How I Planned Your Wedding

by Susan Wiggs

  And that was just the first meeting.

  Throughout the wedding planning process, Jody and the Good Taste gals saved our lily-white hineys time and time again.

  The first heroic rescue took place eight months before the wedding, when I received two save-the-dates for the weddings of college friends. Not only were their guest lists sure to overlap with mine by about twenty of my nearest and dearest, but they were both getting married within a month of Dave and me. As my arms broke out in hives and my throat began to constrict with panic, I called Jody and gurgled, “My friends are stealing my wedding guests! Stealing them! And now everyone’s going to get those save-the-dates first, and realize they can’t take three weekends off this summer, and they’ll decide they can’t come to my wedding because they hate me and I didn’t send a save-the-date yet, and, and…”

  “Shhh, honey,” Jody said. “We’re on it.”

  Two days later, everyone on our guest list found a silver envelope in their mailbox containing a custom magnet announcing our wedding date. Even better, Jody had managed to talk me off the ledge of wedding wars by reminding me that the friends who really love me would move heaven and earth to be there on my Big Day, wedding season or not.

  A few months later, our modest 125-person guest list had ballooned up to a whopping 232 people (thanks, Mom) and we had outgrown our chosen venue, Court in the Square, in the heart of Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square district. When we moved to Chicago, Dave and I were at least secure in the knowledge that our wedding would take place in the most unique, beautiful and affordable place we could imagine.

  So you can imagine my reaction when we were told we had too many guests for a reception there. I wailed, I rubbed ashes into my scalp, I chewed my fingernails to the quick, I consumed eight gallons of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.

  Shaking with fury and frustration (and more than a little annoyance at my mother for insisting that we invite her eyebrow waxer’s entire extended family), I called Good Taste After telling me to sit with my head between my knees and breathe slowly into a paper bag, Jody and her team went into damage-control mode.

  Within weeks, they had booked the Pan Pacific, a new and very swanky hotel in Seattle that was miraculously available for our wedding date. Even better, Jody had scoped out our original venue and engineered a seating arrangement that would allow us to keep our ceremony there. To that, I said, “I do.”

  And don’t even get me started on the fires the wedding planners put out on the actual weekend of the event. A canceled rehearsal venue? No problem, let’s rehearse the wedding in our favorite bar. A missing antique handkerchief for the ceremony? Here’s a silk napkin that is even prettier. Another bridal party moving into the suite where we’re supposed to be getting ready? Pfft—we’re moving to a suite in Seattle’s most famous hotel.

  People, I won’t lie to you: when I first got engaged, I envisioned myself planning the whole wedding without any help. I dreamed of calling my mom from rainbow-hued aisles of blooming flowers, asking whether she preferred anemones or mums and having her blithely reply, “Just get both, and make sure you order the most extravagant bouquets possible!” I pictured the shining faces of my various wedding vendors, always helpful and willing to take a wedding bullet for me. I imagined my mom watching Father of the Bride with me as we lovingly hand-addressed each invitation, pausing only to hold hands and talk about her own wedding to my dad twenty-eight years earlier.

  I wouldn’t even call that a pipe dream. It was an acid trip.

  Sure, when I was first engaged, I was all gung ho. I even liked making guest list spreadsheets, for cripes sake. But the honeymoon (pun intended) was soon over. Before I knew it, I didn’t want to think about signage and wedding favors and table linens. That’s where the wedding planners came in—and, miraculously, they weren’t faking it! They really did care about the minutiae that made me want to take a power drill to my temple.

  Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting my mom onboard. As with most wedding-related expenses, this one wasn’t small. To a woman who has managed to write two books a year; raise a daughter, an Airedale Terrier and a Doberman; have dinner on the table every night; and maintain a trim physique and good hair, the notion of hiring someone to make decisions for me set her head spinning. I had to show her that the wedding planners were so much more than decision makers. They would fight, tooth and nail, to make sure my loved ones and I would be able to relax and enjoy the fun.

