The "Perfect" Wedding

Most people will tell you that there’s no such thing as a perfect anything – not a perfect marriage, or a perfect person, and they always say there’s no “perfect” wedding. I tend to disagree with the last part of that theory as I have attended many “perfect” weddings, as far as my clients know anyway. But this year, I experienced the most perfect wedding of all – but it wasn’t because of anything I did, or anything that any of the vendors did – it was because of the bride, the groom and the family involved.
Last week, Dee White passed away leaving behind four beautiful children and the “perfect” wife. One of those four children, Barrett, got married in March of this year and I was lucky enough to be a part of that most wonderful wedding.
I was first introduced to the family in August of 2010 and we began planning from there. Because the bride and groom lived out of town, I planned majority of the wedding with the bride’s mother, Jessica. From the very first meeting with Jessica, she spoke so lovingly of her children and husband that I knew this was a family I would fall in love with, and I did. Both Dee and Jessica did everything possible to give Barrett whatever she wanted, not what they wanted. Barrett traditionally came in around the holidays, so the house was filled with all four children, and significant others, plus all of their puppies! And every sibling wanted to be involved in the wedding details, including the only brother of the four children, Neal.
I had never seen such a supportive family, starting with the parents trickling down to each of the children. I realized the true bond of this family when Neal came home in the middle of our cake tasting and announced he had passed a certification exam and everyone quickly put the cake tasting on hold. It was his sisters who pulled out the champagne to toast his success immediately and they included me in every minute of the celebration. I knew his parents were proud of his accomplishment, but I was more proud of the way they had raised their children.
People often say that when planning a wedding, parents in particular get wrapped up with the bride and the bride can certainly forget that other things non-wedding even exist. This was not the case in this family and it was refreshing to see that weddings do not always cause drama and stress. They were one of the most even keeled families to work with and it paid off on the day of the wedding.
My point in having this tribute to this special family is this: often times the stereotype surrounding weddings has more to do with the drama it can cause for a family, the fights it can lead to with the mothers and the stress of the planning. This family was proof that when things are done correctly and kept in perspective, a wedding is the happiest day of your life and the one of the best memories we have with our families – and that’s exactly what it should be. But this all starts at the top of the chain with the parents.
So thank you, Dee and Jessica White, for raising your children to rejoice in each other’s time of joy and to share special times with each other. For allowing your children to be themselves instead of pushing them to be who you thought they should be. And for reminding me what makes the “perfect” wedding – Being on the dance floor all night long with your wife and children dancing like no one is watching, enjoying each other like no one else exists and knowing that it’s a moment they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

