wedding planning

Wedding Planning Superlatives: A Blog For Anyone Who’s Married or Hopes To Eventually Be Married

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

wedding planning

It was about nine months ago that I created a separate category on my blog’s homepage called Wedding Planning Insanity. I did that because I obviously thought planning my wedding was going to be crazy, complicated, a nightmare, the death of me.

But if you look at that link you’ll find only three posts. This whole planning thing hasn’t been difficult at all. That’s a good thing for me and my fiancee’s sanity, but a terrible thing for my blog. I make a living off of complaining and criticizing and there just hasn’t been much of that happening during this process. (Note: I absolutely do NOT make a living off of those things.)

But hey, we officially have less than 100 days until my two best men give the worst speeches in the history of weddings, so why not try to force out some bitching & moaning about this whole process.

Let’s do this in the context of handing out some superlatives, shall we?

The Most Meaningless Words A Person Can Say During the Planning

“It’s your wedding. Do whatever you want.”

Translation: “It’s your wedding. Do whatever you want unless it conflicts with what I want.”

I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the amount of people who try to subtly or not-so-subtly influence your wedding decisions…friends, family, people who aren’t even invited. Doesn’t matter. My recommendation to the entire human race is to never make any assumptions about the wedding of someone you know. Don’t expect to be invited. Don’t expect your kids to be invited. Don’t expect the bride & groom to have the wedding in a convenient location or at a convenient time for you.

Remember, you said it yourself. It’s their wedding.

The Biggest Scam of Wedding Planning

Do It Yourself Projects! (DIY is what the cool kids call it, I think.)

I’m all for saving money, and my fiancee is all about Pinterest. So when she approached me with lots of little ideas on things she could do herself for the wedding that would save us money, it was a win for both of us. But then there’s that moment when you find out your fiancee isn’t the DIY expert that her Pinterest boards have been making her out to be all these years. For me it was the Gift Card Box. She convinced me that we’d spend less than half of the normal cost of a pre-made box if she made her own. Great. Except once you’re on your third attempt with your third box, you’ve actually spent more than what it would have cost to just buy one (not to mention we’re still trying to figure out how to get spray paint off the balcony of our rented apartment that we’re moving out of in one month).

That’s just one example of several things that have followed a similar path. You can understand why I’m convinced DIY is one big scam that makes you appreciate spending money on well-made/well-executed items.

Most Likely Reason For Calling the Wedding Off

I mentioned in a previous post that if we called this wedding off at any point, it would be because we couldn’t compromise on flowers. That’s actually not an issue anymore. So what is the new leading candidate for a reason we call the wedding off?

My fiancee may decide she’d rather not get married than have to write and deliver her own vows. Every time she thinks about this daunting task she throws up in her mouth a little bit and then asks me if it’s too late to disinvite 170 people and just elope instead.

Most Brilliant Money-Making Idea That’s Come Out of This Process

Which reminds me, I want to copyright the word “unvitations.” I’ve threatened to disinvite people left & right over the past few months who have pissed me off for one reason or another. Instead of calling them and having that awkward conversation, I think a nice little unvitation they get in the mail that says, “You’re cordially disinvited to the most amazing wedding in the history of the world,” is a nice touch. And then depending on the reason, it would either say, “This unvitation is due to the fact that you totally tricked Ross into an awful fantasy football trade that he’s still mad about,” or, “It’s not you, it’s us. We’ve simply invited too many people and now we have to walk that back a bit. You’re still on our list of “Top 200 People We Want At Our Wedding,” but you didn’t crack the top 150. Therefore, here’s your official unvitation.”

*Unvitations will come in gloss, matte and embossed style.

Strangest Moment During Wedding Planning

My fiancee and I were set up on a blind date with another couple by our wedding coordinator. When we met with our coordinator last Fall, she started talking about this recently married couple who lives in the same general area of LA where we live. Then she decided we needed to make friends with them because we have so much in common….for instance, they like food too!

So we went out with this lovely couple one night. And they were terrific. But it’s like, c’mon, we’re 32 years old. People don’t make new friends at that age. We stick with the friends we have until they eventually die off. And then we’re completely alone. Holy crap, this paragraph took a turn I wasn’t expecting.

Anyway, at my age there needs to be a lot more in common with someone to become their friend. Basically, you need to be from New England, love sports, and actually, I need to already know you.

Scariest Moment During Wedding Planning

Linking the two Moms up because…oh god, what are they talking about all those times they’re on the phone or hanging out? (I have no idea, but I bet an opinion or 10 about how many kids we should have is part of it.)