  This won’t come as a surprise, but Jody is one of the few people I’ve known to rival my mother in her mastery of multitasking and efficiency. As soon as they met face-to-face, they did this grave little nod thing that said, “We’re two of a kind, comrade.” The deal was sealed when my mom saw Jody being kind to my slightly loopy grandfather, who only talks about denture glue and the price of bacon.

  Now for the nitty-gritty—how wedding planners work. They usually charge a flat fee that covers a set range of services, such as helping you find your venue, suggesting and negotiating with vendors, creating a time line, keeping your wedding on budget and serving as the logistical point person in the days and weeks leading up to your wedding. We paid around $4,000 for Good Taste’s services—a little lower than their usual rate because our budget was lower than average and we already had some of the bigger chunks figured out. But the cost of a wedding planner can cover the spectrum, based on the size of your event, where you’re having it and what level of service you’ll be getting. For $15,000, you can probably find a wedding planner who will give you a full-body massage on the morning of your Big Day. For $500, you might have a recent college grad who’s eager to sink her teeth into event planning and is happy to keep things organized on the day of your wedding.

  Early in our conversations with Good Taste, I asked Jody whether she thought it made sense for us to be spending 20 percent of our budget on our planners. I knew she would give me an honest answer—Good Taste doesn’t do more than two weddings a month, and they would have no trouble finding another lucky couple to take our place if we couldn’t afford their services. She wrote me a very kind email saying that she understood my concerns and that ultimately the decision was mine. “However,” she went on, “keep in mind that part of our job is to keep you guys within your budget. More often than not, we end up saving our couples more money than we cost. We have relationships with wedding vendors in this area, and we can get discounts that simply aren’t available to most people.”

  Dave and I sat down after the wedding to figure out how much money Jody and her team had saved us: the total came out to more than $5,000. The Good Taste gals knew how to pull some strings, that’s for sure. In the months leading up to our wedding, they got rental fees waived, called in favors with industry connections and managed to find inexpensive alternatives for us that we never would have dreamt up on our own. In short: booya. Even Dave, the most frugal of frugals, agreed that Jody and her girls were the best thing that happened to our wedding (besides, you know, the two of us spending eternity together and everything).

  SUSAN

  Having conceived of and executed my own wedding in a thirty-minute, tequila-fueled frenzy one fateful day, I had no notion of what a wedding planner did. See, once Jay and I made up our minds to do the deed, we just wanted to get it done.

  I was raised Catholic and although I had some major quibbles with the church (don’t get me started), I did revere the pomp and ceremony of a Catholic wedding. I went to the local church and informed them that we wanted to be married in oh, say, the next month or so.

  Who knew the church had Conditions? Since Jay had never set foot in a Catholic church, they wanted him to take marriage classes and show up for mass for six months running, keeping track of his attendance with personalized collection-plate envelopes to make sure he wasn’t truant.

  I said, “I’m pretty sure my fiancé is not going to do that. He doesn’t want to be Catholic. He just wants to marry a Catholic girl.”

  The church played har
dball. They expected to see him front and center, envelope in hand, for the next several months of Sundays.

  “Would you consider officiating?” I ventured. “We could have it in a demilitarized—er, neutral—zone but it would mean the world to us if you’d officiate.”

  Nothing doing, said the padre.

  “Well, maybe you could just be there, stand by us. My parents would love that.”

  Can’t do it. No pay, no play.

  “So how about you come to the reception? We’re having cake and champagne—”

  “What kind of champagne?” the padre asked. “Brut or dry?”

  Thus ended my fleeting notion of a proper church wedding. I celebrated my new freedom with a bottle of the aforementioned tequila and a tome of Yellow Pages. There were several outfits listed under “Weddings,” and I booked the first one to take my call. It was the Always and Forever Wedding Chapel. In the picture, it looked like something that belonged on the Vegas strip, complete with faux-Tudor styling, a cave-like interior and plastic flowers.

