This is the “ugly!”

Okay, I guess you are due for an “ugly” story! When people find out I’m a wedding planner, their first response is usually “Wow, that’s so cool!” (Thank you JLo!) And then their next response is, “I bet you have some good stories to tell!” Yeah, I’ve got stories, I’ve got good ones, I’ve got bad ones, and I’ve got ugly ones. Thankfully, I don’t have too many ugly ones! So, let’s talk about a wedding that I had back in 2013 that seriously haunts me till this day! This couple booked me for a Wedding Day Direction package, which is wedding day management. The planning of it was left up to the couple and I stepped in a week before to assist with getting them to the day, and managing the day for them.

Everything was fine until the day of the wedding. We started set up of the ceremony at 11 am. The ceremony was held on the rooftop of a 2nd-floor ski chalet. The only way to access the 2nd floor was by way of the stairs. The couple rented chairs from a local party rental place but didn’t pay for delivery or set up. Instead, they rented a U-Haul truck, picked up the chairs themselves and my staff and I carried every single chair up the stairs. All, 128 of them, two at a time! Now, think about it, what goes up must come down! And it did later that night in the same way, but my poor husband did that by himself while I was tending to the other “fires” that were going on.

A local BBQ joint was hired by the couple to cater the food and beverage for the wedding. One of my responsibilities was to make sure that all the vendors were aware of their time of arrival and make sure that they arrived on time. As we got closer to the ceremony time of 3:10 pm, they still hadn’t shown up, so I gave them a call. The caterer told me that one of his smokers broke down and he was doing the best that he could to get there. At that point, there was nothing I could do but just say a little prayer and hope that they would get there soon! Just as the ceremony began the first wave of catering staff showed up. I was so relieved to see this but then found out that nothing was prepped. When I mean prepped, they didn’t come in, remove the saran wrap from the vegetable crudites (a fancy way of saying veggie platter) and place it down on the table. Everything still needed to be plated. So, there I was in the kitchen working side by side with the catering staff making platters of food and bringing them out as fast as I could. And what about the bar? Well, nothing was ready there too. The bartender was so busy unloading items, that no one was manning the bar. The ceremony ended and people started coming down the stairs to a reception room with no drinks or appetizers available. Thank goodness one of the photographer’s husband was around and he jumped behind the bar and started serving guests. Seriously, God bless him for that!

The couple hired a band to play for the reception. The one thing you have to know about bands is that a good amount of them will not MC your reception and this band was one of them. So the Bride assigned her brother to be the MC for the night. Remember I told you before, that’s a no-no if you read my post on DJs! As the catering staff was trying to get dinner ready, people started to get a little restless and were hungry. So after about 30 or so minutes of stalling, the Bride’s brother decided he didn’t want to wait anymore! So, he opened the doors to the room where the buffet was and made the announcement that the buffet was O to the P to the E to the N! I remember the Caterer glaring at me and saying “We’re not ready!” Well, sir, what would you like me to do since the MC decided to go rogue? Throw myself in front of the guests and push them back out?? Yeah, not an option. As we got through that fiasco and dinner got going, I became the busboy and proceeded to bus tables since the Caterers just couldn’t keep up.

As the night progressed, things seemed to calm down somewhat as we went through the toast, cake cutting, and dances. It seemed the ugly started to subside, and it looked like I was finally going to get a break from all the madness! But no, we weren’t done yet! As I started packing things up and breaking down items, I noticed the Caterers started packing up their items too and then headed out in a flash. Their responsibilities included cleaning and dumping the trash from the kitchen. Guess what, they left that “gift” for me! They left me to mop the kitchen floor and dump their trash. And it wasn’t just one bag of trash, I’m talking like 4 or 5 bags! At this point, I was already on a 10 hour day and had responsibilities of my own that I needed to take care of like stacking all the chairs, breaking down the tables, sweeping and mopping the reception area. And now they left this also for me to do…needless to say, I was livid!

At the end of the night, I was so beaten up and tired! It ended up being a 13 hour day of just continually putting out fires! I didn’t blame the couple so much but felt a little sour about them afterward. I felt like they knew what was going on or at least heard about it from the brother the next day. I was hurt that they never even said a simple “thank you” when the Bride called me the next day about a question on where I had placed the dirty silverware in the rental truck. And for the Caterers, I couldn’t believe how they screwed me over. They said they would make it up to me and send me a gift certificate for my help, but it’s been 6 years and I don’t think it’s coming, lol!

With each experience in life, personal or professional I try to think of it as a learning or teaching moment. It took me about 5 years to get over my “PTSD” from working at that venue. And I even turned down a couple of weddings when they mention the venue name. And the venue did nothing wrong, I think the memories of where all this took place haunted me more! When I finally decided to assist with a wedding there, I took the ugly that I experienced that day and made sure that it didn’t happen again.

I’ll leave you with this the next time you have an “ugly” in your life: