My theory about wedding service people: 50% are crazy and the rest fall in to predictable categories

I have developed a theory regarding people that provide wedding services. I suppose this theory might apply to other services, but I'll keep this post framed around my wedding experience. For those of you that are kind of slow, that really means I'll try to write something funny about my fiancée's reactions to her our wedding planning. I mostly tag along to witness the phenomena.

Here is the theory broken down in to its primary parts:

1. Weddings are typically crazy events.
2. The more exclusively someone works on weddings the more crazy they are likely to be.
3. The more generic the service is the more likely the person is to be normal.

Here is how I thought of this wonderful theory. Sheri and I just finished planning all of the things that modern society expects us to do about a year before the wedding. That includes picking a location, cake, decorations, flowers, photographer, and videographer. While picking these services we asked a few friends, Googled a few companies, and were comped tickets to a bridal show (Ack, I forgot to make fun of that...). After meeting up with all of the possible people I realized that almost half were completely off the deep end. Seriously, if I had a lifecam and recorded what we saw it could be edited to make for some great entertainment.

I'll primarily talk about the ones that we didn't decide to use. After the big day, I'll try to add in some notes on the services we paid for. Here are the general categories.

The really great

1. Hotel Location #2: Kingsley Radisson, chat with Dana Bellant
• The hotel seems both well-priced and incredibly nice
• Great communication and they were happy to let us look around
• E-mail actually is a fast way to chat. It also actually works for follow-up information.
  
• They let us book a block of rooms
• We ask about holding the presidential suite until my parents (4 states away) can come take a look in 3 months. No problem, it is booked right away while we figure out the details.
2. Cake Choice #1: Pronto! in Royal Oak, MI
• I have to declare that the fiancée's mother has a long consumer history with Pronto! and knows the owners. We probably had special treatment.
• The food is fantastic. I'd eat there often if I lived closer.
• The atmosphere is very colorful. Be warned if you are ultra-conservative, but it is a sense of style and flare I personally love to see.
  
• The cake sampling was lots of fun and really good. One of the owner's actually sat with us.
• Obviously they've made tons of wedding cakes and worked with lots of flower shops. We knew little about what we really wanted, but they listened well and gave us concise options to choose from. All advise also seemed to be really helpful...none of the crazy talk (see below postings).
  
• Awesome flower person recommendation. By far the best price and brilliant work. I will blog the place post wedding.
  

The great deal but get-what-you-pay-for communication (i.e. we know we aren't making much money off of you)

I'll save these listings for later. I'm not ashamed to admit that if something seems like a really great service for a great price, I'm willing to be treated like dirt. Especially if others highly recommend the service. Post wedding I too will gladly recommend, but I'll also fairly flag some frustrations that you the fiancée might experience.


The questionably crazy but good deal

I'll save these too for later. Again, saving money greatly influences my capacity to work with wedding focused people that seem to provide a pretty good deal. I'm looking forward to seeing if questionably crazy ends up as crazy or as a good deal during the wedding.


The Crazy (i.e. wedding are the primary business)

1. Photographer #2: Our first exposure to the bizarre.
   
• We show up at the business address, which also happens to be their living room.
• Oddly enough their living room is walled with crazy over-sized photographs. I fail to appreciate why those particular photos are worth showing off.
  
• They cleverly spin to state that it is good to really get to know who they work with, thus the living room. Sheri and Jayson's expectations: on the up.
• After a brief chat we're stuck with just the sales person. Said person dims the lights, closes the curtains, and has us sit through a 15 minute, techno-thumping, nonsensical prior work Power Point.
• If you know us, said sales person must have totally ignored what we said in the "know who they work with" segment. Sheri and Jayson's mood: fear. We're now locked in the dimly light room of the crazy....
• Said sales person subjects us to at least an hour of bad humor and awkward information sharing.
  
• We finally get the photo package info and reenact Jailbreak, Season 1.
• Conclusion: way to crazy and a little conceited, but most importantly the price isn't nearly cheap enough to overcome photographer #1's package.
2. Decorations and Flower Lady #1: if you can't laugh or smile, it creeps out customers.
   
• We show up to the business, and it is a real business. So far we're pretty excited.
• We get escorted to a house next to the business to chat. Kind of weird.
• Initial negotiation goes well, we're learning that there is a lot that we don't know.
• After an hour we notice some disturbing trends.
• "I want it to be just like you have always imagined" is her way of saying, "Quite Foo! Listen up. This is what I want you to buy"
• The person doesn't smile. Not in the I-like-Botox way either.
• The person never laughs...not even when my ignorance of wedding formalities presents itself.
• The person trash talks every other couple that they have worked with. I notice and joke about what she'll say when we leave. Not the most popular of my comments.
• Approaching hour two, we declare the experience a war of attrition. The enemy is entrenched deeply and we have no choice but to retreat.
• Conclusion: We learned some stuff, but didn't really feel treated well. A few days after we misinterpreted what "I'll send you the quote later tonight meant", I classified this one as crazy.
3. Free tickets to the wedding show: Crazy, crazy, crazy.
• Seriously, just don't do this.
• Guys, when she says "...but Jayson is a guy and was just trying to be funny. I think we should go." Refuse. Say that you love her and want her to be able to more easily lie about how great it was after she is let down.
  
