I got married in July, 2019.
First, a confession… I thought planning my wedding would be easy. It was set to be a small dinner party type of affair with no more than 40 guests. I’ve been at more than 250 weddings, so I thought it would be quite simple and I was SO WRONG!
Second, the short summary… Make decisions when you are ready, pay attention to responsiveness (or the lack of it), and seek out experience. SO MUCH experience.
DECISIONS: If you don’t feel ready to make a random wedding planning decision, don’t! I wasn’t ready to shop for a dress, I wasn’t looking forward to it, frankly, I was dreading it. I felt like I had to though, ASAP (it can take up to 9 months to order and we were exactly 9 months away from our wedding date). The dress I chose was lovely, the shop amazing, but as the months passed, I knew the dress was not ‘me’. I felt so foolish, wasteful and sad and being my own decision to buy it, I wanted to just suck it up and just wear it, but I told my fiancee about it and he said, ‘just get the one you want, it’s fine.’ I then called the dress shop, which was BEYOND graceful at my call and I ordered the dress I’d seen online months prior. It was perfect. It was ‘me’.
RESPONSIVENESS: I am an extremely responsive person. To an email, to a text, to a phone call. It’s in my nature and it’s how I am in my personal life as well as my business life. It’s hard to then think that others might not be similarly responsive, especially when your conversation with them began in a responsive way. If they aren’t very responsive, they likely will remain that way. This leads me to the tough advice of LISTEN TO YOUR GUT. If you have amazing vibes with someone, run with it. If, even after you’ve paid a non-refundable retainer, you have weird feelings, DO NOT ignore them! You should feel great about your vendors. You should feel like they care about you and your wedding. You should have an amazing experience! Do not settle for anything less.
EXPERIENCE: Experience is KEY. Thankfully I had it around me in spades. I had some vendors who were friends, who would do anything for me and man, did they. Without me even asking. One of my vendors made up cute bathroom baskets (tissues, hair spray, band-aids, you know, all that good stuff). Another drove one of our guests back to our airbnb because we forgot our rings and had all been drinking pre-ceremony (HA!) and could not get them ourselves. Our cake gal insisted on driving 3.5hrs (each way) to bring us the perfect vegan cake. These are my people. These are the types of people you want at your wedding. Treating you like family. Literally.
Since planning my wedding, I have an entirely new level of empathy for my clients as they plan and ask for advice. I have an entirely new understanding of the value of vendors who are responsive and follow through on their word. I have a newly realized motivation to serve my clients in the best way I know how by being responsive and showing them that I truly do care about their individual wedding, because it is important, it’s such a special day and I want every couple I work with to know through the entire process of working together that I have their back and will do my best by them.
PHEW! I know that is a lot, so here is some of the PARTYYYYYY! <3
