How I Planned Your Wedding

by Susan Wiggs

  VIDEOGRAPHY

  A family member told Dave and me that her only wedding regret was not having a videographer there to record the ceremony and dancing at the reception. I’m so crazy about documenting special moments that Dave even set up a video camera in the room where he surprised me with his proposal. So OBVIOUSLY I had to find the Best. Videographer. Of. All. Time.

  Mitch of Cabfare Productions in Seattle is a man who has dated a prize-winning female Elvis impersonator, has a mean golf swing and is the proud owner of a 1970s-era video camera with a crack in the lens (in addition to others, of course). He’s a true artist—he weaves each couple’s wedding video into a documentary, the plot of which is defined by an interview he does with the pair. Most couples get interviewed after the wedding, but since Dave and I were heading back to Chicago immediately after the honeymoon, we did ours ahead of time.

  Mitch also offered Super 8 and high-definition video. In case you’re not wading through myriad websites and magazines about videography yet, and thus don’t know what Super 8 is, it’s the grainy, cool-looking film that most of us associate with old family movies. Think of the opening credits from The Wonder Years.

  Most importantly, Mitch put Dave and me at ease from the moment we met him. He told us that our love inspired him, and that documenting our marriage was going to be more fun than work for him. He personalized every single element of our wedding film and edited it in such a way that the final product was visually beautiful, entertaining, moving and complete.

  Our wedding video ended up being perfect. When I watch it, I’m transported immediately back to the moment I said, “I do.” Years from now, when I show it to our kids, they’ll be able to experience our wedding as though they were sitting in the audience (which would admittedly suck for most kids—who likes seeing their parents be mushy?), but it’s a testament to our classic, authentic wedding video.

  Mitch was hands-down the best impulse decision I made about our wedding. I was lucky to find a talented, fun-to-work-with videographer, but if you end up not being able to afford a professional, set up a couple of cameras during the ceremony (if not other parts of your day, too) to capture the moment you become husband and wife. You’ll be glad you did when you’re able to watch the video more than a year later and remember exactly what you were thinking when you randomly let out a little giggle in the middle of your ceremony.

  THE UPDO SAGA

  I’m known for my hair. I never lost the blond ringlets that sprouted from my head when I was a tot, and I never quite abandoned the dream of having princess-hair on my wedding day. I didn’t expect that this would be an issue because my style routine has always been blessedly simple: wrap in a towel, add a dab of mousse, air-dry…so imagine the possibilities given a professional stylist and two-plus hours in a salon.

  Whenever anyone asked me what I was going to do with my locks on the wedding day, I would glibly answer, “Well, my hair is pretty easy to do so I’m going to deal with it later.”

  Big mistake.

  The wedding goblins—you know, the ones who lie in wait, eagerly listening for the details about your wedding that you don’t think merit much concern—pounced on my carefree attitude and served me up an epic trauma that I never saw coming.

  Three months before my wedding, I embarked on a series of about ten different hair trials, each one a different ringlet of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Every time I called a salon, I would specify my hair type and describe the style I was looking for. Each curt, aloof receptionist would promise that Tina, or Jessica, or Brett, or whatever stylist got me was an “expert” at that sort of thing. And every time I went to the salon, I would leave with my hair teased within an inch of its life, cast in a frizzy shell on top of my head like a cross between a helmet and a ratty wig. My shiny, bouncy curls would be reduced to dull, lifeless strands that hung like rattails out the back of a tangled nest on the back of my head.

  You probably think I’m exaggerating.

  I’m not.

  Each time I had a trial updo, I would call Lindsey and Molly, my most trusted friends and bridesmaids, and ask them to critique. Lindsey would dutifully take photos while Molly attempted to find something positive to say about my newest hair nightmare—but even she, the Pollyanna in my life, couldn’t make lemonade out of the lemons I kept ending up with. And Lindsey, the more blunt of the two, didn’t bother sugarcoating the truth: “Do you think she’s ever done anyone’s hair before? Ever?” she said after a particularly bad trial that ended with me looking like a drowned Marie Antoinette.