Most Frustrating Recurring Aspect of Wedding Planning

Just a minor piece of advice for the 170 people who are being invited to my wedding: Before asking the bride & groom about every little detail that will help you plan your trip to San Diego, do us a favor and at least re-check the Save the Date. On it you will find a website. On that website is a world of information waiting for you. Things like where the ceremony is, what time the ceremony begins, what hotels we got room blocks at, where you should search for houses if you want to go that route, where we’re registered, THE DATE OF THE FRIGGEN WEDDING, and so much more. Just remember that you’re one of 170. If you ask us five questions, realize that we’re probably answering 850 questions just like them.

I’m not saying you can’t reach out to us with questions or concerns. I’m just saying to do us the courtesy of using the info we’ve already provided you first. And if you don’t find your answer there, then give us a call. (Please don’t call. Text us instead.)

The other alternative would have been for you to tell us eight months ago not to bother sending you a Save the Date because you won’t use it for anything. Then we could have saved that one stamp and been prepared for your idiotic questions.

Most Frustrating Single Incident During Wedding Planning

This is actually a tie between two ridiculous things that recently happened:

  1. The Airbnb we booked five months ago—the one that we’re supposed to be staying at for six nights leading up to the wedding and the one that all the bridesmaids were going to spend the day of the wedding getting ready at—cancelled our reservation without warning or any legitimate reason.
  2. One of the hotels where we reserved a room block reneged on their promise to allow us to use a space on their property to host the day-after brunch.

Most Naive Words Uttered By Me Over the Past 8 Months

“We sat down and figured out everything we need for the wedding and we budgeted for every single item on that list. There shouldn’t be any surprises.”

Whoops.

I said that to a friend about six months ago, and he laughed. He laughed because he’s married. He told me to wait until I realize there are 100 little things we haven’t thought of that all cost money. I didn’t take him seriously because I pride myself on being a logistics & planning genius. And in fact, he was wrong. There weren’t 100 little things we hadn’t thought of. There were 3,000.

For instance, I could have never known ahead of time that we’d “need” a special, custom stamp to help us put our return address on hundreds of envelopes. Or that we’d need mini-chalkboards that would indicate to our guests certain seats are reserved or where to find the dessert table.

Most Ridiculous Cost of the Entire Wedding

You might think I’m crazy for this one because from a pure cost standpoint it’s a drop in the bucket of the overall wedding budget. But having to purchase wedding insurance is absolutely confounding to me. My brain hurts just thinking about it.

I guess I’m of the mindset that the more money you pay for services, the more that should be included. Like, I get if we were doing a wedding in a public park where we weren’t being charged much/anything, I might want to buy insurance in case anything goes wrong (for instance, we start a forest fire, or my least favorite uncle is “accidentally” pushed off a cliff). But when a venue is charging us $X,XXX.XX and that cost includes almost nothing? Maybe toss in the insurance. It’s a small gesture that would go a long way, I promise.

Most Nerve-Racking Words Uttered By A Vendor

“We’ve never done that before, but sure, we can try it.”

I’ve started to understand why some people still go with the traditional things in a wedding. For instance, a wedding cake. It’s not because they can’t think of a better or more fun dessert to provide their guests. It’s because businesses have been making wedding cakes for hundreds of years! When you decide to design your own custom mini-dessert bar, you run into a bunch of vendors saying, “We’ve made four of your six choices before so we know how to do those, but these other two, we’ve never made. But sure, we can try it.” It’s not the most comforting thing going into your wedding knowing someone is “trying something” for the first time ever at your expense.

Best Part of Wedding Planning

By far the most fun thing we’ve done during this wedding planning—other than figuring out the honeymoon because nothing can compete with that—is picking out all the music. I’m not talking about the music during the hours of general dancing. We’re letting the DJ figure that out. I’m talking about music for the ceremony entrance and exit, the wedding party’s entrance at the reception, our first dance, etc. In fact, if most of these song choices don’t get dozens of comments from our guests, I will be so disappointed. I’m that jazzed up about it (and to be even more dramatic about it, I think the ceremony entrance songs are the greatest decisions I’ve ever been a part of in my entire life).