The Vendor and the Wedding Planner

Once upon a time, there was a very sweet, reliable, even keeled wedding planner with great communication skills! She worked really hard to please both her clients and her vendors by trying to get her job done while avoiding stepping on toes in the process. One day, she was hired to help a client with last minute details on the day of her wedding so she began calling vendors to make sure all of the details were finalized, arrival times were set and final payments were received. Things were going well until she got the florist on the phone. She gave her routine speech and asked the necessary questions:
“Hi, this is Kelly Sherlock. I’m the day-of wedding planner for Ms. Bride so I’m just calling her vendors to make sure we have the details finalized, that you have the most updated floor plan, to see if there’s a final balance and also to get an arrival time from you so I can add you to the schedule for the venue!”
Here’s what this florist had to say:
“Well thank you for reaching out to me, but I won’t be speaking with you. I am working directly with the bride and I really hate when planners call me and try to get involved. I’ve been in this business for 36 years and I know everything I need to know – there’s nothing that I need from you, but I will be calling the bride to give all of this information directly to her”.
That florist has never worked in New Orleans again – Just Kidding!!
What actually happen was that the florist delivered the flowers late because the bride forgot to tell her that picture times had been moved up and the floor plan had changed so she did not have enough arrangements. Both things could have been avoided if the florist would have taken my call and allowed me to run through the schedule with her.
This little fable is based on a true story, but unfortunately it happens more than you think because some vendors are concerned about working with planners, and the brides need to know this so that the expectation is set up front. With so many planners popping up in the city, the good ones are hard to spot, but we do exist. The problem is that so many vendors have had bad experiences with the other planners that by the time the good ones come into the picture, the vendors are jaded with an attitude and a closed door. The reality is that although I understand that, I still have a job to do. And we all have to consider that there’s a lot of competition in this industry so I can name at least one florist, one photographer, one videographer, one limo company and one band who have done a poor job on occasion and totally ruined someone’s wedding day. Does that mean that every time I come in contact with someone who performs one of those functions in this industry, I believe that they too will screw up? That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
My point is, everyone has horror stories, but allowing me to screw up, before you assume that I will, is very helpful to our clients – because these brides are OUR clients. Also, in the case of full service planning, I am with these brides for the entire engagement, not just one or two meetings like most vendors - so allowing me to pass along the trigger points of this particular bride and her family, is only beneficial to you. Plus, no bride wants to know that she’s paying me to take away the headaches and she’s paying you to buck that system.
As for the brides, if you are not hiring a planner until the end of the planning process, please let your vendors know that she will be contacting them the month prior and that you do not want to be bothered at that time – which is why you are paying the planner. In the case of full service, the same rules apply. If you want your planner to be the main contact and you do not want to be bothered with the details and questions, let the vendors know so that it’s coming straight from your mouth. And more than likely, if there’s a vendor that the planner will not work with, they aren’t worth the trouble they will create, but as always, it’s up to the girls.

Congratulations Randy and Brianne

This blog has covered many different topics from budgets to bridesmaids, but there’s one thing that I have consistently preached no matter what the topic – make your wedding your own. Finally, I’ve found the couple who went against every grain possible to get the wedding that they wanted and it could not have been more fun! My brother and his new wife have never been considered a traditional couple, to say the least. They were best friends before they ever got together and neither of them has ever felt the need to explain their relationship to anyone nor have they ever been fans of public displays of affection. Their wedding day was no different!

Last Saturday, they were married in the courtyard of the Board of Trade in an intimate ceremony attended by only immediately family and close friends. The vows, however traditional, were given their own twist of humor and personality and a hand shake sealed the marriage prior to the traditional kiss. The wedding pictures show a couple whose love is visible through laughter rather than a forced kiss and the family portraits displayed each person’s personality rather than robotic poses to declare uniformity.

The reception followed at the same venue where 150 friends and family members joined the party to celebrate the marriage. Rather than a “go to” song, such as, I Will Always Love You, the couple danced to a song by a North Carolina band (which is where they met and reside) and then broke into Soldier Soulja Boy, which was always a favorite of the two at any party. Rather than floral center pieces, the tables were dressed with arrangements mixed and matched to include New Orleans favorites such as lanterns, coffee beans, candles on fleur de lis candle sticks and of course the sporadic mardi gras mask.

Even with all of the touches that made this wedding their own, my favorite pieces of the non-traditional puzzle included the shoes worn by the bride and groom, the cake topper and the cake cutting. Since blue is the favorite of both Brianne and Randy, the bride wore blue platform heels while the groom sported blue Converse (with his groomsmen following suit in black Chuck Taylors). The groom had the cake topper custom made into characters from the movie “Up” – even though none of those characters bare any resemblance to them (not even the dog looks like their dog) so if you didn’t know the movie, you didn’t understand the topper. And for the cake cutting, my husband shared the first piece of cake with the bride as he is the only person in the world who could appreciate the cake the way that she could. Once the cake was cut and the traditional “sharing the first piece of cake” pictures were taken, my brother stepped in for the “token” pictures of the two of them with the cake.

