This will be fun right?
Updated: May 9, 2023
Sh** No One Will Tell You About Planning Your Wedding, except me, I'll tell you.
Ever plan a wedding or major event? Then you KNOW the devil is in the details. Our wedding was mostly perfect and in the sea of the busiest wedding year to date. I'm going to share some major things to pay attention to.
“This is supposed to be the best day of our lives right?"
James and I planned and paid for our wedding. We were aware of every penny that walked out the door and towards the event. Here are six items we believe you should pay major attention to.
Item No. 1: Decide what's most important to you and your fiance before you do anything else - then find a planner that will make sure you stay true to your north pole.
James and I cared about #food, #curatedexperiences, and #weddingstyle the most when it came to planning our wedding. We didn't want shitty catering food, or a recycled venue and florals. Piecing together the long list of #weddingvendors and having them work in a logistical symphony required countless hours, spreadsheets, and headaches. We had an amazing day of planner who worked with us every step of the way and was incredibly helpful - our one regret was not hiring #simplycharmingsocials for the entire wedding experience. I fully believe had we, we may have had a very different but equally mostly perfect day.
Item No. 2: Be REALLY diligent with your venue, catering, and timelines - read my subtext OVER DOCUMENT AND OVER COMMUNICATE everything.
We all know #papertrails are necessary in today's world, and weddings are no exception. Our vendors were great, well most of them. Our #weddingvenue which also included our #catering and #booze did not handle our event with the ease and grace their brand name had promised. Imagine this, it's 2 weeks before your wedding and #menus, #booze, #timeline, and just general confidence in our venue's ability to pull off your #wedding are completely shattered. Nothing is decided, everything is up in the air, and your main point of contact literally takes time off with no second in command. Now, let's assume the best, either we had a sales rep that just didn't give a shit or is genuinely overwhelmed by the volume of events they are responsible for. My gut reaction, it's not the latter. The pricing on our venue and catering selections kept changing, the booze selections were not finalized (and honestly, were horrific), and the timeline kept resulting in the addition of hours to an already expensive day. This is supposed to be the best day of our lives right? Not entirely wrong, but it was incredibly frustrating.
Item No. 3: When in doubt, go up the food chain. You are paying for (ideally) a once-in-a-lifetime experience, don't let anyone elses' working style f*** up your day.
After a little bit of sleuthing, I figured out the Head of Sales' email for our event and consulted with my #matronofhonor and her #husband, both of whom are attornies, and listed out my grievances. The venue's contract "go hard" (meaning money is owed or final selections need to be made) dates had passed and we had no resolution to #catering and #booze. Additionally, new line items (parking passes for our vendors and the catering coffee station, like seriously? no we will bring in a coffee truck, everyone HATES catering coffee) that we'd never heard of or had previously struck from the contract were popping back up on our proposal. James and I began to feel more like a #piggybank than a valued client or guest. I almost forgot the greatest grievance - charging us $35/bottle for their mistakes of not following up about wine lists sooner rather than later and offering up the opportunity for us to bring in our own wines AT OUR EXPENSE to correct their mistake. I expressed in an email to the Head of Sales our disappointment in how things had been handled from the #catering to the line items, referencing that they're supposed to be an award-winning hospitality group. I started to deduct the cost of my time from the overall cost of our event. Read the subtext, most legal agreements will have a section that implies the hospitality company will endeavor to do its best to provide you with an experience that is up to its standards. Highlighting these 3 areas of disappointment fall underneath the "endeavor to provide" section. It expresses a factual seriousness that backs up the grievances. After 4 different proposal reviews over a 72-hour period during the work week with the venue's Head of Sales, #catering was decided (on the night of a few things coming out incorrectly but I'm going to let that slide), and #booze became our responsibility. Shoutout to #vinoteca in #inmanpark for bulk ordering and helping us #curate our wine list on literally 96-hour notice - more on that in the next section.
Item No. 4: Track everything, every cost, every proposal, every e-mail, every guest, all of it. Get realllll comfortable with excel or google sheets because #sum or #sumif equations will make your life so much easier.
Back to my comments about being treated like a #piggybank and #vinoteca. We had 165 guests at our wedding, 165 guests of which 130 were drinking (we had a column that said "drinking yes or no", and asked this question on our RSVP form). Multiply 130 by the number of glasses each guest would be estimated to drink based on whether they're moderate, heavy, or light drinkers. Our guests are in the moderate to heavy category so let's say 6 glasses to be on the safe side. Now, remember, there are around 4 glasses per bottle. So, let's do the math (130*6)/4=195, 195 bottles of wine, this doesn't take into account parsing out #bubbles, #whitewine, #rosewine, or #redwine and the #winevarieties we would need to include to pair best with food being served. If we had to pay a corkage fee of $35/bottle x 195 bottles, that would have been an emergency expense of $6285. Our sales rep (the one before I got in touch with the head of sales) was willing to reduce the cost down to $25/bottle which would have been $4875. This cost would be in addition, to tracking down, sourcing, and delivering all the #wine to the #venue. Doing this the week of the event when we had, I don't know 18 million other things to do was not my ideal situation. I told our sales rep no and began solely communicating with the Head of Sales. After several more petty emails, in which, our rep continuously left off either our planner, James, or our planner's assistant, the Head of Sales became our sales rep for our event. I want to be clear, once our sales rep was removed - things began to move much more smoothly - our day of venue coordinator and our venue staff coordinator worked lock step with our planner.
Item No. 5: You will need more time, and don't skimp or skip photo time
This is my biggest #regret for our #weddingday. I think we paid for 13 hours in the venue and the reality is we needed 18 hours. I could (and did) bring in a small army to help everyone in the wedding party get ready but it didn't take into account the things that would require me as the #bride, or James as the #groom. Those things included issues with decor, last-minute table changes, or people being late or asking dumb questions. Those things ate into the time that James and I could have taken more photos together. For example, we had #frothy the coffee truck, #bixiethebasicbus, and a seating area by #blueeyedyonder all styled with beautiful florals by #lupinsandlava, all of which would have been perfect vignettes for James and me to take photos or portraits with, and it didn't happen. If the venue you are hoping to use is nickel and diming you for your time, maybe, just maybe, go with your second choice or a completely different choice because they will give you access to the venue for a longer period of time. I cannot recreate our #weddingday and not having enough #time is my #biggestregret.
I will make up for it with a photoshoot of James and me in a different location in our wedding attire but it won't be the same.
I mentioned that I would talk about my #bespokeweddingdresses - sorry y'all I think we're gonna need a whole new post for that - stay tuned :)
With brutal honesty, wrapped in good intentions,
Keep in touch
@yasmeenemilia