  We signed up for a package that included an officiant, one variety of flowers (carnations dyed blue, if you must know), canned music and seating for up to twenty-five guests.

  It was perfect. The more tequila I drank, the more perfect it seemed. “Let’s go for it,” I told Jay.

  So when Elizabeth first came up with the idea of a wedding planner, I couldn’t imagine what we would do with such a person, besides add her to the payroll. But, of course, in the beginning of it all, I couldn’t imagine two venues, ten attendants, an unrelated torchlight parade causing a traffic jam to outer suburbia, squatters in the bridal suite, a raft of flower-shaped cupcakes and ten different hair trials.

  Sound fun? Thought so. Here’s my best advice—go ahead and hire the wedding planner if it’s in your budget. You need one. Trust me on this. The right one will change this process from the nuptial equivalent of a root canal to a party you actually get to enjoy.

  * * *

  THE ONE-DAY PHENOMENON

  If you’re planning a wedding, you will be bombarded by the phrase One Day. It’s an insidious little two-worder that is ultimately used to induce guilt or rationality (depending on whether you ask the user or her victim). One Day, as in, “How can you spend that much money on One Day?” or “It’s just One Day…it doesn’t matter if your best friend doesn’t come!” or “You don’t need a $12,000 Vera Wang dress that you’re only going to wear for One Day.” And it’s always said in this somber, slow voice: “Calm down. It’s just…One…Day.” Sometimes One Day is accompanied by other zingers, usually budget-related, that force you to calculate awful figures, such as the cost of one hour of your wedding (a few thousand dollars, at least).

  And, as a bride, your hands are pretty much tied. It’s not as if you can say, “Nuh-UH, it’s three-hundred days!” or “NO, I’m not actually spending tens of thousands of dollars on a five-hour event.”

  Well, I’m arming you now with your defense against the One Day–slingers—photography and videography. When someone insinuates that you should do your own hair because it will only last for One Day, you can say, “Actually, this day will be the most documented day of my life. I’ll show these photos and videos to my grandchildren. I think it’s only natural that I want to look my best.”

  See how I did that? Genius, right?

  Unfortunately I figured this out a little late in the game, and spent the greater part of my wedding-planning journey torn between materialistic guilt and an overwhelming desire to spend my parents’ life savings to make my One Day the best damn One Day anyone had ever seen.

  Still, the nugget of truth in my One Day defense—the most documented day of my life—remains true for every bride. With that in mind, I set out to find the best people to follow me around and treat me like a celeb on my wedding day.

  * * *

  The wedding planner Elizabeth engaged first impressed me when she jumped in with her take-no-prisoners attitude and made this process a pleasure. She won our confidence from the start, and then during a last-minute flurry of RSVPs, she won my heart. There were a few requests for guests, and more guests…and guests of guests, twice removed… This was one of those last-straw moments, precipitating a prenuptial meltdown. And it was Jody to the rescue.

  Did she rescue them by chasing the interlopers away with a flame-thrower?

  No. She sent the bride a very simple email note: “Just welcome them with open arms and an open heart.”

  Vendors, venues and menus aside, this is the kind of perspective you want in a planner. One who is going to remind the bride not to freak out over a few extra bodies. A skilled, compassionate wedding planner understands how dangerously easy it is for the couple to fixate on minor details and lose the grand vision and the joy in what they’re doing.

  ELIZABETH

  PHOTOGRAPHY

  Your photographer and videographer will not only be hanging out near you for the most important moments of the day, but they will be creating the images you’ll one day show to your kids and grandkids. Dave and I realized this and chose vendors whose style matched our vision. We didn’t want some bossy, commandeering photobug who would wrestle my grandmother away from a conversation with a wedding guest and force her to pose on one foot, pretending to scarf down a cupcake. Nor did we want someone who liked to play with angles in their “wedding art” so much that my bridal portrait would end up looking like a cubist nightmare. I wanted a photographer and videographer who were storytellers, who would find the special moments of the day and frame them in the most beautiful, real way possible. I wanted them to capture the sunbeam as it hit Dave’s hair during the ceremony, to notice how beautiful my bridesmaids’ shoes looked scattered on the side of the dance floor as they boogied their feet raw, to snap the moment my grandfather started crying as he gave our wedding toast.

