Weddingbee

It would be foolish to expect your wedding to be 100% perfect, and I’m no fool. I expected that a few things would go wrong. Little things. You know, the groomsmen are a little bit late, the frosting on the cake is off-white instead of white, things like that. I truly didn’t think anything big would go wrong. In a way, I think we expected that things would go a lot more smoothly, just because I was so organized. In some ways, that was totally true. But in other ways… well, not so much.

Although I would love to tell you that everything about our day was all sparkles and rainbows, I can’t. And you know what? I don’t want to. When I started blogging on Weddingbee, I didn’t want to pretend like wedding planning was 100% fun, 100% of the time. It can be stressful! I had weird dreams. I made a mistake booking a vendor. I had a meltdown in a shoe shop (ha ha). They’re all memories, and they’re actually pretty funny now. But to me, blogging about these issues is what makes it real. It’s what makes blogging worthwhile. And you know what? Our wedding wasn’t 100% perfect, either, so I’m not going to pretend like it was. I’m going to share the nitty-gritty, in addition to the wonderful, sparkly, rainbow-y stuff. I’ll share with you the good things, and the bad things. Because that’s life, and your wedding may be no different.

So as I was saying, we expected little things to go wrong, and had already decided not to pay any attention to the things that no one else would notice. Unfortunately for us, we had some really big things go wrong:
Read more…

Source

No, not that Church Lady!

When we first starting planning the wedding, I thought the one place we could save money on was not hiring a day-of-coordinator (DOC). Since I plan fundraising events and have stage managed in the past, I felt pretty confident in my ability to put our little shindig together. Then when our venue said they would have a coordinator on hand to help make the day go smoothly, I was even more confident that we didn’t need to hire a DOC. It was settled no DOC!

Read more…

(image source)

When we first started the planning process, our first check mark on “the big list” was to find someone who could just help us out. Planning from over a thousand miles away can be difficult alone, but we knew if we had someone to ease the load it would make a huge difference. Brides usually seek the help of family friends or their dear mom, but our situation is a bit different.
Read more…

I emailed all of the Seattle Day of Coordinators (also known as DOC’s) that I could find contact information for, and then did research on all of them. After creating a tentative budget and setting my priorities, I realized that we couldn’t afford to spend $1000 on a DOC. I had resolved that I would have to figure out everything by myself and probably have to fix some disasters on the wedding day.

Then the Weddingbee classifieds stepped in and changed everything. Way back when I was a subscriber and not a Bee, I was scrolling through some posts and saw an ad for a Seattle DOC. Her price was so low that I was skeptical at first, but this is her first year in business and she is attempting to get started. Since this is a fairly normal thing to do (and exactly what I would do if I were attempting to start my own wedding coordination business), I decided to give her a call and see how we clicked over the phone.
Read more…

OK. Granted, even though friends and family refer to me as a “groomzilla”, I’m still not well acquainted with some intricacies associated with whole wedding planning process. In my quest to expand my wedding planning knowledge base, I ran across the idea of a “Day of Coordinator (DOC)”. So, if any guys are reading, DOC has nothing to do with emergency medical personnel for the day of your wedding (which might not be such a bad idea??).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard brides mention that if they could have changed anything about their wedding day, it would have been to hire a DOC. I guess it’s because they can take a huge load off your shoulders and give you some time to soak up the wedding fun.

In any case, Ms. Mango and I decided it would probably be a good idea to hire one for our Walima (wedding) ceremony. Now, I have to warn you, I am a very visual person. During my planning, I usually try to envision exactly how various elements of our wedding will actually materialize on the actual day. For example, I have a vision of exactly how our linens will go with our chair covers, and how our centerpieces will go with the ambiance of the room, etc.
Read more…

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve admitted wedding planning defeat. (Yes, I am being a little dramatic) I sent the most pathetic email to our day of coordinator yesterday, swallowing my pride and confessing that I can’t make it through the next two months without her help. It takes a lot for me to admit I can’t handle something myself but with the last few weeks of rehearsal venue changes, broken contracts, bands who can’t keep it together, and all around unresponsiveness from vendors I am going to (I’ll say this as delicately as possible) lose my sh*t.

Vendors - 1 Miss Sundae - 0

Our coordinator is so affordable and truly so wonderful, this was a no brainer for me. I make her copies of all our contracts and hand it all over. She’ll take care of confirming with everyone, setting up a schedule for the day, telling the vendors when they need to be set up, making sure they are where they’re supposed to be, etc. I feel like there actually is a price for peace of mind, and I wrote a check for it this morning.

Sigh.

Read more…

I think it’s about time I come out of the woodwork and post some vendor reviews, don’t you think?

Hiring Christine Viola of Exquisite Affairs Productions was one of the best decisions I made. Being such an anally retentive control freak, it usually takes a force of nature for me to trust someone enough to completely hand over the reigns…Christine was that force, and much more.

A month before the wedding, Mr Peony and I met with Christine to go over all the details. She took extensive notes, asked us questions we hadn’t even thought of, and BAM! A few days later, she emailed us the most meticulous and detailed timeline for the big day (not to mention, it was beautiful as well).

“Christine, I thought I was anal! I bow down to your list-making skills!” I emailed back.
Read more…

with my beloved wedding coordinator, angel swanson

While I’m waiting for our professional pictures to come back, I thought I’d start on some vendor reviews. I chose almost all my vendors based on vendor reviews I found online, so hopefully my comments will be just as helpful to other Los Angeles/Orange County brides-to-be.
Read more…

I realized after all this time, I had forgotten to post on one of the most important aspects of my wedding… my day-of-coordinator. Early on in the process, I was freaking out about all that I would probably have to do on the day of the wedding– namely feeling overwhelmed with the obligation to entertain our guests, particularly family we haven’t seen in a long time or people attending from overseas and my desire to cut loose and have a blast. I suggested to Mr. Canary that we hire a day-of-coordinator to help alleviate these fears, but he thought it was a frivolous expense. Just ask one of the bridesmaids to do it. No way! I wanted my bridesmaids to enjoy the wedding as much as I would and not have the stress and pressure of coordinating and navigating the guests.

I suggested we meet with a few coordinators and get quotes before we made a decision on whether or not to hire one. Mr. Canary reluctantly agreed and I started my search. As usual, the main constraint was budget. Since we had not originally considered hiring a coordinator, it was last on our list and thus, we had a very small budget.

Read more…

That was my attitude towards wedding planning before we got engaged. It’s just planning a big party, right? I would tell friends that I love to plan, used to work in event planning, I am organized, I can handle it all on my own. Who needs a wedding coordinator? They would smile and nod, no doubt thinking to themselves that I am a huge moron.

I’ve said this before, but it’s really shocking how clueless I was about so many wedding related things! Not until I was months into this journey did I realize that I am so organized and particular, I am going to need help. It seems counter intuitive, but being overly organized and picky means that I do really care about how the place cards are set out. It matters to me that the cake table is set up the way I want it to look. And I also don’t want to be worrying about all of this the day we get married. I want to focus on the day and try to remember each moment, because I’ve heard so many people say that it goes by in a blink.

Read more…