• Realize tickets normally cost $10.
  

Well that is about all I can write for one sitting. There are a few more experiences to throw in to the theory's categories, but it seems most of the good ones will have to wait until after the big day. I hope you enjoyed the read.

December wedding update

After many different drafts of what we wanted our wedding to look like, we decided that we couldn’t get married without all of our family and friends we love present. Talking to my recently married friends, it seems as though everyone goes through this process. It starts with lofty, imaginative plans about a wedding on top of a mountain or on an exotic beach in bathing suits and bare feet. Then, reality hits and you realize how much work and money that will involve. After that, you try to re-envision your wedding in a place where everyone can make it. There were many formulations of our wedding in the past four or five months. When it finally came down to it, though, we realized we wanted everyone that we love and care about to be able to attend (if they can, of course).

As far as wedding planning goes, things have really slowed down. Most recently we met with Nicole at Westborne Market on Woodward to discuss flowers. She had some great, colorful ideas and we decided she would be a good match for our wedding vision. Since then, I’ve called/emailed her multiple times asking if I can modify this or that. Oh my, it’s 9 months out and I’m already an obsessive bride!

Even more importantly, my mom, my good friend, and I picked up my wedding dress the other day! It’s the most gorgeous thing I have ever worn by far. And, the best part about the whole adventure was that my mom saw it in a window months ago and said that it would be the perfect dress. It was! She has been an amazing help with all of this wedding planning – knowing that I have a somewhat full plate. It’s also just so much fun to be able to do this with her, especially since we have such similar taste. We even came home with the same wedding magazine the other day. It had a picture of a cake similar to the one we picked out (you’ll have to wait and see) so we were both excited about it.

That has been about the extent of wedding planning in the last month. For the time being, I am buckling down for my LAST ROUND OF LAW SCHOOL FINALS. Counting down the last 14 days here! Then it will be on to studying for the bar…

(That's for you, Wachler:)

Over zealous postal workers: mailing save the dates

Did you know that any envelope with an "object" in it technically requires $0.58, not $0.41, for the postage? I didn't. This fact holds true even if there is no easy way a postal worker could tell if the "object" is a card-sized fridge magnet. Thankfully our friendly neighborhood post office has an employee that knew this tidbit of information. If we hadn't told him that we were mailing save-the-dates, we might have missed learning about this postage requirement.

After asking if the $0.58 postage was really required for our save the dates, the quirky postal worker stated, "It'd just take one over-zealous postal worker to notice that you missed $0.17 postage per envelope." At that point in time I learned all about what the phrase "postage due" means. Essentially it is a ritual involving the post office holding mail hostage until the receiver pays the missing postage.

Sheri and I had to make a critical choice before leaving with our stamps. Do we pay $0.58 per envelope or shamefully ask for $0.41 stamps and avoid that post office. What did we decide? You'll have to check out your envelope to find out....

And so it begins...

I am a detail oriented, control freak. I like to plan and check things off my to-do list. This to-do/checklist process worked amazingly well in my many years of school. Wedding planning is a whole new ball game. Really? A gobo? A what? Turns out those are the lights that illuminate your new MONOGRAM on the wall or floor at your wedding. Monogram? I haven't even decided if I am going to change my name yet! My to-do list has been thrown to the wind - well at least the traditional version of a to-do list. Jayson will tell you that I still make him sit down and do things that, of course, need to get done "immediately." Note: Our definitions of that word are not the same.

Varying definitions aside, we are actually having a lot of fun with the planning process. The best thing we did was get all of the big vendors out of the way at the beginning. That part was slightly stressful (for me, at least) and, man, we met some characters! Now, we have some down time to enjoy being engaged, to fix up the amazing website that Jayson created, and to pick out the details, such as flowers, colors, and...monograms...or no monogram. I vote no monogram.

On a completely different topic, we sent out our save the dates today! Check one off the list! We wanted all of our friends and family to know far in advance so they could make travel/work/vacation plans, if necessary. There are so many different places that will now make these save-the-dates for you - for a fee, of course. We made our own with some photopaper, a good exacto-knife, and rolls of magnets with one sticky side. Then we found the perfect stationary and matching envelopes at...drumroll please...Kroger. For you west-coasters, that is the same as a Safeway. Jayson and I are very happy with how they ultimately turned out. We hope you like them!

About this blog.

Getting married is a crazy process. One might expect lots of planning, chatting with family, and jokes about how much you'll spend; however, I've quickly learned that there is a lot I had absolutely no clue about before I proposed. This blog is an attempt to share my wedding planning experience with others. I've also convinced my fiancée to post here and share her experience. Hopefully this will end up being a helpful repository of information for people getting married, particularly mid-20 somethings living around Ann Arbor/Detroit, MI.

We'll try to post as individuals. The idea being that you'll get a view of the whole process from his and her eyes. We're not getting paid for this or sponsored in any sort of way. I'm just a geek (she understands) and this seemed worthy of blogging.