  I posted Lindsey’s photos on my blog and my readers agreed—kindly, of course.

  My mom, infuriatingly, found the whole thing hilarious. After the third bad updo, she cackled, “You look like George Washington!”

  I had to be patient with her. She works from home, and sometimes goes weeks without being seen in public. So…her tact can be nonexistent from time to time. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that she was so lighthearted about it because she knew I would find the right stylist before the hair situation reached DEFCON 1 status.

  A few weeks before the wedding, I had another hair trial at a posh salon in downtown Seattle. The receptionist who made the appointment assured me that this stylist was on the salon’s “runway updo team” (whatever that meant) and had years of experience with weddings. I had high hopes. Surely someone who was on an actual team would be a pro at the type of wedding hair I wanted.

  I came to the salon that day armed with a pile of photographs: one of Eva Longoria on the red carpet as an example of how I wanted my hair to look, and then a stack of the images Lindsey had taken after my previous trial disasters. “Here’s what I don’t want,” I said firmly to the stylist. I went methodically through each of my other updos, pointing out exactly what I didn’t like about each.

  “In short,” I concluded, having practiced my speech in the mirror before my appointment, “I want my hair to look exactly like this photo of Eva Longoria. I don’t want it to look fuzzy, or ratty, or dull, or straight, or lifeless, or anything like these other pictures of me.”

  My stylist gave me a confident nod. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can tell you’ve had amateurs working on you. I know exactly how to give you what you want.”

  I sighed, hoping she was right. I gazed down at the red carpet image resting in my lap. Eva’s dark hair was a mass of loopy, soft ringlets that were pulled loosely off her face and back into a romantic mass of shiny curls at the nape of her neck. Her hair looked like mine, only more styled. It should have been easy to re-create this look with my blond locks.

  So you can imagine my horror when this woman—a member of the “runway updo team,” no less—began to tease my hair until the entirety of my skull was covered with a two-inch-thick mound of tangles. The ends of my curls struggled free of their teased roots, spiraling around my face like stringy Medusa snakes.

  I should have said something at this point. But I have a deep-seated fear of confrontation (thanks, I’m sure, to the fact that I have no siblings and thus never learned how to fight). So I sat there in the chair, a growing sense of dread developing in my gut, trying to convince myself that the stylist did, in fact, know what she was doing and her vision would be revealed shortly.

  Sadly, things got worse from there.

  She pulled a couple of straggly, limp pieces of hair out around my face, straightened them with a flat iron, and let them hang in parallel lines down my forehead in front of my eyes. She pulled the rest of my teased, frizzy tresses back into a severe ponytail high on the crown of my head, then began braiding random strands. A few minutes later, she attacked the ponytail with a curling iron, crimping it randomly so the fuzzy curls poked out behind my head like a fountain of pure, unadulterated ugly. My ears—which have always stuck out the teeniest bit—seemed to spread from the sides of my face as though trying to take flight and escape the heinous mess that my stylist was creating.

  “I’m going to give you something extra sp
ecial,” she commented as she raked a comb over the top of my head, causing the right and left sides of my hair to form large furry bumps at my temples.

  She pulled out a Bedazzled white plastic daisy with a flourish. I was shocked. The flower’s plastic stem was wrapped gaudily with lace and strands of cheap silver sequins. I didn’t know an upscale salon like this would ever allow something so obscene within a two-mile radius of the premises. I watched in a near panic as she lowered the thing to the base of the ponytail she’d created and shoved it in. I could feel it scraping my scalp, a painful reminder of how difficult it would be to detangle my hair later that evening.

  I managed a shaky smile, realizing there was nothing I could say or do to make this stylist good at doing hair. She was a lost cause. I tried to forget about the $80 price tag of this trial and set my sights on getting out of there as quickly as possible. Without letting her add any finishing touches to the monstrosity perched on my head, I exclaimed how pretty I looked, shook her hand and bolted for the door. I stopped long enough to pay for the trial and leave her a tip (she did try, after all, and I’ve never been a fan of stiffing service people on their tips).