Every piece of this wedding was well thought out whether it was something that the couple included in their wedding or decided not to include. And all of their vendors were flexible enough to go with the flow that represented Brianne and Randy, specifically, which is another thing I always preach – picking the right vendors. No one rushed them, slowed them down, told them they had to be somewhere that they didn’t want to be, made them take a picture that they didn’t want to take or pose in a way that didn’t fit “Brianne and Randy”. This was a night true to the two of them, the way a wedding should be, and I was just happy to be a part of it as a sister to them both!

The Wedding Album

Four years ago, on September 16th, one of my best friends got married in one of the most perfectly planned ceremonies and receptions I've ever seen. Every detail was thought out and every song was perfectly timed. For 9 months leading up to the wedding, all she thought about was this wedding so much so that after the wedding was over, she apparently wanted nothing more to do with it - hence the email that we all received the day after her four year anniversary that she had finally picked the pictures for her wedding album. FOUR YEARS later??!!
Knowing that I would blog about her, Bonnie Meteye, this topic is for you!
Most brides are similar to Bonnie in that they live and breathe for their wedding day while they are planning, but once it's over, they tend to let a lot of things fall by the wayside. Not to mention, the overwhelming task of picking 50 pictures from a proof book of over 500 images can be a bit much. But even with that being said, there has to be a deadline. In most cases, the bride gets home from her honey moon eager to see her wedding pictures and has no problem hounding the photographer about when they will be online or when the proof book will be in. Once the images are able to be viewed, suddenly, the bride does not have time to make selections and finish the process. And in that same token, when the day finally does come, a year, two years or even four years later, this bride has made her selections and is ready for the book to be made, she has no problem once again hounding the photographer as if he should have planned his work week around the fact that she would re-surface so many years later.
The fact is, in any job, there is a process and a shelf life for files and past projects. The same applies to a wedding photographer. Let's just pretend that Bonnie's photographer shoots one wedding every weekend - that's a little over 50 weddings a year. If he kept up that average for 4 years, by the time he heard from Bonnie with her decision of images, he would have shot over 200 weddings. What are the chances that this poor man has nothing else to house in his studio but old weddings with the hope that the lost bride will one day come to him to pick out images for an album that was inevitably included in the package that she bought 4 or more years ago. Yay, more work at a time that he didn't expect but for free! That's just what every professional wants!
The bottom line is, these brides should have up to 6 months, tops, to get the process completed. I think 3 months should be the cut off, but most photographers are more lenient with a 6 month reprieve. At any rate, I do understand that once the wedding is over, it's hard to get back into decision-making mode, but you have to give these vendors a break. I know, at the time of your wedding, the good vendors make you feel like you’re the only client they have, but the reality is, if they don't move forward after you, you won't have someone to call in 4 years for a book. So do not make their job more difficult and leave them stuck in limbo. Be grateful that you chose a photographer who gave you so many great images, pick your pictures and move on!

The Kardashian Krash

After a much needed break from this blog due to a very busy wedding season, Kim Kardashian has given me the energy to once again get fired up about the stupidity of people. I am not only talking about the stupidity that is Kim Kardashian thinking that marrying Kris Humphries was a good idea, but I am talking about the ignorance that fans have shown by being shocked that this marriage didn’t work out.
First off, I found it extremely hard to even watch the wedding, which should say a lot since weddings are my favorite thing in life. I have tried at least four different times to watch the entire 2 hour event, but somehow I still can’t make it thru. The reason I cannot make it thru is because of the ridiculousness of Kris Humphries.
I am an extreme Kardashian fan and many people close to me know that I consider myself to be the fourth Kardashian and I would marry Rob just to make that my reality. My name already starts with a K and I have the black hair and everything so it’s a great fit, but that’s a different subject all together. At any rate, I think Kim is great and I think the idea of being married is wonderful, but Kris Humphries, really? He has been an idiot since day one and the wedding special showed him as the idiot for 2 hours instead of only 30 minutes.
Even with all of this said, my irritation does not come from Kim or Kris in this situation – it comes from the fans out there who thought this was going to last. And for those of you who are talking about how Lamar and Khloe have lasted longer even though they dated for a shorter period of time, I just have one main difference which should always be the dead give-away of the future a couple will have together. When we saw the special of Lamar and Khloe getting married, did you see Lamar anywhere near the planning of the wedding? No, I think not. Yet in the two hour time period that we had to suffer through the wedding special of Kim and Kris, I believe we saw Kris crying about the details more than the bride herself. That should say something.
Essentially, this entry should be all about one of my least favorite things in the world of weddings, the Groomzilla, but I shall rant about that another day. This entry will simply serve as a warning to the brides out there; if you learn only one thing from the Kardasians, learn this – if your groom is more interested in the flowers and the ice carving than you are, run, don’t walk, away immediately. If your groom won’t even let you have the wedding that you have always dreamed of, I doubt he’ll be supportive of anything else throughout your married life. Just a thought!
In this case, Kim got what she needed from Kris, 10 million dollars for the rights to her wedding. In the real world, with a groom like that, you’ll be getting a lot of heartache and backlash from your family. It’s reality TV people – don’t read too much into it, but always beware of the Groomzilla.