  Yvonne Wong, our photographer, fell into my lap fairly early in the wedding-planning process. I knew I wanted photos that were as much art as snapshots of the best day of my life. I would never hang a photo on the wall that looked like it was shot at a prom but with us wearing fancier clothes—you know, the pose where the couple faces out of the frame at a forty-five-degree angle, his hand stiffly on her hip, she with an uncomfortable, forced smile? Vomit.

  I discovered Yvonne and her husband, David, on the blog that consumed my life for a good chunk of the engagement: WeddingBee. Go there at your own peril. Just make sure you don’t have anything to do for the next week or so because you’ll spend the whole time browsing through the message boards and blog entries by other brides-to-be like yourself. Anyway, during one of these marathon WeddingBee sessions, I saw some stunning engagement photos that played with light and shadow, focusing in on the details and capturing moments that many would overlook. Five minutes later, I had Yvonne on the phone and she passed my only other photographer test: she wasn’t creepy. I mean, think about it. Your photographer is going to follow you around all day, and will likely be snapping photos of you as you bare it all and step into your gown. You know those classic photos of the woman’s hands buttoning the back of the white dress? The bride was in the bu? only moments before.

  I’ll let you marinate on that for a second.

  See why it’s so important to have a photographer who makes you feel comfortable?

  I ended up needing Yvonne and David’s coolness during the wedding reception, when I finally reached my breaking point with the posed photos. My face was starting to feel like it would crack, and I was trying to say goodbye to some guests who were leaving early, and for some reason I got a little misty-eyed (and not in a good way). Suddenly, Yvonne lowered her camera, pulled me aside, and said, “Go enjoy your party. I’ll get candids of everyone who matters.”

  Prior to the wedding, she had asked me to fill out a form with the names of all the people I wanted to have in photographs. I also let her know that candid photographs were more important to me than posed images. After my little mini-meltdown, I went back to cutting an
awkward rug on the dance floor (I’m the worst dancer of all time) and she sneaked around snapping photos of my loved ones.

  I also opted to get a photo booth at our wedding. Unlike the tiny boxes found at carnivals, however, this photo booth was provided by our photographer and consisted of a white background, props and Yvonne’s husband behind a professional camera. We stuck it in a corner by the bar and made sure everyone knew about it. Dear Readers, if you can have a photo booth, do it. I’ve seen some made with retro fabric backdrops and digital cameras on tripods. Something about a photo station makes guests go wild—and it ensures that your peeps will get in front of the lens if you end up skipping some of the formal portraits, as I did. The photos from our booth are some of my favorite from the wedding, and the consistent background gives them a uniformity that looks great when they’re grouped together. And yes, I did think about how I would display my wedding photos before the actual event. You should, too.

  Yvonne emailed me a teaser slideshow of the highlights from our wedding photos. Dave and I watched it while we were on our honeymoon, and we both shed a tear or two as we saw the first high-quality images of ourselves on what had been the happiest day of our lives. The show linked to our very own web page where we (and guests who had the address and password) were able to view all fourteen hundred photos Yvonne and her husband and taken, and order prints. In addition, Dave and I received all our pictures on disc and in two thick books of thumbnails for easy reference.

  I won’t lie: getting a professional album made can cost almost as much as the photographer’s time, so Dave and I promised each other we’d save up and purchase a book for our first anniversary. (Of course, then he got cold feet over the price, which has forced me to go rogue and try to scheme up a way of buying the album without him knowing about it…but that’s a story for another book called How I Hid Your Extravagant Purchases from Your Husband.)