down. No more decisions, nothing wedding related.

You read a book. You watch a show. You do something non-wedding, right? Schedule rest. And then principle 13, be kind to yourself. You do not have to get this perfect. You will be stressed. And that is okay. You're worth getting married to. I mean, there are so many janky things that go through our minds during big events, right? especially ones that are, I don't know, that feel more or less like life defining. So this is a very, very important time to be kind to yourself. And the kinder we are to ourselves about our own shortcomings and struggles and insecurities, the kinder we are to others about theirs, which definitely comes in handy when stress levels are likely pretty high for more people than just you if you're planning a wedding.

and that is how to lazy genius a wedding or anything right you start with what matters and then you literally run through the entire list of principles and see what sticks if you have not if you not read the lazy genius way which is the book that holds more detailed descriptions and ideas for all 13 of these principles maybe that could be your start small maybe if you're planning a wedding reading more about these principles if you're new to them it could be a great lens as you begin the planning. I, oh my word, I super wish I'd had all of these principles named when I got married, you know, 19 years ago or whatever. They just help you know, they help you know what to search on Pinterest. They help you know where you need to DIY things and what you want to splurge on. Like,

you don't need an internet full of ideas. You need a lens to help you find the right ideas for you and what you need. Every idea has really been named already. You just need a lens to sift through on and pick through what you need. You don't need to get what everyone else says that you need. So I hope that if you are planning a wedding, that this was helpful. This was a helpful start. And also I think it's just good for all of us to, you know, like we said, flex our lazy genius muscles and start to make our brain think about these things more and more. These principles impact everything. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate our lazy genius of the week. It is Andrea Buck, shared on Instagram that she has created a Decide Once gift list on Amazon. So when she finds a great

decide once gift for any age group or occasion or whatever, she puts it on a specific wish list so that when it's time to buy a gift for a baby shower or a kid's birthday party, she just goes to that list. She sees the Decide Once idea that she has found that she's going to get for every baby shower or every kid's birthday party or whatever. And she gets that gift. Beautiful. I love that idea so much. I actually shared a similar idea on IGTV last week. I did a live where I shared about how I kind of like keep up with my TBR, my TBR Red list, but also about checking for deals for Kindles where I have like a TBR list. And so all the prices are always there.

And I can see if something is, you know, $1.99 instead of $11.99, which is so great. So anyway, be sure to follow me on Instagram at The Lazy Genius. So you can see that video and so many more things. and that is also where I find my lazy geniuses of the week. So I would love for you to follow me there. It is most definitely my favorite place to hang out on the internet. So congratulations, Andrea. I don't know if that's the right word. Congratulations. It feels sort of weird. But I'm so thankful for you. You're always very generous in your shares of the lazy genius way and encouraging others how to think about these principles and ways that are helpful to them. So I appreciate you. I appreciate all of you who are

listening. This is such a fantastic group of people. I love y'all so much. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough.

Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.