The toughest song to pick was the parent dance. We’re doing the father/daughter & mother/son dance as one, and there just aren’t many songs that are super appropriate for that type of dance. First of all, most love songs are written about someone’s actual lover (and usually include overt or semi-discreet sexual connotations). And many songs that would be appropriate for just a father/daughter dance aren’t appropriate for the mother/son part, such as “My Girl.” People said not to pay too much attention to the lyrics or else you’ll never find a suitable song, but I can’t help it. For example, I really like The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” but there’s a line in there that goes: “And when I touch you, I feel happy inside.”

I just couldn’t get past that.

Second Most Anticipated Part of the Wedding

After the music, the thing I’m most excited about is the groomsmen’s socks. I can’t say another word about it, but if people don’t absolutely love the idea/theme, I’m gonna remember this wedding as the worst day of my life.

There you have it. Nine months of planning down, three months to go, and only a dozen things to complain about.

Wedding Planning Update: This is Too Easy

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

bridezilla

So this was supposed to be our big challenge as a newly engaged couple? Planning a wedding? I’m insulted.

Sure, it took my fiancee and I nearly two months of searching to find the perfect venue, and we accidentally ordered 950 return address stickers that it turns out we don’t need, but if that’s the worst of it, this wedding planning thing is a friggen joke.

For those of you who have successfully planned a wedding, I can see you reading this and bursting into laugher.

“Just you wait,” you’re probably saying.

Fair enough. It’s true that we’re only scratching the surface with the planning. We haven’t yet had to tackle the details of a wedding day timeline, seating arrangements, which of our many vendors are going to forget key things or show up late and what the contingencies are. There’s a lot of planning to go, and I’m sure it’ll get harder. But I still don’t believe it has to be stressful.

So what have we done so far? We’ve locked in our venue, hired most of the major vendors, designed a save the date and finalized the guest list.

Let me take you on a brief stroll through these past few weeks.

Venues

I have to imagine this is the most frustrating part of the early-on wedding planning for many couples. You’ll find that no two venues are alike, specifically in terms of what services are included, which services you’re required to use one of their “preferred” vendors for, what restrictions they have on timing, noise, decorations, what type of toilet paper you’re allowed to wipe your ass with…

And when choosing a venue you can’t think ONLY about the venue. You have to think about how close or far hotel accommodations are, how curvy the road is to get to the venue for your fiancee’s side of the family who apparently all get car sick very easily, what the weather’s going to be like, what part of the sky the sun sets in compared to where you’ll be standing as you say “I do.”

All of that is going to bother you a little bit, but it’s the photos that some venues put online to demonstrate how awesome their spot is for a wedding that will really make you scratch your head:

wedding 4wedding 2wedding 1

Oh look, this venue allows for appetizers to be passed around on wooden platters! And there’s a perfect place for the bride’s shoes on a random bed at the venue! AND…OH MY GOD…this venue is so good that the bride & groom are actually smiling during the ceremony! BOOK IT, QUICK! DO IT!

I just want to scream at so many of these pictures: ZOOM OUT!!!

I know. Weird thing to be so passionate about. But when you’ve looked at 50+ venues and each of their websites has roughly 30-100 photos to browse, it gets pretty obnoxious to have to deal with these pointless images that do absolutely nothing to enhance the attractiveness of the venue.

Moving on.

Caterers

You probably think I’m about to complain about the apparent 900% mark-up that all caterers charge just because it’s a wedding. I’m not.

Instead I want to talk about an important lesson learned.

One of the bonuses of the caterer selection process, so I’ve been told, is the opportunity to do tastings. After reading reviews of the two catering companies we were considering, we felt pretty confident the food would be good. But one friend who recently got married said he had an awful tasting experience so he highly recommended doing it to be sure of the quality. And another friend has been talking for years about how the tasting was his favorite part of the entire wedding process.

For those of you who don’t know, my fiancee and I live in Los Angeles. We’re getting married in San Diego. From an efficiency and logistics standpoint, we decided to load up on as many vendor visits as possible on our last trip to San Diego. This resulted in our first tasting happening on a Friday morning at 10am, and our second tasting happening at 12pm on that same Friday.

This turned out to be a major misstep. While people told us about tastings in the past, they didn’t really tell us ABOUT tastings. We didn’t realize that each caterer would roll out multiple hors d’oeuvres followed by three entrees for each myself and my fiancee. We didn’t share each of the three entree choices. We each got served all three entrees. This would have been an absurd amount of food if we were only meeting with one caterer that day.

I ate salmon, beef, shrimp and crab cakes at 10am and washed it down with sliders, short ribs, summer squash ravioli and more salmon at 12pm. The tastings themselves were awesome. The 10 hours immediately following them were the worst.

