You’ve scrolled Pinterest until your eyes glazed over. You’ve argued about chair rentals. You’ve said “I don’t know, what do you think?” approximately forty-seven times this week. Wedding planning burnout is real, and it doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful or bad at this. It means you’re human, drowning in decisions that somehow all feel urgent and none of them feel like you anymore.
Its OK to step away from the spreadsheets once in a while, in fact its very necessary to keep yourselves sane! When you’re burnt out, you make worse decisions or you pick the easy or safe option because you’re too exhausted to fight for the weird one you actually love.
These seven activities take 20 to 45 minutes, require minimal supplies, and zero craft expertise. They’re not about adding to your to do list or trying to make something perfect. They will help you decompress, focus on something else and remember why you’re doing this in the first place.
1. The Real-Life Palette Hunt
Time: 20 minutes
What you need: Your eyes, your closet, your home
Forget colour swatches. Walk around your actual life, your wardrobe, your bookshelf, that corner of the kitchen you both love, and pull five colours that feel like you as a couple. Maybe it’s the burnt orange of his favourite jacket, the deep green of your houseplants, the brass of your vintage lamp.
Make it alt: Include one “ugly” colour you both secretly love. Mustard. Rust. That weird mauve that doesn’t really go with anything.
2. The Soundtrack Swap
Time: 30 minutes
What you need: Spotify, headphones
Separately, each of you picks five songs: one for the ceremony, one for dinner, one for the last dance, one that’s “so us it’s embarrassing,” and one wildcard. Then swap and talk through your choices. You’ll learn something. You might cry. You’ll definitely argue about whether that one song is actually romantic or just sad.
Make it alt: Add a “song we’d never play but secretly want to” category (and then seriously consider including it).
3. Guestbook Art Night
Time: 45 minutes
What you need: Watercolours or acrylics, thick paper or postcards
Paint postcards or small cards that guests can sign on the day. They don’t need to be good. They need to be yours. Abstract splodges, bad portraits of your dog, colour blocks, whatever. The point is making something together that becomes part of your wedding without anyone grading your technique.
Make it alt: Paint each other (badly) and use them as your table numbers.
4. The Heritage Menu Moodboard
Time: 30 minutes
What you need: Paper, pens, your memories
Forget “wedding appropriate” food for a second. Write down your favourite comfort foods, dishes from your families’ backgrounds, the meal you’d request on death row, your ideal 2am snack. Your wedding menu doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to taste like something you’d actually want to eat.
Make it alt: Include one dish that’s an inside joke. Mac and cheese because of that road trip. Onion rings from your first date.
5. Fandom Table Names
Time: 20 minutes
What you need: A list of things you actually love
Ditch “Table 1, Table 2.” Name your tables after things that mean something: albums, films, gigs you’ve been to together, comic book characters, cities you’ve visited, books you’ve both read. It’s a tiny detail that makes your reception feel like your space, not a generic event.
Make it alt: Mix fandoms shamelessly. Tolkien meets Tarantino meets that weird podcast you’re both obsessed with.
6. Ceremony Micro-Vows
Time: 30 minutes
What you need: Paper, pen, tissues (probably)
No pressure to write your full vows. Just three lines each, starting with: “I promise to…” Don’t edit, don’t overthink, don’t worry about what sounds “wedding-y.” This isn’t for anyone else. It’s a reset on why you’re doing this, and it might become the foundation for the real thing later.
Make it alt: Write one vow that’s deliberately stupid. “I promise to always let you control the thermostat.”
7. The No-Pinterest Vibe Check
Time: 20 minutes
What you need: Honesty, maybe alcohol
Sit down together and ask: “What have we added to our wedding because we actually want it, and what have we added because it looked good online?” Be brutal. If the answer to “do we actually care about this?” is “not really,” cross it off. You just freed up budget, time, and mental energy.
Make it alt: Replace one “should” with one “want.” Ditch the traditional cake for a dessert table. Skip the bouquet toss for a shot ski. Whatever feels more like you.
The Point of All This
You don’t need an art degree or a Pinterest-worthy outcome. You don’t even need to use any of the ideas that come out of these sessions. What you need is time together that isn’t about vendors or budgets or seating charts.
Most of these need nothing more than what’s already in your home. But if you want a grab-and-go setup for the artsy ones, especially the guestbook painting, we used Tobio’s Kits and it saved us the “wait, do we have watercolours?” scramble. Totally optional, but handy if you’re the type who’ll never get around to gathering supplies otherwise.
Enjoy!