It would be foolish to expect your wedding to be 100% perfect, and I’m no fool. I expected that a few things would go wrong. Little things. You know, the groomsmen are a little bit late, the frosting on the cake is off-white instead of white, etc. I truly didn’t think anything big would go wrong. In a way, I think I expected that things would go a lot more smoothly, just because I was so organized. In some ways, that was totally true. In others…well, not so much.
Although I would love to tell you that everything about our day was all sparkles and rainbows, I can’t. And you know what? I don’t want to. When I started blogging on Weddingbee, I didn’t want to pretend like wedding planning is 100% fun, 100% of the time. It can be stressful! I had weird dreams. I made a mistake booking a vendor. I had a meltdown in a shoe shop (haha). They’re all memories and they’re actually pretty funny now. But to me, blogging about these issues is what makes it real. It’s what makes blogging worthwhile. And you know what? Our wedding wasn’t 100% perfect, either, so I’m not going to pretend like it was. I’m going to share the nitty-gritty, in addition to the wonderful, sparkly, rainbow-y stuff. The good things, and the bad. Because that’s life, and your wedding will be no different.
So as I was saying, I expected little things to go wrong, and had already decided not to pay any attention to the things that no one else would notice. Unfortunately for us, we had some really big things go wrong: one of our vendors–our “day of” coordinators–seriously screwed up. Like, really bad. We’re not talking OMG-the-cake-didn’t-show-up-on-time stuff. We’re talking OMG-they-didn’t-set-up-the-ceremony-right-at-all-and-they-didn’t-know-what-time-the-reception-started-and-they-were-drinking-alcohol stuff. Yes, it could have been worse. They could have not shown up at all. But it was really bad.
After (and during) the wedding, I really didn’t want to think about the things that went wrong. I guess I had high expectations of the wedding, and I wanted nothing but positive thoughts and memories to look back on. Maybe thinking of it that way was a little naive, I don’t know. A few days after the wedding, I sat down with my parents and talked about how the day went, and I was finally totally honest with how I felt about some of the mishaps. There were tears, but it felt so good to finally be honest with myself and be real about my feelings. Life ain’t perfect, and the wedding wasn’t perfect, either. I was really angry at first, but now I’m in a place where I can truly offer some sound advice to you guys, rather than rant and rave about how upset I am (was).
My number one piece of advice is this: no matter how organized you are, or how many details you thought of, it means nothing if your details aren’t properly executed. Also, go with your gut. I had such a good feeling about our caterer. Leading up to our wedding, I was totally confident that they would execute our reception perfectly. And you know what? They completely exceeded my expectations. Our reception was immaculate. The ceremony, however? Not so much. The trolley rides? Really bad. When it comes to hiring professionals for your wedding, you can skimp on the little things–go with the cheaper lighting or the less expensive limo company. At the end of the day, if you’re missing the spotlight on your cake, nobody’s gonna notice. But the people who are responsible for actually setting up your day? Be sure you have someone you trust.
What went wrong, you’re probably asking? Well, it’s a long story that would probably take three posts to cover, and I’m not sure that we really need to get into exact details about what went wrong. In general, I think most of the problems stemmed from the fact that I handed our DOC’s my plans a few weeks before the wedding, and I’m not entirely confident that they read through it all. They said to me at one point during the planning process that they didn’t think I needed any help because I was so organized. I can’t help but think that they put their energy into other clients or personal matters, rather than preparing for our wedding. They may have thought that they could fall back on my completely organized plans. And you know what? Part of it was my fault, too. I wasn’t 100% confident in the DOCs I hired, but the price was right. I set out to make things as organized as possible and give them as many detailed instructions as possible–no matter how inexperienced they were, if they followed my directions and used their common sense, I figured we would have very few problems.
Unfortunately, they didn’t follow my directions or seem to use their common sense. Our ceremony setup was kind of a disaster. Signs I’d spent hours slaving over were in the wrong places–guests never even saw them. The aisle was set up really badly–it curved in strange places and didn’t follow the measurements I’d given as guidelines, even remotely. Strangers were talking during the ceremony and the DOCs did nothing to quiet them. They told me about every little problem, which stressed me out and made me feel like I needed to do something to solve them. But I’d made a commitment to myself: do not let the little things bother you. So I plastered a smile on my face and tried to forget that my ugly aisle probably wouldn’t be gracing the pages of Martha Stewart Weddings (haha).
The ceremony itself went perfectly. I was totally thrilled with the ceremony we’d written, and with our reading, and with my Uncle Bob’s reading in Hebrew. The weather was perfect, the chuppah was perfect. At one point, my dad stepped on my veil, which was hilarious. It was all quite wonderful. I was very happy.
After the ceremony, our trolley ride was to begin. So many things went wrong. Basically, a lot of the guests didn’t end up with tours and most of them arrived to the reception a half an hour late. Some guests were waiting around at the ceremony location for a long time, waiting for their trolley. Prior to the wedding, Mr. Cream Puff and I were very, very excited about our trolley tour. Mr. Cream Puff told me later that he had visions of hanging off the side of the trolley, waving to onlookers. Sadly, this is not what happened, though I must admit: this probably wouldn’t have happened anyway (you know, because of the risk of bodily harm and all). We drove straight to our reception and still missed the entire cocktail hour.
I was very, very frustrated with the DOCs at that point, but I was really trying not to let it affect me. In retrospect, I should have sent them home right then. The reception was handled by the caterer, and the only job the DOC had at the reception was to take care of my family (ie, handle any drama, make sure Mr. Cream Puff and I have water), and I figured they couldn’t screw that up. My third piece of advice? Don’t think to yourself, “well, they can’t screw it up that bad” and also, know when to cut your losses. Think twice–you only get to do this day once.
At the reception (which, as I said earlier, was immaculate), our DOCs were nowhere to be found for most of the night. There were a lot of issues that could have been handled by them, and I have no idea where they were (well, that’s actually a half-truth: at one point I went on the back patio and found them drinking alcohol and socializing with the guests). These aren’t the reasons why I say that I should have asked them to go home after the trolley mess, though. Every half hour or so, one of the DOCs would find me and tell me how much time was left in the reception, and would periodically tell me about every mini-crisis as if I needed to help solve the problem. That really put a damper on my enjoyment of the evening, which sucked. I doubt that the DOC knew she was doing this at the time, but it just goes to show: there are unexpected ways to screw things up. You can’t think of everything.
I can honestly say that our wedding would probably have been ruined if I had trusted our DOCs to set the whole thing up. Thank goodness for our caterer, who set the reception up perfectly and was responsible for executing most of the details I’d slaved over. And thankfully, pretty much everything else went smoothly. We were missing one of our ceremony musicians (string duo, anyone?) and we didn’t up with the cake spot we’d ordered, but neither of those things were important and none of the guests noticed. I simply called, got my money back, and forgot about it.
So, my friends, to recap: Do not skimp on a DOC. If you need one, pay the price for a good, experienced one. This is the execution of your day we’re talking about: it deserves a bigger slice of your wedding budget than some of your other details. Secondly, listen to your gut: if you’re feeling a little iffy about something that really, truly matters to you, deal with it before the wedding. Sometimes, it’s worth losing your deposit. Third: don’t make excuses or say, “they couldn’t screw it up that bad.” If you think they could screw it up at all, get rid of them; it’s not worth taking the chance.
Hopefully our experience will help some of you!
PS–thank you so much for all of your support for my E.Coli, guys! I’m feeling a lot better–almost recovered, in fact!