It’s not about you!

When I was sixteen years old, my best friend (since the age of six) lost her father to a horrible battle with cancer. On the day of the funeral, after the service, I met my parents in the back of the church where I began crying uncontrollably for the first time since his diagnosis. The funny thing is that my immediate thought for my friend was, “Who will walk her down the aisle at her wedding?” Since I was not a person who grew up dreaming of her wedding day, that was an odd thought when you consider all of the other key moments her and her sisters would experience without their father.
The truth is no matter how cynical of a person you are and how non-traditional you think your wedding will be, most people who have relationships with their parents dream of having them involved in their wedding day. Some little girls grow up dreaming of planning their wedding with their mother while Daddy supportively writes checks and then swoops in on the day of the wedding to walk his baby girl down the aisle. The planning process is a breeze, the night flows perfectly and you can prove it all by the photographer catching that “money shot” of Dad kissing one cheek while Mom kisses the other.
Unfortunately, our parents do not always cooperate with our visions – much of the time because of reasons that could be helped – and their selfishness and stubborn attitudes prevent sane decisions. The reality is that I’ve had more than one client who had to deal with parents threatening not to attend their child’s wedding due to things not being done the way they wanted them done. In one case, I had a father follow through and not show up to the wedding at all and I am on the verge of a case where a mother will not be in attendance.
It is perfectly normal to get emotional about decisions made while planning such a big event. The wedding is essentially about the bride and the groom joining their lives, but I can see where Mom might get a bit competitive with her friends who recently had daughters get married. Wanting everything to be perfect is typical when you love someone, and we know that most parents always want everything perfect for their children. But there is a difference between the parents who want things perfect for their child – and those who want it for themselves.
When you start threatening to skip the wedding, if your child does not choose the favors that you want, you might want to step back and check yourself. When you are not even paying for the wedding and you cannot seem to stop saying the words “I want, I want, I want” that’s called selfish. And when you cut off all contact with your child in the middle of the planning process and then show up the week of the wedding just to look good to your friends, you probably do not deserve to be there.
Can any parent out there please explain to me why your child not getting married in a Catholic Church or not having the cake you were hoping for is worth losing the relationship and missing one of the most important days of their life? It is my job to up-sell and I make a living off of people believing that they need to consistently out-do the friend that married the weekend before them, but even I do not get it! I guess one of the things that sets me apart from other people in the business is that I’m still a realist, and the reality is that no amount of flowers or choirs singing at a wedding ceremony is worth jeopardizing a relationship with someone you love.
I know there are people out there who can flip this and say, “Why not just give in to your parents if it means that much to them?” The answer – because it’s not about them! It is hard enough to plan a wedding these days without having the extra drama of a parent who just needs attention.
I know this might be my most harsh entry yet, but I cannot stand to listen to one more crying bride who feels that she is at the mercy of a parent who couldn’t care less about the true meaning of her special day. You know that I will be the first to call out a bride on her attitude and I believe, especially when parents are paying, everyone needs to keep their priorities in check and pick their battles. But the parents’ threats and walking out is getting really old.
For all the parents out there who think that not inviting your seventh cousin once-removed is more emotionally draining then never speaking to your child again, please think about the parents who would do anything possible just to see their child get married. Life is short and monumental moments are few and far between, so if you are lucky enough to be on Earth to enjoy them together, sit back, enjoy the cocktails and thank God for giving you one more memory with your family!

