NEW YORK, Jan 22 — Although a wedding cancellation can’t be predicted, these tips can minimise humiliation for those involved and may decrease the risk of calling it off in the first place.

1. Get premarital counselling, which can help you with stress, joint decision-making, and family and religious issues.

2. Have a short engagement.

3. Do your wedding planning in private. If you don’t document every minute of bliss online, it will be less humiliating if the rom-com of your life soon becomes a psychological thriller. Besides, narcissism is gauche.

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4. Do without a dozen bridesmaids and corresponding groomsmen. If you keep your wedding small and inexpensive, your decision about cancellation won’t be clouded by fears of wasted money. Anyone who has been through a contentious divorce will tell you that a canceled wedding is a small cost compared with lengthy litigation. 

In the event of a cancellation, there will be fewer calls to make, and hotels may be more amenable to offering refunds.

5. Ask friends and family for advice once you know you cannot go through with it. Make yourself vulnerable, if not to the person whose heart you are about to break, then to family members who may have been through similar trials. You’ll feel less alone and less afraid to make the right choice.

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“Treat yourself the way you will treat your best friend if they were going through this,” said Eve Sturges, a therapist and writer who canceled her wedding eight weeks before the date. “One day at a time, and you will be OK. You may feel that you’re the only one this has happened to or that you want to die, but those are not the facts.”

6. Plan to elope. There is little to no stress, and if you decide to call it off, no one knows in the first place. — The New York Times