New Apple watch stuck on preparing

I am trying to pair my new watch series 3 to my iphone 13. It asked to update watch os when i first scanned the watch with iphone. The watchos came in as 8.7.1 and it got "downloaded to watch" after a long time and is now stuck at preparing. (its been 2 hours , progress bar has not even moved single dot). My phone runs on ios 16.0.3 which i believe is the latest. I tried restarting both phone and watch, resetting network settings, hard reseting watch and re-installing watch app on my phone but still no luck. please someone help me in this regard and will be really appreciated.