  As I slinked back to my car, hoping I wouldn’t pass anyone I knew, my phone buzzed. It was Dave, calling to remind me that I was supposed to be at a cupcake tasting.

  People, I had managed to keep myself together about the whole hair drama up until that point. I hadn’t yet shed a tear over my bad updo trials, and I’d maintained a sense of humor about how ridiculously bad my hair had looked each time. I hadn’t allowed myself to add up just how much money this bevy of appointments was costing me, and I refused to think about the number of hours I’d wasted squirming in the leather chairs of Seattle’s salons. But this time I wasn’t going to be able to go home, jump in the shower and erase all memory (other than a digital photo) of this horrific hairstyle. I had to go meet our wedding planners, Dave and our cupcake gal, with my hair looking like something pulled from a locker room shower drain.

  I plunked myself down on a bench in the parking lot. I pulled out my phone, looked at the time and told myself I was allowed to flip out for five minutes. Then I had to go back to being a self-deprecating, up-beat bride who was completely confident in the belief that her wedding would go off without a hitch.

  And then, friends, I had a five-minute sob-fest. This wasn’t your normal, run-of-the-mill hiccupping cry. This was snot flying out of my nose in slimy projectiles that landed on the asphalt at my feet. Tears squirted in arcs from my eyes into my lap and drenched the ugly little pieces of hair the stylist had let hang in my face. I could feel my cheeks pulsing beet red as I struggled for breath, and my saliva got all thick and spitty the way a toddler’s does when she’s throwing a tantrum. My fingers curled into fists of rage, fingernails digging into the hot skin on the palms of my hands. Pit stains drenched through my shirt from my crying effort and I flapped my elbows wildly in a vain attempt to avoid getting body odor before my cupcake appointment.

  It was epic.

  And it lasted exactly five minutes.

  Then I snorted my remaining snot back into my nose, dried my eyes, took a deep breath and forced myself to stop.

  I arrived at my cupcake tasting appointment only a few minutes late, and though my eyes were still red and swollen, I knew nobody could tell just how intense my five-minute breakdown had been.

  Heather, one of the Good Taste girls, was joining us for the appointment. When she saw my face, coupled with the disgusting pile of hair on my head, she immediately put her arm around me. “I have a friend who is great at updos,” she said. “Trust me—she’s done my hair before. I’ll give her a call and we can stop this nonsense.”

  I won’t lie to you; I didn’t completely trust her. I’d been burned too many times before. But I meekly agreed to meet with Heather’s friend and resolved to get through my cupcake tasting without any more fretting about my hair.

  When I walked into the little room where we would be trying flavors, though, Dave was waiting for me. He knew me well enough to keep his trap shut about the cowpie on my head, but I could tell he was concerned by the obvious fact that I’d been crying.

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “Heather’s got a plan.”

  And then I got to eat cupcakes, so I was a happy camper.

  Later that afternoon, when Dave and I were both back at work, he IMed me. I could tell he’d been giving my hair trauma some thought, and I knew he genuinely wanted me to be happy with the way I looked on our wedding day. I also knew he didn’t want me to be so done-up that he wouldn’t recognize me at the end of the aisle. He started the conversation by talking to me about how great the cupcakes had been, how excited he was, yadda yadda yadda…and just as we were about to sign off, he said:

  Dave: by the way – i want your hair to be up or down for the wedding – none of this in between business

  me: hahaha okay

  Dave: i want it to look like my wiggs i really just love your hair and i love the way you look to me every single day and i want you to look like my wiggs!

  me: don’t worry, i will

  Dave: but it’s been sticking out to the sides both times i like it either dangling down or pressed in allllll the way you can do whatever crazy pattern stuff to the back but from the front it has to be totally pressed in! you just have this beautiful face and it makes me smile and bubble and feel waves of happiness

  me: aw don’t worry

  i don’t want to look weird, either

  i just want to be a more beautified version of my normal self

  Dave: yes it’ll look JUST the same from the front…and howEVER you like in the back!

  me: haha okay

  Dave: you can just show ’em your usual pull-up awesome sexy gorge hair-do and then say, “i’m paying you to make this look better in the back but the same in the front…ready, set, go”

  (For the record, that conversation is an unedited copy and paste. Isn’t my hubby so cute, even on IM?)