My recommendation is to limit yourself to one tasting per day.

My final question about the caterer experience: Which of these is more awkward?

  • A romantic table for four is set up in a conference room and the owner & his assistant join you at the table for the 45-minute tasting. They eat the full meal with you, never leave you alone and make forced small talk the entire time.
  • The chef & his wife leave you alone while you taste their food, only entering the room to clear your plates or bring you the next dish. But at the end of the tasting, they both sit down with you and go line-by-line through the full menu to get your opinion on everything you tried. Intimidated because the guy who made the food is sitting right there? Don’t worry, they assure you, he doesn’t have an ego. Really? So when I tell him, “You almost nailed this salmon. Almost. I think you just need to take it easy on the mustard sauce,” that’s not going to be awkward at all?

DJ

I’ve made several suggestions for saving money throughout this wedding process (you’ll see some more ideas that got shot down below), and one of them was to just have an iPod playing music and cut the DJ out entirely. Well, that didn’t gain any traction with my bride who is solely focused on the dancing aspect of the reception. When we met with our DJ, he assured me that beyond being a glorified iPod, he also has the ability to “read the room.” I’m intrigued to see what this means and how valuable I think it is compared to the money paid for his services.

His one example of reading the room: “If I’m playing Michael Jackson and no one is dancing, then no one’s ever gonna start dancing.”

Well played, DJ Nik.

Photographer

Only one note on this particular vendor. My fiancee was not on board with scrapping a photographer and instead having all of our family & friends take pictures all night on their phones and send them to us after the wedding. I can’t imagine how that idea wouldn’t have worked perfectly.

Florist

This is by far the most absurd vendor of the bunch. I understand flowers are a necessary evil for any wedding, but you can’t price your flowers out as if they are the very last flowers on earth. That’s not fair.

What’s worse is that I know how much flowers should cost. Every time I fuck up in my relationship, I buy a nice bouquet of flowers because I find it’s a better solution than showing actual remorse. Those bouquets generally cost $20-$30. The bouquets that each bridesmaid will walk down the aisle with at my wedding? Four or five times that cost! Atrocious.

OK, so maybe the bouquets are needed. Fine. But can’t we skimp on the centerpieces? Why do those have to be flower arrangements? You know what’s a better and cheaper idea? A bobblehead doll of a different Boston athlete at each table. That way you can even name the table after the athlete who’s occupying it.

“Oh, Matt, I noticed you’re seated at the Carl Everett table. That’s a good one.”

Just know that if the wedding doesn’t happen, no matter what excuse we make, it was because we could never compromise on the flowers.

Other Notes

  • I had one more brilliant idea. In order to get to the partying portion of the reception as quickly as possible, I proposed we create a seating plan where no one sits at a table with anyone they’ve ever met before. This would cause all of our guests to get dinner over with as quickly as possible, which is my main goal with this entire wedding.
  • The concept of paying for a honeymoon when also trying to wade through the costs of the wedding seemed daunting at first. But then I realized if we pay for the entire wedding on a credit card, the points we’d earn from those charges would probably pay for most of the honeymoon. And then we started getting the contracts from the vendors, most of which included the fine print of a 3-5% fee if we wanted to pay by credit card. Why are my vendors in cahoots with the credit card company?
  • I’ve found that if you manage your parents’ expectations extremely well, you’ll only get…25 or so people invited to the wedding that you never had any real interest in inviting! Isn’t that some great news?
  • Registries always seem to have such serious adult stuff on them. Stuff we’ll never use. Stuff we’ll return without telling you that we realized we have no use for your gift. Can I put fun things that I’ll use on my registry? Beach chairs, a bike that has gears, a new 3-wood? All those things would get used. Oh, and maybe a new couch is in order?

couch

Final Thought

  • If you’re the man in the relationship, and you tell your fiancee you don’t want to be involved or that you “don’t care” about the details of the wedding, you’re kind of a douche. And really, you’re only making it worse on yourself because I promise your fiancee will be 20 times more stressed and not awesome to be around if she’s taking on the entire wedding planning on her own.
  • First of all, why wouldn’t you want to be involved in the planning of what should be a kick-ass party in your honor? Second, what kind of asshole says, “Yes, let’s get married. Let’s invite 175 of our closest friends & family to our wedding where we’ll need to line up about 10 vendors who have clear-cut instructions from us on every tiny detail, and hey, let’s have the logistical challenge of getting these people all to the right city, then to the right venue at the right time and then herd them from the ceremony to the cocktail hour to the reception and then safely home…but you go ahead & do all that because I don’t really care about the details.”
  • I told my fiancee early on that I will give opinions on everything, but for the decisions I truly don’t care about, I will tell her, “I really don’t have a strong opinion or preference so if you’re leaning one way, go for it. But if you need to break a tie in your head, here’s what I think.”
  • And really, as long as there is an open bar for every minute I have to be around these “family members” and “friends” then I’m satisfied.

