I don’t think I am alone when I say that as a bride, you often have to deal with a lot of advice that you JUST. DON’T. WANT.
For example, you and your fiance have not a single bone in either of your bodies that desires a wedding ceremony that takes place in a church. Not everyone understands this decision, so even your grandmother’s sister’s friend’s uncle’s goldfish calls you to ask if they can help you find a church for the wedding. Or maybe you want to use a non-traditional song for your processional, and your mom doesn’t like the idea, so you now have to listen to her ideas for processional songs every time she calls. Maybe it’s something as simple as whether you ought to have a signature cocktail served during the reception, or if you should go with the lobster or the filet mignon as the third menu choice for dinner. EVERYONE has an opinion to share. Sometimes the ideas are good, and sometimes they are just plain ugly. (And, yes, some of those things have happened to us!)
This doesn’t affect Alex and I as much now as it did when we started our wedding planning process, but in the beginning it was both overwhelming and frustrating. We wanted to make everyone happy, but we also felt it’s our wedding, and it ought to be about us, not about everyone we know. And when you shoot down an idea, or pretend you are taking someone’s advice and then obviously go in a different direction, feelings get hurt. There is a difference between asking for help because someone might know something you don’t know, and being pulled aside for a dissertation you didn’t ask for, right?
Then we got a piece of advice from a rather unlikely source: our landlords. They live in the apartment below ours, and they got married about 3 weeks before Alex and I got engaged. The first thing they told us when we told them the good news was this:

Everyone’s going to have an opinion they want to share. You listen, and thank them, maybe even say there are a lot of ideas you’re sifting through right now and you are certainly going to add theirs to the list. Then you do what you want anyway.

I know this sounds really simple, and perhaps even obvious, but when you’re in the middle of everything, it’s truly difficult to keep this in mind! Adopting this strategy has been one of the best things we did for ourselves with the wedding. It has actually worked out so well that we have decided to carry it over into all aspects of life – you know, for big stuff like having kids and buying a house. There is so much advice to be had when it comes to these things, it becomes easy to lose sight of what you want, or what you envision, just because you don’t want to insult someone.
How do all you other brides deal with superfluous opinions while in the midst of planning your wedding, or your life?