Wedding Planning… the Hard Way – Lessons Two and Three:

Just to be clear, I am not a “I-loved-planning-my-own-wedding-so-much-I-started-my-own-business” event planner. I have worked in meeting and event planning for both corporate and non-profit entities. However, I did learn a few things in the process, and in order to save you a bit of wedding planning grief, I share these lessons with you:

Given my background and experience, I had never really seen a wedding with centerpieces at the tables, so behind the scenes my in-laws arranged to have their friend make them out of artificial flowers. They were god-awful things – super fake blue and maroon flowers of an in determinant type in orange-y brown handle baskets. I appreciated the sentiment, anyway. For the bouquets, boutonnieres, can corsages, I was informed that I certainly couldn’t afford anything more than carnations for my wedding flowers, and I made the mistake of believing it without further investigation. I gave up any thought of the dark red roses I had envisioned, and a nice woman who did freelance floral design made the personal flowers from pink, dark red, and white carnations with lots and lots of baby’s breath and leather leaf fern.

Just typing this gives me a facial tic. I’m emotionally scarred to this day… please don’t ask me to use baby’s breath, it gives me flashbacks! Must redirect…..
I just ordered beautiful peonies and David Austin Darcey and Rosalind roses for a client…. aah… OK… I’m better now.
Had I done the research, or given it any serious thought for that matter, I might have used fewer nicer flowers. I certainly would have done something else for centerpieces – perhaps a candle arrangement. Unfortunately, I just didn’t take any time to think it through and I certainly didn’t voice an opinion.


Lesson Two… do your homework. Just because “they” say it can’t be done on your budget doesn’t necessarily mean something nice can’t be done on your budget. I haven’t had a “sky’s the limit” client yet (if you’re out there CALL ME!) so finding ways to make a bride’s vision fit her budget has become a specialty of mine. I can’t do miracles, but I do take it personally when someone is told they can’t do it.


Fortunately, I was so happy to be marrying the love of my life, so it was easy to keep things in perspective. Which brings me (quickly) to:

Lesson Three… keep things in perspective. A wedding is a day or two of your life, the marriage ahead is what is really important.

Lessons in Wedding Planning...the Hard Way

Just to be clear, I am not a “I-loved-planning-my-own-wedding-so-much-I-started-my-own-business” event planner. I have worked in meeting and event planning for both corporate and non-profit entities. However, just as classroom learning experience doesn't always sink in and you have to learn it on a "field trip," I also learned a few things in the process of my planning all those years ago. In order to save you a bit of wedding planning grief, I share these lessons with you:

In my hometown, a wedding reception was pretty much cake and punch in the church fellowship hall. No other food, unless you count butter mints or Jordan almonds in pastel colors. And of course, no dancing – ever! After all, we were Baptists. My mother had stirred things up with my older sister’s Very Peach Wedding by having cheese and fruit and *gasp* decorating the fellowship hall with rented plants.


Note the the copius use of carnations and baby's breath at the VPW, not to mention the synthetic lace-like table cloth. I think all images of my peach quiana gown have thankfully been destroyed.

We decided to have my wedding at his church because its traditional dark wood pews and traditional architecture matched our color theme better than the burnt orange tones and modern design of my home church. The Orange sanctuary worked well with my sister's Very Peach Wedding, but clashed badly with my burgundy and mauve one. And those paper bells and crepe paper streamers? NOT happening at my wedding. With my fiance working in the Netherlands for the summer before our wedding, I was on my own for planning. So I merrily planned my version of an evening wedding with the reception on the church patio.

My husband’s family, however, came from a more upscale tradition. His church was founded by Dutch dairymen and his grandparents were founding members. As far as I can tell, the California-Dutch dairyman’s tradition was “I can top that wedding.” More often than not in stylish hotel ballrooms, hosted bars, and shockingly enough, dancing.

His church was much more architectually pleasing, and certainly less Peach. This was his younger sister's wedding. You'll note that there was also the use of considerably more non-carnation flowers, and a larger budget for the bride's ensemble. While she did use Peach, we bridesmaids got to wear minty green moire tafetta.

Needless to say, the future in laws were more than a little surprised at the lack of a band and a proper meal and graciously offered to pay for both.

Lesson One…. Do talk to your future in laws and find out what their expectations and ideas might be for your wedding. His parents might want to help out & they might have an idea or a connection or two that you don’t know about. A wedding is about the joining of you two, certainly, but it can be more than that. It can be the joining of two families and two (or more) traditions. Be respectful of this as you plan.

How Did I Get Here?

It’s not the first question brides or mothers of brides ask me, but they invariably ask it:

How did you get started in the wedding business?

The short answer is that it is just how I was made.

The long answer begins like this:

I can remember planning my birthday parties with my mom – always on a budget, by the way! – when I was a very little girl. I think my favorite was the “come as your favorite story book character” party I had when I was about 10. I’m not sure who I was – a princess of some sort. The “gown” was fashioned from a beautiful, lacy peignoir and silky nightgown with hoops made by my daddy from coat hangers, and I wore pink camellias in my hair from the bush that bloomed every year for my birthday. We even made a spice cake that looked like a story book - even then it was all about the details.

Fast forward to high school. My youth group at church consisted of about 3 regulars, but the college and career group was a much larger bunch of perhaps 35 people. Pastor John, my discerning youth pastor, had me pegged from the beginning: even at 16, I was a planner. He gave me the task of planning the sweetheart banquet for the older group. I planned, shopped, created and set up hte room in a pleasing arrangement, cooked (prime rib and twice baked potatoes, with a tomato and broccoli salad, as I remember it,) served and cleaned up the entire event. Once again on a tiny budget. This was the first in a long line of youth group events I would plan and execute.

While away at college, I didn’t have the opportunity to plan much of anything. Instead, I studied Animal Science, including forage crops, where I learned all about the local indigenous plants while collecting samples from the central California hillsides. I still remember things like Amaranthus retroflexus is the Latin name for pigweed. This should have been my cue to jump ship to the Ornamental Horticulture department. I might have found my inner floral designer sooner if I had, and I could hace worked on Cal Poly’s Rose Parade Float.

The other thing I learned at college, that there were very handsome men there, one of these absolutely swept me off my feet with his charm and humor and married me. Which brings me to the next big event I would plan: my wedding.