How I Planned Your Wedding (10 page)

The wedding planner Elizabeth engaged first impressed me when she jumped in with her take-no-prisoners attitude and made this process a pleasure. She won our confidence from the start, and then during a last-minute flurry of RSVPs, she won my heart. There were a few requests for guests, and more guests…and guests of guests, twice removed… This was one of those last-straw moments, precipitating a prenuptial meltdown. And it was Jody to the rescue.

Did she rescue them by chasing the interlopers away with a flame-thrower?

No. She sent the bride a very simple email note: “Just welcome them with open arms and an open heart.”

Vendors, venues and menus aside, this is the kind of perspective you want in a planner. One who is going to remind the bride not to freak out over a few extra bodies. A skilled, compassionate wedding planner understands how dangerously easy it is for the couple to fixate on minor details and lose the grand vision and the joy in what they’re doing.

ELIZABETH

PHOTOGRAPHY

Your photographer and videographer will not only be hanging out near you for the most important moments of the day, but they will be creating the images you’ll one day show to your kids and grandkids. Dave and I realized this and chose vendors whose style matched our vision. We didn’t want some bossy, commandeering photobug who would wrestle my grandmother away from a conversation with a wedding guest and force her to pose on one foot, pretending to scarf down a cupcake. Nor did we want someone who liked to play with angles in their “wedding
art” so much that my bridal portrait would end up looking like a cubist nightmare. I wanted a photographer and videographer who were
storytellers,
who would find the special moments of the day and frame them in the most beautiful, real way possible. I wanted them to capture the sunbeam as it hit Dave’s hair during the ceremony, to notice how beautiful my bridesmaids’ shoes looked scattered on the side of the dance floor as they boogied their feet raw, to snap the moment my grandfather started crying as he gave our wedding toast.

Yvonne Wong, our photographer, fell into my lap fairly early in the wedding-planning process. I knew I wanted photos that were as much art as snapshots of the best day of my life. I would never hang a photo on the wall that looked like it was shot at a prom but with us wearing fancier clothes—you know, the pose where the couple faces out of the frame at a forty-five-degree angle, his hand stiffly on her hip, she with an uncomfortable, forced smile? Vomit.

I discovered Yvonne and her husband, David, on the blog that consumed my life for a good chunk of the engagement: WeddingBee. Go there at your own peril. Just make sure you don’t have anything to do for the next week or so because you’ll spend the whole time browsing through the message boards and blog entries by other brides-to-be like yourself. Anyway, during one of these marathon WeddingBee sessions, I saw some stunning engagement photos that played with light and shadow, focusing in on the details and capturing moments that many would overlook. Five minutes later, I had Yvonne on the phone and she passed my only other photographer test: she wasn’t creepy. I mean, think about it. Your photographer is going to follow you around all day, and will likely be snapping photos of you as you bare it all and step into your gown. You know those classic photos of the woman’s hands buttoning the back of the white dress? The bride was in the bu? only moments before.

I’ll let you marinate on that for a second.

See why it’s so important to have a photographer who makes you feel comfortable?

I ended up needing Yvonne and David’s coolness during the wedding reception, when I finally reached my breaking point with the posed photos. My face was starting to feel like it would crack, and I was trying to say goodbye to some guests who were leaving early, and for some reason I got a little misty-eyed (and not in a good way). Suddenly, Yvonne lowered her camera, pulled me aside, and said, “Go enjoy your party. I’ll get candids of everyone who matters.”

Prior to the wedding, she had asked me to fill out a form with the names of all the people I wanted to have in photographs. I also let her know that candid photographs were more important to me than posed images. After my little mini-meltdown, I went back to cutting an awkward rug on the dance floor (I’m the worst dancer of all time) and she sneaked around snapping photos of my loved ones.

