So… You Want Your Wedding To Be Perfect…..

We’ve been blogging now for awhile about all sorts of subjects… but I think today it’s time for something completely different!

When working with brides we two girls  have noticed a common theme. Each Bride wants her wedding to be absolutely perfect.. and of course who wouldn’t!! They seem to expect that every item they’ve chosen, every nuance of detail, will go EXACTLY as planned, without a ripple.

We are here to tell you that every wedding IS perfect… it’s just that some don’t go as smoothly as others.

The following are the 10 most ridiculous things that have happened in we two girl’s families during a wedding. (including our own).

1. The photographer for this wedding had been contracted for 4 hours for the ceremony through part of the reception and some formal photographs.  After showing up literally 5 minutes before the wedding party walked down the aisle, he took photos during the ceremony and then proceeded to spend another 1 1/2 hrs there taking pictures. The wedding party still had to get to the reception hall which was about 25 minutes away. He spent another hour taking pictures in the hall’s entryway which caused the Bride & Groom to be late to their own reception. He then threatened to leave without taking any pictures at the reception at all unless he was paid more money because his alloted time was used up. By the time the Bride and Groom actually sat down at their table to eat, most of the guests were getting ready to leave. So they begged people to stay for their first dance and cake cutting, which they ended up doing before they even ate dinner. To boot, there is not one full shot of the just the Bride & Groom in their dress & tux in all of the pictures he took.

2. Did I mention flowers? At this wedding the Bride had ordered her flowers and her future sister in law and mother in law were going to make the bridal party bouquets. An hour before the wedding when the Mother of the Bride asked the Maid of Honor where were the flowers, she remembered that the Best Man had them in his car. They were then brought  to the Mother of the Bride, in a bucket. still in their packages, not made into bouquets, with a bag of ribbon in rolls beside the bucket.  So… calmly… the Mother of the Bride took the flowers, and made all 5 wedding bouquets in less than 1/2 an hour. Amazingly, they looked great.

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3.  One wedding ran out of food. Not sure how or why, but this caterer did not make enough food for the 150 guests that he knew would be attending. The buffet table was pretty much scraped clean by the first go around of guests. Since they had not prepared the proper amount of food in advance and saw what was happening, (and because the Mother of the Bride was throwing a screaming fit in the kitchen), the staff  were in a a bit of a tizzy. Eventually, they brought out a large platter of heated frozen fish sticks and a vegetable & cracker tray, which  I am assuming was all they could come up with on short notice.  So much for the carved roast beef and turkey they were supposed to have enough of.

4. At this particular wedding, the Bride and Groom were not in favor of serving any liquor. The Groom’s father had told some of his friends about this couple’s decision beforehand and they decided to remedy the situation. These friends brought with them in the largest car’s trunk, 3  massive sized coolers filled with beer, bourbon, scotch, an array of mixers and ice. At one point the Bride’s father asked the Groom’s father if he knew if there was any liquor to be had because in his words “What kind of Wedding has no liquor??”  He was quietly escorted down to the parking lot where he took one look at this car trunk and exclaimed that this was a great thing! So, all afternoon, whenever someone mentioned about being thirsty, or asked anyone if there was any liquor available, they were carefully whispered to, and gently escorted to the parking lot  ‘car bar’. The Bride and Groom were completely unaware of this ever happening until about 25 years later.

5. This particular event was to be held outdoors overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and then afterwards for an intimate backyard reception. That was the plan…. until the weather decided not to cooperate. We would like to say it rained, but that would not be accurate. It was a deluge… with rain sheeting sideways, coming down in buckets. After some moments of panic and disarray, family and friends came together to save the day. All the furniture was moved out of the Bride’s living room and stashed in every other room it would fit. Everything was moved inside to the living room and people were escorted from their cars to the house under beach umbrellas. Not quite the day that was planned for, but still there is something to be said for a small room filled with the people you care most about sharing your big day!