The Perfect Prep

Your wedding day is typically filled with anxiety and nerves which are perfectly normal for any bride – no matter how much you plan. The excitement of getting married and finally having reached the day you’ve dreamed of can overload even the most solid of brides-to-be with emotions she’s never felt before. However, there are ways to make the day run as smoothly as possible, keeping the stress to a minimum, and it’s all about scheduling, being prepared and going with the flow. Here are some tips to help you do just that:

1. The schedule – One of the most important things to have on your wedding day is a schedule stating the flow of the day, in particular if you and your bridesmaids are getting your hair and make-up done. Although the schedule is most important, be careful not to be too controlling with the timing. You only need to schedule the time period that it will take to complete the entire group, you do not need to map out which girl will be in the chair at each time slot. Trying to control things too much will only make it impossible to obtain your goal, causing you to fail before you begin.
2. Let them come to you – Typically, the hair dresser and make-up artists will come to the bride’s house or hotel room the morning of the wedding. Having them come to you is the best thing possible so that you do not have to account for travel time, regrouping the troops, etc. Being able to wake up and have everyone come to you often makes the bride feel more relaxed and less rushed from the start of the day.
3. Make it possible to sleep in – Starting at a time that is later than the crack of dawn helps you feel relaxed and not worn out by the time the big event takes place. In order to ensure that you can sleep in, you want to assess just how many girls are getting their hair and make-up done and how long it will take each person to get each service completed. At that point, you need to decide if it’s best to have two hair dressers or make-up artists in order to get everyone done in less time. This could mean the difference between starting at 7:30am in order to get 7 girls ready by 3pm or being able to start the prep at 11am in order to get 7 girls ready by the start of photos.
4. Check with your photographer - Before finalizing the schedule for the prep, you’ll want to check with your photographer to make sure you are giving him/her enough time to complete pictures before heading to the church. You will want to check on the arrival time of the photographer if you want your prep photographed. Ultimately, you will need your bridesmaids to be dressed and completely ready before you get into your dress. After you are completely dressed with jewelry, the veil, etc. the photographer can begin taking portraits and group shots. You will want to check with the photographer to find out whether or not a second shooter will be on hand to photograph the groom and his groomsmen at the church before the ceremony. This can change the time that he/she will start pictures of the girls depending on whether or not he/she has to leave to make it to the church.
5. EAT, DRINK and RELAX - Make sure to have lunch brought in for you and your girls so that you have something in your stomach before the night begins. Most brides do not eat enough on the night of the wedding, even when time is allotted for such, but having lunch and snacks during the day helps to keep your energy up and absorb some of the alcohol that you will be consuming throughout the event. A glass of two of champagne or wine is nothing to worry about while relaxing with your girls on the day of your wedding, but make sure you save the real party for the reception.

I should have prefaced by saying that this type of relaxation only comes from having a planner, a good friend or a great venue that provides someone you trust to set up the reception venue and make sure everything is in place. Not having to worry about when your vendors are showing up, travel schedules or who is handling the extra details at the church and/or reception venue is the top priority for any bride. Once you have that taken care of, you are free to work out the other steps to a relaxing day. Just make sure that you and your vendors know the schedule prior to the morning of the wedding and that the times match with everyone’s responsibilities. Try to have vendors come to you to avoid travel confusion and losing items. Do not forget to eat, eat, eat and have a cocktail if the spirit moves you!