Erin called me on Easter Saturday
2011 and told me that Shane had proposed at the Tucson Reid Park Zoo, that she
had accepted, and that she was a "hot mess"! We knew it was coming, though, as Shane and
Erin had recently visited us in Hawaii.
Ron and Shane went deep sea fishing one day, and Shane was gentleman
enough to have "The Talk" with the father of his intended bride about
a month before the actual proposal. At first, they planned on a two year
engagement. Six months after becoming
engaged, they realized they wanted to get married sooner than that and so they
decided over Thanksgiving 2011 to get married in May 2012. Then we jumped into planning mode!
My daughter Erin was a full
time nursing student in the months preceding the wedding, while I was a
stay-at-home mom with a lot of flexibility in my schedule. As a result, it made sense for me to step in
and do a lot of the wedding planning and tasks for her. My husband is an Army
officer, and so I often see things from a military perspective after having
been an Army wife for 18 years. In the
military, there is the role of an "XO", an executive officer, who is
in charge of executing the decisions made by his or her commanding officer. When
it came to planning Erin and Shane's wedding, I regarded my role as being
Erin's XO. I looked at everything I did
as a service to her, and hopefully I didn't overstep too badly! Today's
technology (especially the internet) made planning from afar very feasible!
Possible but difficult.
The overall vision of the
wedding - a morning wedding followed by a brunch - came solely from Erin. I like planning and organizing things, and
was fairly comfortable in finding the major vendors and reception space. It
probably helped that I grew up in Scottsdale and was familiar with many of the
potential reception venues. When Erin and Shane toured the Scottsdale Plaza and
saw the gazebo area, they both fell in love with the setting. Shane said immediately afterwards that it was
the first place they had toured where he could picture them getting married. Erin
and Shane liked the idea of having the ceremony and reception at the same
location, and having it at a hotel where our out-of-town guests could stay for
maximum convenience. Having the reception at Remington's was perfect, because
they don't open until 5:00 pm on Saturdays, and we all really liked the idea of
having an exclusive reception space versus mingling with the general public.
The brunch menu was one that appealed to all of us, and in fact the quality of
the food truly surpassed our expectations.
Finally, the Scottsdale Plaza charged a reasonable price for their
upscale brunch; the cost of the ceremony site itself was particularly
economical.
I definitely shared opinions and
suggestions with Erin; I'm a pretty normal mother in that regard! Many choices were determined or modified by
our budget limitations, but I can honestly say that she made all the final
decisions, particularly the major decisions. Despite having much of the key
details decided and squared away, I began to worry about the many tasks that go
on during the actual wedding day. I knew
I didn't want to be running around like the proverbial headless chicken when I
should be focusing on the importance and joy of the day. My brother got married
about a year before we started planning Erin's wedding, and he and my sister-in-law
used a wedding coordinator. At first, I
didn't understand why they felt the need to hire help, but they too were
planning from long distance, and it quickly became apparent just how many
details and tasks that their coordinator was handling for them. Their wedding went beautifully, and they
attributed the success of their day, in part, to their coordinator.
One of my specific anxieties
about the wedding was that our wedding officiant really didn't want to do a
rehearsal. We love the minister who did
Erin's wedding, and he makes a very eloquent argument as to why he has found
rehearsals to be pointless. But all I
could do was recall my brother's wedding just a year earlier, and the fact that
all of us in the wedding party had
regarded the rehearsal as being the key reason the actual ceremony went so
beautifully the next day. So I really
loved the idea of having a day-of coordinator who embraced the idea of a
rehearsal and treated it with the importance we thought it deserved.
Erin was very open to the idea
of hiring a day-of coordinator, and when we were together over Christmas break,
we agreed to explore the possibility. She and I called Amy together and spent
about an hour getting to know each other over the phone. Amy asked such
intelligent and insightful questions that both Erin and I were quite impressed;
it became obvious that Amy was professional and extremely experienced in her
field. By the end of the conversation,
Erin and I just nodded at other to verify what we were both thinking: that this was the right person to help us
with our day-of coordination! We hired Amy on the spot.
Amy proved to be a tireless
sounding board for our many questions and concerns, both big and small. It was a blessing to be able to call her, or
e-mail her, and consistently get a prompt response. There are two things about
our experience with Amy for which I am especially grateful. First, she truly became our advocate, working
tirelessly and passionately to coordinate Erin's wedding to the very best of
her ability. Second, she always
maintained a sense of joy, enthusiasm, and confidence about the wedding. Erin
also verbalized how much her stress level decreased once we hired Amy. We knew that one of the important jobs of a
day-of coordinator is to handle the unexpected emergencies or surprises that
come up during the day. By definition,
these challenges are almost always unexpected, and have the potential of
derailing a very important event. Erin said that she felt like we had an
"insurance policy" for the wedding once we hired Amy, because we were
both confident that she could handle, to the extent reasonably possible, any
surprises that arose on the day of the wedding.
Even better, we felt like her careful planning and timeline coordination
would itself prevent some of these
challenges from arising in the first place. The timeline itself coordinated all
the countless details of a wedding into a logical and useful format – and
provided, for example, contact information so that the vendors, the family
members, and the wedding party could all reach one another if needed.
Amy and her team seemed to be
everywhere on the day of the wedding, taking care of the numerous details that
the rest of us were too busy to do. They were the ones: who ran to Starbucks
for the wedding party; who offered to get medicine for a sick flower girl; who
ran to Men's Warehouse to pick up shoes that had been left out of an order; who
placed the wedding programs on each guest's seat; who pinned on the corsages
and boutonnieres; who provided ice water to our vendors on a hot day; who made
sure the bride and groom had something to eat; who prevented my daughter's
wedding cake from getting accidentally contaminated with an allergen. In fact,
I am positive that I don't even know everything they did on our daughter's
wedding day, but I know that they worked tirelessly to make sure things went as
smoothly as humanly possible.
I would encourage parents to
enjoy their very special and unique role as parents of the bride or groom. It is likely to be an emotionally intense
day, not only because you are watching your precious child get married, but
because you are surrounded by a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of loved ones from
across the country. My husband and I were able to better enjoy the day, spend
more time with our guests, and experience less stress as a direct result of
hiring Amy and her team to help us with the process. There are just too many moving parts involved
in a wedding for even an organized and detailed-oriented bride (or mother of
the bride) to supervise and manage singlehandedly! So even if the concept of hiring a wedding
planner is a new one for parents, I would encourage them to keep an open mind
on the subject and see the many potential benefits of hiring some degree of
wedding coordination help.
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Blog Written by Patrice Klaum | Planner and Writer for Celebrations by Amy Bacon
