watch stuck on preparing in update

Exactly the same here

Why should I have to do that? I did that in order to get the watch to pair and now I have to reset the watch again!?

Same. I have reset, powered down, reconnected stuck again on preparing. At this point I am 15 hours in to attempting to update. It’s ridiculous.

This isn’t working for any of us. Provide a troubleshooting fix that works.

Right!!!

Same here!!

even i am stuck at “preparing” for last 20 minutes.

hope that it gets going soon!!

Suck, first stuck w/ verifying, then unpair... waiting, pair.... waiting.... now stuck at preparing... how long to finish up normally?

I've done this several times and still no luck. Apple needs to get their stuff figured out. We pay far too much for their products to have this many issues and no real support.

Hey there, and welcome to Apple Support Communities, peb3473!

From our understanding, when trying to complete your watchOS 7 update, it shows “Preparing” but doesn’t complete the update process. We definitely want to be sure you’re able to update with ease, and would be happy to assist.

To get started, we’d recommend restarting both your iPhone and your Apple Watch. Once complete, we’d recommend unpairing your Apple Watch and setting it up as new, instead of restoring from a backup. During setup, you should be prompted to complete the update of the Apple Watch. To unpair your Apple Watch, follow these steps: Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Cheers!

I really understand your frustration. Clearly, Apple needs to work on this problem. I waited for about 12 hours with my phone stuck on "preparing". What finally worked for me was shutting down my phone, shutting down my apple watch and then turning both of them on again and just starting all over. I was able to PAIR my phone again and choose a backup from the day before. I have no clue why this worked.