Yes, You Can Have Your Wedding Cake And Eat It Too

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Dear Maze,

"It's about time… Our wedding day is around the corner. Yay.. It's supposed to be a celebration. But in reality, it's turning into our worst nightmare. The nitty-gritty is driving us nuts. We are both on edge and fight a lot. All we wanted is a perfect wedding. But now, I'm not even sure if we should get married at all. What should I do? I feel miserable. –Mike"

First of all, congratulations on the big day! You are not alone. Many people experience similar situations as you do. It is just another incidence that we are tripped by our mind—The Egocentric Bias. It refers to the tendency that we rely too heavily on our own point of view when we examine events in our life or try to imagine how others would perceive the events. In other words, we are so consumed with our own perceptions that we assume others will see things the same way. This causes us to focus on our own anxieties and fail to see how it might feel like to the persons on the other side, which is known as The Spotlight Effect. Researchers have found that the targets systematically overestimated the number of people who actually noticed the embarrassing images on the T-shirts worn by the targets. The attention to the targets' own embarrassment by others was artificially magnified by the targets themselves. How many weddings have you attended so far? What do you remember from those weddings? Your guests will be just like you at other weddings. All they want is to cheer for you, meet others, and be happy. So, relax! Enjoy the process. Don't sweat if things don't go as planned. At the end of the day, no matter how much imperfection you zoom in on, nobody else will notice nor do they mind.

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