6.  The rings are important!! The Ring Bearer had her pillow, the rings were tied and fastened to the pillow. She came down the aisle on cue.  When the officiant asked for the rings, the pillow was presented… however, there were no rings to be had!! Someone had taken them right off the pillow! So, the officiant asked for a loaner ring from the audience. Only 1 person was willing to part with their wedding ring to complete the service, but, only 1 ring was required. The service continued and the ring was returned. Though the original rings were never found and new rings were bought at a later date, still, the bride and groom are happily married to this day!

7. At one wedding the Bride’s bouquet was a long cascade of cymbidium orchids, white daisies and blue delphinium. The Bride actually wanted yellow gerbera daisies with brown centers with white daisies, but the Bride’s Mother in Law, who was paying for the flowers, didn’t like that choice and insisted that it would look chintzy. So, in an effort to not start a marriage off poorly, the Bride acquiesced to using the florist  and  the flower choices that her future Mother in Law insisted upon. The day of the wedding was a sweltering hot June afternoon…. and the a/c on the delivery truck broke down…and this was the last delivery of the day. About 10 minutes before the ceremony, 3 of the 6 orchids Mother In Law had demanded were in this bouquet, decided they didn’t like being in this bouquet anymore and promptly fell out. The Mother of the Bride, very calmly, picked the flowers up off the carpet, and carefully managed to get 2 of the 3 orchids back into the bouquet with none the wiser. Including the future Mother in Law. The daisies however, stood up quite marvelously and the Bride only stopped breathing for a few seconds.

8.  Note to self, always check the sound system. This wedding was progressing in a  surprisingly smooth fashion, given our families track record, until …. The Judge who was acting as officiant was about to ask the Bride and Groom the questions that have been asked through time immemorial to seal the deal. Someone, at that moment, in another room, not knowing the sound system was piped into ALL the rooms at the venue, decided to flip a particular wall switch.  Instead hearing  the Officiants voice, we heard a lively and contagiously happy commercial about traveling to the Bahama’s for a great vacation! The Maid of Honor, Bride, Groom and Best Man all looked confusedly at the judge and then raised their eyes to look at the ceiling where the disruption emanated from. Eventually someone thought to run and find the culprit to turn off the speakers in the ceremony room. The Judge then picked up without a hitch and remarked that as much as we’d love to take that vacation, there was this wedding at hand to be completed.

9. During the afternoon of this particular wedding, the Bride, Maid of Honor, Mother of the Groom and some of the Groomsmen were decorating the reception hall. The Maid of Honor and Mother of the Groom left around 2:00 pm to go to the hairdresser’s leaving the Bride at the reception hall. Supposedly the Groom was going to come and pick her up and take her there as well. Two hours later he never showed up. The Bride called her mother in tears, who quickly got one of the Groomsmen to bring her daughter home immediately. It was now 4:00 pm and the wedding was at 6:00 pm. Luckily, the Mother of the Bride had been a hairdresser at one time and managed to get her daughter’s hair, nails and makeup done in an hour.  After which she drove like a maniac to get  them both to the wedding on time, all the while hoping that the rest of the family would find their way on time as well. (There was an enormous traffic jam because of an outdoor concert being held 1 block away from the wedding venue.  Half the guests never made it to the ceremony location and the Mother of the bride actually drove on the sidewalk at one point to get past the stopped dead traffic).

10. Never give a kid a drink. At this particular wedding the kid in question was 15 but was 6′ tall and no one would have guessed he was under the legal drinking age of 18. Now this particular groomsman/15 year old swears to this day it was not the drink that made the following happen…he insists it was the wool suit he was wearing on a hot summer day and all the running around he did, doing everything his mother asked him to do. So, in the middle of the wedding ceremony… he fainted, went down sideways, like a bowling pin. Which caused him to knock into the groomsman next to him, which caused that groomsman to knock into the one next to him and so on eventually, knocking into the Father of the Bride and him into the 2 men who were standing there singing special prayers. When the Bride’s father knocked into one of the singers, he was in the middle of a note, which abruptly stopped, and you could hear him plain as day say… S**t!!

So, if during a consultation, you see either of us two girls politely smiling as the Bride To Be is describing every little planned detail, just know that inside, we two girls are quietly, alternately, laughing and praying that most of the planned things goes smoothly at this wedding.

Now go out and have yourself a PERFECT, wholesale flower-filled day.