10 Observations From the First 21 Days of Being Engaged

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

wedding planning It’s looking like getting engaged a few weeks ago is going to make the next 12 months of my life pretty busy planning a wedding. Who knew? That just means you’re likely to see some wedding-themed blogs popping up every now and then. I can’t imagine this planning is going to go very smoothly so tune into the blog to see the trials & tribulations of a guy who has no business planning a wedding. Should be fun for everyone but me.

Let’s kick this new wedding section off with a quick list of observations from the first 21 days of being engaged.

  1. The normal first interaction with someone after you’ve gotten engaged is about seven seconds of congratulations followed by seven minutes of questions. “Oh my god, Congratulations! I’m so happy for you…Do you know where you’re gonna have the wedding? What month? How big is it gonna be? What type of venue are you looking at? Are you gonna wear a tux or a suit?” Jesus, lady, give us a minute to finish having engagement sex before you barge in with all these questions that we haven’t even come close to thinking about yet.
  2. Within the first few days of getting engaged, your fiancee’s family will have told you repeatedly how happy they are that this is happening and how their daughter couldn’t have found a better man. No matter what you fuck up over the next 30-40 years, you’ll always have this to point to whenever her parents are saying things like, “I don’t know why you ever married this loser in the first place.”
  3. While it’s not fair to hold “I spent X thousand dollars for that tiny piece of jewelry on your finger” over her head for eternity, it certainly should buy you a lot of leeway, rapid forgiveness and some get out of jail free cards for at least a few months after the engagement (And now people will realize why I planned my engagement just six weeks before the start of the NFL season…all the TVs in the house are now mine on Sundays).
  4. Over these first few weeks, at least a couple people will tell you how excited they are for your wedding next year, and you’ll get to share a brief evil laugh with your fiancee after that person walks away because there isn’t a single scenario in which you’d actually be inviting these people.
  5. Celebrations galore. Everyone wants to celebrate your engagement. And who are you to say no to a nice dinner, a round of drinks or an engagement party? Let them spoil you. You only get married a few times.
  6. As the man in the relationship and the person with the awesome sense of humor, you’ll be making tasteless wedding jokes to your fiancee for the better part of the next year. Get it started immediately. When she says you need to eventually register at Crate & Barrel and Macy’s, tell her that’s fine, but she should remember you want to register on these websites too: http://www.golfsmith.com & http://www.mancrates.com/shop
  7. I’ll hand it to my fiancee. She seems more than willing to accommodate my insane obsession with the NFL and has agreed to not purposely schedule any wedding planning stuff on Sundays from September – January. But I’m already stressing about that random weekend where a venue or caterer or someone can only meet on Sunday and I have to look like the world’s biggest dickhead while I try to convince her to go without me (my strategy so far has been to put A LOT of work into this wedding planning thing before the NFL season kicks off so that she’ll hopefully remember my efforts and let me skip a meeting or 12 during the season).
  8. The speed at which “a perfect wedding” fades away as soon as you start looking into prices is incredible. The dream is to have the most beautiful venue, amazing food, top shelf open bar, the greatest party DJ, perfect decorations and flowers…and then you quickly say, “An above average venue with edible food, well-level liquor, decorations from Party Center and someone who knows how to press play on iTunes will do.”
  9. A heads-up for the men: When you start looking at venues, try not to get offended by the wedding planners/coordinators completely ignoring you. I mean completely. We had one woman showing us around a venue who exclusively started sentences with, “I’ve had brides do [fill in the blank].” She never once looked at me. I was invisible. She made it sound like no man has ever contributed to the planning of a wedding. Don’t be upset about this because it might just work as a nice subliminal message to your fiancee that she’s in charge, meaning she’s doing all the work.
  10. Last but not least: I highly recommend getting a degree in advanced accounting before you embark on wedding planning. You will be immediately bombarded by options, fees, taxes, what’s included, what’s not included, what to calculate on a per person basis vs what’s a flat fee, upgrades, per hour extensions, etc, etc, [picture me miming the act of blowing my brains out with a shotgun and you’ll get my point].