  I had to give the guy credit: he might not have known the correct terminology to use when trying to talk about hairstyles, but he had a point. My hair looked nice on a daily basis. I just had to find someone who could add a little bit of va-va-voom to what I naturally had.

  Heather set up an appointment with her friend, Jacquelynn, who owned Sorella Salon just east of Seattle. Heather and Jacquelynn met me in Sorella’s cozy lobby, offered me a glass of iced tea and sat me down to talk about my updo journey—the good, the bad and the frizzy. I showed them photographs from my prior traumas, and they shook their heads sympathetically.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” said Jacquelynn.

  From that moment on, I was in the hands of a true master. Jacquelynn smoothed my hair, brushing it out to a glossy sheen before taking a flat iron and constructing the shiny, loopy curls Eva Longoria wore in my inspiration photograph. While she and Heather entertained me with stories of other weddings they’d worked on together, she pinned my curls back, forming a soft pile at the nape of my neck and pulling a couple of pieces forward to frame my face.

  Before I knew it, she unclipped the smock I was wearing to protect my clothes.

  My hair…it was perfect. She’d taken the red carpet photograph I’d shown her and created a beautiful style that flattered my face like nothing I’d ever dreamed possible. It was, dare I say, better than Eva Longoria’s hair.

  Jacquelynn’s next step solidified the burgeoning love I had for her: she offered to cut and color my hair a few weeks before the wedding to make sure that it was perfect for the updo on the wedding day. Then she armed me with two bottles of Bumble and bumble cream to make sure my hair was nourished and healthy. Realizing I had to look gorge at our rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, I asked her to give me a blowout the evening before the Big Day.

  A self-admitted control freak, Jacquelynn liked this idea. “Now I can make sure I know everything you have in your hair before I do your updo,” she said. This was imp
ortant because updos usually wear better with “day-old” hair that hasn’t been washed immediately before styling. Obviously, this can get pretty annoying for stylists when their clients show up on the morning of their weddings with hair full of cheap, sticky gel.

  The weekend of my wedding, I looked like a flippin’ hair model. During the happy hour the evening before my nuptials, my hair was a glossy, golden sheet hanging down my back. On the wedding day…my hair was perfection.

  * * *

  CHEAT SHEET

  WERE YOU TOO BUSY RECRUITING A CRACK TEAM

  OF PROFESSIONALS TO READ THE LAST CHAPTER?

  HERE’S YOUR CHEAT SHEET:

  The right wedding planner can change your life. And bear in mind: more often than not, she’ll end up paying for herself with the money you save.

  Your photographer and videographer are going to be around you all the livelong day. Make sure you get good vibes from them in person as well as on film.

  Know what you want and have inspiration photos for your hairstylist—and start looking early enough in case your search for the perfect beauty team turns into an epic saga, as mine did.

  * * *

  8

  THE HYPE

  Invitations and other printed matter

  ELIZABETH

  In the early days of the engagement, I was completely clueless about the world of invitations. Don’t get me wrong; I’d seen Platinum Weddings on the WE TV channel and I knew some brides spent their IRA savings on platinum-plated, hand-embroidered invitations that had to be FedExed and weighed five pounds each. But I figured everyone else just went to the nearest FedEx office, ordered a bulk package of card stock, printed out single-sided postcard-sized invitations, slapped a stamp on ’em and called it a day.

  Ohhh boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

  Even my simple postcard idea, it turned out, could cost more than the couch I scrimped and saved for six months to buy. And don’t even get me started on embossing, letterpressing, calligraphy, vellum and hand-stitching. My mom instilled in me a passion for all things paper-related, and for a girl whose favorite toy growing up was a sample folder from Paper Source, wedding invitations represented a box of candy. A stunning, expensive, delicious box of candy.