Wedding Blog

Part I: Location, location, location! 
Part II: Family Matters

Part III: Get it in writing!

I was in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, part of me was jumping up and down inside and saying, “This is the opportunity you have been waiting for! Tell her that you’ll handle it from here.” and “That’s exactly the problem, it’s not her wedding, it’s yours!” But another voice inside was saying, “This is a test…be careful here,” and yet another voice whispered, “Be more sensitive, she feels really hurt by the both of you.”

I wasn’t sure what the best way to respond would be, so I did the easy thing and stalled. “I will speak with Mr. D,” I said. “We’ll talk everything out and try to figure out what the best roles for everyone would be, and perhaps when we are all in LA together in a few weeks, we can sit down and discuss together.” FMIL seemed satisfied with that answer. I then called Mr. D and he agreed that was the right response; it would be better to talk about all this in person with her. Perhaps we could delegate a couple of roles to her, let her run with those, and we would handle the rest.

Two days later, however, I got some bad news. It had been almost four months since we had laid out our plan with the Hilton. We had negotiated prices, determined the menu, and spelled out all of the details for the contract. At first, they said they would send everything in writing in a couple of weeks. We had wanted to put down our deposit back in March; however, they came back and mentioned they actually had a policy that they could not allow us to sign anything until at least one year prior to the date of the wedding. We were first in line though, they said, and that it wouldn’t be a problem.

We continued to follow up with them regularly (which we had to do as they would continually say they would get back to us in a couple weeks and would never call). Well, the month of May came and went; there were some holdups with the ballroom, but it should get cleared up in a couple of weeks, they kept saying. Then, toward the beginning of June, they asked us to change our wedding date. We were confused at first, until we discovered that they had decided to give out three of their ballrooms to another party who had come to them only a few weeks prior! Which meant that the ballroom we wanted might have to be reserved for corporate conferences, according to their policies. We were absolutely furious! We were later told that the business office was concerned that the corporate conference would bring in more revenue than a wedding would. The Catering department reassured us there was a chance that they could still get us the room, if we would commit to purchasing several hotel room nights.

Out of our desperation for the space, FMIL and I agreed we would. We also offered to invite more guests, and we leveraged all of the connections FMIL had with the staff there as well, but to no avail. The days turned into weeks, and we still weren’t given a confirmation. Then that day, the Catering manager called me and said they were meeting to discuss the ballroom; he’d let me and FMIL know the final decision as soon as it was over. An hour later, he left me a brief message, saying there were still more holdups. I called back immediately to understand what the holdup was. He never called back.

It was up to me to break the news to FMIL. By now (about 11 months away from the wedding), many of the popular venues had already been booked. I knew that as soon as I told her, she would want to move the reception to a Chinese restaurant instead, which as I mentioned before, was the one thing neither Mr. D nor I wanted. I quickly did some additional research on the availability of some more potential sites, and also pulled out a list of some Mandarin caterers that we could potentially hire. Then I called FMIL at her office.

She echoed my frustration, but then tried to comfort me and calmly responded, “Well, when God closes one door, he opens a better door.” Um, OK, I thought, well I just want to make sure that better door isn’t the door to a restaurant. I offered to set up some appointments for us to explore some new sites. As expected, she responded, “oh, don’t worry about making any calls, I already know all of the good restaurants; we’ll take care of it.” I offered to find a good Chinese caterer who could cater Chinese food to a nice location, and she said no - the quality wouldn’t be good enough and it must be at a restaurant. Then I said that it would be too far away for our guests (the restaurants she liked were ~1 hour away from the church) but she said that people will drive for good food.

And then, for the first time, I actually straight up just said No. I said that, to be honest, I just really didn’t want our wedding reception at a restaurant. She paused. And then she told me I should probably get back to work.

The call left me feeling pretty upset, and that night, I had just about had it. I was ready to just do what I wanted to do and not even consult with her anymore.

To be continued.

But just a reminder to everyone that it’s not done until it’s done…unless it’s in writing, signed, and until you’ve put money down, nothing is confirmed! It should be a warning signal if vendors show signs of delay in their response and if the hotel doesn’t spell out a minimum for you to spend (i.e. a minimum amount you need to spend before the room is yours); if they are slow and don’t spell things out clearly, this experience has shown us that they will try to upsell you and jump to a better opportunity as soon as they see one.

For those of you readers who mentioned you were considering the Hilton, I’m afraid this is my first negative review. FMIL actually was a long-time client of theirs, bringing them a lot of business over the years and recommending their restaurant and facilities to her entire network. However, despite her loyalty to the Hilton, they treated us rather poorly, almost never following up with us when they said they would, refusing to give us anything in writing, and upselling us after we had agreed on the details and were assured constantly that we would get the room. About a month later (after not returning any of our calls), they did come back to us saying we could now have the room if we wanted, but by that time, we had already booked a better venue . If you have already confirmed your wedding with them, then I encourage you to just confirm confirm confirm. You can share with them what you heard about our experience if you like, as I hope that they can learn to provide their clients with better service!