By Cornelia Powell

Use your time in the bridal spotlight to find your quiet center and ground yourself. Pay attention to your breathing...focus inward...deepen and slow your breaths. Enjoy the simple pleasures of following the refreshing flow of your breath.

Have a gentle, meditative stretching routine of some sort during this busy time that helps relax your body and support your inner peacefulness. From that more settled, aware place, your mind gets quieter; your emotions won’t be so apt to bubble over; you become less reactive, more responsive, more creative, more conscious, more available for love.

Who could ask for more?

Cornelia Powell is publisher of Weddings of Grace and author of the best-selling book, The Bride's Ritual Guide: Look Inside to Find Yourself. She takes the old bridal rhyme, “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence for her shoe,” and turns it into a magical reverie for the modern bride. She shares ways to bring more ease, pleasure and reassurance into a woman's life not only as a bride, but through all her rites-of-passage.