No one wants to seem tired and grumpy on their big day. Expensive beauty treatments won't mean much if you don't get the necessary hours of beauty sleep for that ultimate glow and rested feeling. If you manage to get the requisite hours of night’s sleep before your important day, you’ll enjoy your day feeling and looking out refreshed. A scarcity of sleep, on the opposite hand, may result in dark circles under your eyes, irritability, and excessive yawning – none of which are desirable on an important day of your life! Here's our guide to sleep well before your D-Day: 

Guide to pre D-Day Sleep Hygiene

It’s vital to get into a routine of healthy sleep habits long before your D day. Getting yourself into a solid pre-D day sleep routine should be part and parcel of the planning. By implementing these healthy sleep habits ASAP, you’ll find it much easier to sleep the night before the day. Attempt to start a minimum of a month before your big day, but you should follow healthy sleep habits all the time ideally. 

Fix Your Eating and Drinking Habits

What you put into your body and when you do it can have an enormous effect on how well you sleep.

• Avoid caffeine. Caffeine is found in coffee, tea, energy drinks, and fizzy drinks which are all very common beverages offered during wedding ceremonies. Its effect can last for over 6 hours. Have your last caffeinated beverage before evening. 
• Avoid alcohol before bed. Alcohol may cause you to feel tired initially, but it creates a restless, bad-quality night’s sleep. Have your last drink 4 hours before your bedtime.
• Eat a lightweight meal for dinner. Have bigger meals for breakfast and lunch instead. Don’t eat anything within the 3 hours before hitting the pillow. 

Exercise Daily

Exercise is an important part of any healthy sleep routine. If you don’t tire your body out during the day, you’ll find it hard to doze off at midnight. You shouldn’t run marathons or spend hours at a gym – even a 20-minute exercise or a brisk walk in the evening would do. 

Ideally, exercise within the morning or the early afternoon. Working out near bedtime can energize up the body and make it tougher to go to sleep. You must also aim for 10,000 steps per day – most smartphones have step-tracking apps if you don’t have a pedometer. You’d be surprised by the number of steps you can fulfill just doing chores and walking around the house every day. 

Get Some Sunlight

Getting some direct sunlight on your skin daily will help reset your biological time that no amount of fancy sleep products and supplements would do. Your body’s internal ‘clock’ detects when it’s daytime and night-time using light. If you stay holed up inside your room all day, especially in a cozy room that doesn’t get much light, your body can become confused. Try and get outside in the sunshine for a minimum of half an hour every morning. On cloudy and rainy days, a bright and cool-toned ‘daylight lamp’ can help as well.

It’s equally important to not get an excessive amount of light after the evening. From about 6 pm onwards, use soft, warm lighting in your home.

Work away from your worries

We often struggle to go to sleep because our minds are racing. Sometimes we can’t stop brooding about what’s going to happen the following day, or we’re worrying about hypothetical scenarios. Within the month or week to your D-day, your mind is consumed by many things and tensions. 

So, we recommend that every single day, you write a listing of everything on your mind. Try this 1-2 hours before bed. If you’re worried about anything, write it down, and assign a time for the following day that you’ll follow up with it. Make a listing of what you wish to try and do the subsequent day, any upcoming appointments, and any problems you would like to resolve.

Make Your Bedroom Sleep-Friendly

Your bedroom is where you’ll spend approximately a 3rd of your life. Making the place you lay your head sleep-friendly is one of the key parts of building good sleep hygiene, and yet it’s something many people rarely even consider.

Invest in a very good mattress and pillows. Your bed should be as comfortable as possible. Want to know where you can get the most comfortable sleeping products for your bedroom? Livpure offers a wide range of mattresses and pillows for your sleeping needs, and other sleep products as well. Say bye to all your worries and body aches with a Livpure mattress and pillow. 

Install blackout curtains or blinds so that no light gets in during early mornings. Make your room a screen-free zone: phones, computers, and tablets shouldn't be where your bed is. Maintain a temperature of 15.5 to 19.5 degrees Celsius which is ideal for sleep.

How to Handle Pre-D day Insomnia

Understandably, many of us experience pre-D day insomnia. Such a large amount of different emotions can keep you up – worry, excitement, butterflies within the stomach, or perhaps timidity. Practicing proper sleep hygiene, and building a concrete sleep routine, will make it much easier to sleep the night before your D day. But even then, you might find something that keeps you awake. If that's the case for you, here is what we recommend.

• Write down your thoughts. If you can’t sleep because your mind is racing, write it all down. Get these intrusive thoughts out of your head and onto paper.
• Use the 5-4-3-2-1 method. This is often a mindfulness technique designed for anxiety. Acknowledge 5 stuff you can see, 4 belongings you can touch, 3 belongings you can hear, 2 belongings you can smell, and 1 thing you'll be able to taste.
• Imagine a calming scenario. Picture a peaceful scene – sort of a beach or a forest – and concentrate on the imaginary sensations around you, just like the sound of the waves or birdsong.
• Invest in a comfortable sleeping environment- a high-quality mattress, a comfortable pillow, soft bed sheets, etc. You can find such comfortable sleep products and many more on Livpure’s website. You can get it delivered right to your doorstep as fast as possible! 

In the end...

If you continue to be awake after half an hour, get up. Take yourself to a different quiet, dimly lit room and do something relaxing. Have a warm, caffeine-free drink and try to read something. But try to stay away from the screens. This might help you doze off quickly afterward. Do not worry about not sleeping too much- it comes to you when you are in clean mind space. Practice healthy sleep habits to be your freshest on your important day!