Please Invest in Your Wedding

August 26, 2008 My Reverie Exotic flowers cascading from every corner of the room, chandeliers in their exquisite beauty dropping down from several spots on the ceiling, top of the line photographers snapping guests posing in modelesque manners, teeth glistening like pearls in the moonlight, a cake that rises for what appears to be miles, guests all chattering and plates clinking as the silverware hits the smooth enamel of the dinner plates that hold the scrumptious meal that $100 per head would get you. All this is happening as Onyeka Onwenu's classics play softly in the back ground….the DJ is seriously representing!!! The hall is a master piece of what I would like to call the handi work of the crème de la crème of wedding planners, but there is only one problem….this is a reverie!!!! The Reality I snap out of my reverie as the irritating noise seems to seemingly escalate exponentially. The actual scene that permeates my senses is chaos as the guests stand up randomly to get the food that they have been craving for over 4 hours. They have sat through a wedding ceremony that lasted 4 hours (why did they need 4 pastors officiating the wedding and why did they actually have to have a service? Talking about the couple's first service together…tcheeewww), and have had to sit through another hour and a half of introductions of guests to be seated on the high table. All these mind you, without so much as a puff puff to silence the rumbling of our (the guests) hungry stomachs. "Here we go again", I mutter under my breath. The tables have soiled sheets thrown on them as though the process was an after thought. Some chairs have broken legs, the table is decorated with plastic flowers, styrofoam plates and silverware made of plastic spoons from the dollar store (I am sure I saw the exact replica there while shopping for our church's picnic two weeks ago). The hall seems like it had been haphazardly decorated as though the person doing the decorating was being swept away by the cops for an offence…"the violation of poor decorating skills," I think to myself. Some random person is taking pictures of the guests with a disposable camera and in the background, I hear several babies screaming their young lungs out as though it is the end of the world for them. I hear an argument erupt behind me and witness several guests run to a section of the room. My gaze follows the guests and catches the cake crashing down as the argument morphs into a boxing match between the maid of honor and the groom's sister. No joke o! On the poor bride's wedding day? People come on!!!! This was the scene from a real live wedding that took place earlier this year o!!! Honest to God! The source of this boxing match was STRESS!!! Let's take a short journey to explore the onset of this unfortunate occurrence. Several Months Before the Wedding The bride is seriously stressing out. The cost of her dream wedding seems to be way too exorbitant, so she decides to "trust" that she can plan the wedding herself. "Afterall wedding planners do it all the time", she thought. Plus, she always did have a good eye for colors and fabrics and decorating. She gets rid of the wedding planner and solicits the help of her equally artistic and stylish bridesmaids and sisters-in-law to help with the planning of the wedding. Everyone is glad to lend a helping hand and to be trusted with such sacred a task. The bride is SUPER content as she does the mental check note and congratulatory dance at the decision she has made; the decision that would ensure that she saves $20,000 but unbeknownst to her, cause her her temporary sanity. Moving on to a month before the wedding!!! 1 Month Before the Wedding The bride is scrambling around. Procrastination crept into the planning process and now, nothing has been done. The process of making the cake is still undetermined. The decoration of the hall has not been given a second thought since the bride asked for the support of her bridesmaids and sisters in-law. The bride's mother is constantly getting on her nerves. "Why is this woman harassing me", she thinks to herself. "After all, I have everything under control", she thinks as she rolls over on her bed and tries to relax her nerves by going to sleep, but the realization that nothing is getting done, especially with the wedding date approaching, keeps her awake. 1 week before the wedding The bride realizes that the help she has solicited is not reliable. See, it is extremely difficult to find people that will be 100% supportive of your ideas, especially if you are not paying them; everyone has an idea of how "it" should get done and when "it" should be accomplished. If you ever find people that are 100% supportive of your ideas, I beg you in the name of God, HOLD ON TO THEM AND NEVER LET THEM GO!!! Plus, working with 8 women with diverse backgrounds is just stirring room for trouble. But I digress!!! Back to the story!!! At this point, the bride has a general idea of what she wants but nothing concrete has been done to ensure that this "big picture" is achieved; the bridesmaids and sisters-in-law at least attempt to bury their dislike for one another—the dislike that this task they have been mandated by the bride to accomplish has caused. Everyone has their opinion and suggestion as to how things should be. Even the bride is confused at this point, but is hopeful that everyone would eventually be on the same page that she is on. 1 night before the wedding The bridesmaids and in-laws are trying to cook for 350 guests. Unbelievable!!! Nothing seems to be going well at all. All 8 women plus mothers, aunties, and cousins are crammed into the tiny kitchen and tempers are about to reach a feverish peak. The anger and irritation from phone calls that have been made back and forth during the previous week has transferred into the kitchen; it is so tense in there that the bride says a silent prayer to St. Philomena, her guardian saint, to prevent any out burst from occurring tonight. In addition, the hall that was supposed to have been decorated that night was still a sparse warehouse. Nothing has been done to ensure that it would get decorated in time for the reception. An aunty has been tasked to bake the cake, but she has not started the baking process. They have less than 18 hours to have everything complete, but the whole affair is nothing but chaos. The day of the wedding and part 1 of my thoughts The bride sure did save $20,000, but the wedding is a hot mess. Nothing is complete. They have managed to pull everything off, but the execution lacks the finesse that I believe every wedding deserves. I am all for weddings on a budget, but please, for this occasion, splurging a little bit is allowed ehn! A beg! And then, to make matters worse, the fight breaks out!!! Tension is so high at this point that it has resulted to physical blows exchanged by one of the bridesmaids and one of the bride's sisters-in law. Both women had gotten into a heated argument the night before and had, at that moment, decided to take on round 2 of the match. My question is why they did not exchange blows the night before so they could avoid the humiliation that they now caused the poor bride, the groom, themselves, and both families. At least if they had beaten themselves to stupor the night before, they would have taken some Advil or Tylenol, put an ice pack over their bruises, woken up to a new and bright day, covered those bruises by the ever faithful makeup (afterall, there is nothing that a good concealer, foundation, and press powder cannot hide), and pretended to be on civil terms with each other. Goodness gracious!!! The groom was so upset at everything (mind you, he gave his full support of the bride's thrifty idea o) and left the wedding! He did not even spend the night with the poor bride (the nerve of him, but that is another topic of discussion to be saved for a later date). So, while in the long-term, she saved herself and her hubby $20,000, the short-term repercussions were a huge disaster; the cons that this saving presented way outweighed the savings itself!!! My thoughts!!! Anyways, in case you have not figured it out and are wondering where I am going with this, it is simple….THIS IS NOT AN OCCASION TO BE A CHEAP SKATE!!!! Your wedding day should be a day of great excitement and relaxation for everyone involved. Lord knows that your family will get on your nerves, so just create enough space to accommodate their constant bickering, suggestions, ideas etc. All I have to say is the only suggestion I want on that day is the suggestion of giving me money to cover the expenses of the wedding; if the greasing of my palms with your money is not going to be a part of the suggestion, please save it until after the wedding day. By the grace of God, I will be in a financial position to hire a competent wedding planner who can stress over my day for me—afterall, it's not her day now ahn ahn—and figure out how to fix whatever loop holes she finds in the process. All I know is that I am going to pay her well for her services, so she had better not transfer the stress that my wedding day may present to me. So, if you are planning a wedding, abeg, find someone that is competent, set the ground rules (e.g. for each second they stress you about the details of the wedding, threaten to subtract $1 from their pay), relax with your hubby to be, and watch everything fall into place. Do you know of a good wedding planner? Please share the planner's information at http://www.fabnaija.com/.