I also opted to get a photo booth at our wedding. Unlike the tiny boxes found at carnivals, however, this photo booth was provided by our photographer and consisted of a white background, props and Yvonne’s husband behind a professional camera. We stuck it in a corner by the bar and made sure everyone knew about it. Dear Readers, if you can have a photo booth, do it. I’ve seen some made with retro fabric backdrops and digital cameras on tripods. Something about a photo station makes guests go wild—and it ensures that your peeps will get in front of the lens if you end up skipping some of the formal portraits, as I did. The photos from our booth are some of my favorite from the wedding, and the consistent background gives them a uniformity that looks great when they’re grouped together. And yes, I did think about how I would display my wedding photos before the actual event. You should, too.

Yvonne emailed me a teaser slideshow of the highlights from our wedding photos. Dave and I watched it while we were on our honeymoon, and we both shed a tear or two as we saw the first high-quality images of ourselves on what had been the happiest day of our lives. The show linked to our very own web page where we (and guests who had the address and password) were able to view all fourteen hundred
photos Yvonne and her husband and taken, and order prints. In addition, Dave and I received all our pictures on disc and in two thick books of thumbnails for easy reference.

I won’t lie: getting a professional album made can cost almost as much as the photographer’s time, so Dave and I promised each other we’d save up and purchase a book for our first anniversary. (Of course, then he got cold feet over the price, which has forced me to go rogue and try to scheme up a way of buying the album without him knowing about it…but that’s a story for another book called
How I Hid Your Extravagant Purchases from Your Husband.
)

VIDEOGRAPHY

A family member told Dave and me that her only wedding regret was not having a videographer there to record the ceremony and dancing at the reception. I’m so crazy about documenting special moments that Dave even set up a video camera in the room where he surprised me with his proposal. So OBVIOUSLY I had to find the Best. Videographer. Of. All. Time.

Mitch of Cabfare Productions in Seattle is a man who has dated a prize-winning female Elvis impersonator, has a mean golf swing and is the proud owner of a 1970s-era video camera with a crack in the lens (in addition to others, of course). He’s a true artist—he weaves each couple’s wedding video into a documentary, the plot of which is defined by an interview he does with the pair. Most couples get interviewed after the wedding, but since Dave and I were heading back to Chicago immediately after the honeymoon, we did ours ahead of time.

Mitch also offered Super 8 and high-definition video. In case you’re not wading through myriad websites and magazines about videography yet, and thus don’t know what Super 8 is, it’s the grainy, cool-looking film that most of us associate with old family movies. Think of the opening credits from
The Wonder Years
.

Most importantly, Mitch put Dave and me at ease from the moment we met him. He told us that our love inspired him, and that
documenting our marriage was going to be more fun than work for him. He personalized every single element of our wedding film and edited it in such a way that the final product was visually beautiful, entertaining, moving and complete.

Our wedding video ended up being perfect. When I watch it, I’m transported immediately back to the moment I said, “I do.” Years from now, when I show it to our kids, they’ll be able to experience our wedding as though they were sitting in the audience (which would admittedly suck for most kids—who likes seeing their parents be mushy?), but it’s a testament to our classic, authentic wedding video.

Mitch was hands-down the best impulse decision I made about our wedding. I was lucky to find a talented, fun-to-work-with videographer, but if you end up not being able to afford a professional, set up a couple of cameras during the ceremony (if not other parts of your day, too) to capture the moment you become husband and wife. You’ll be glad you did when you’re able to watch the video more than a year later and remember exactly what you were thinking when you randomly let out a little giggle in the middle of your ceremony.

THE UPDO SAGA

I’m known for my hair. I never lost the blond ringlets that sprouted from my head when I was a tot, and I never quite abandoned the dream of having princess-hair on my wedding day. I didn’t expect that this would be an issue because my style routine has always been blessedly simple: wrap in a towel, add a dab of mousse, air-dry…so imagine the possibilities given a professional stylist and two-plus hours in a salon.

Whenever anyone asked me what I was going to do with my locks on the wedding day, I would glibly answer, “Well, my hair is pretty easy to do so I’m going to deal with it later.”

Big mistake.

The wedding goblins—you know, the ones who lie in wait, eagerly listening for the details about your wedding that you don’t think merit
much concern—pounced on my carefree attitude and served me up an epic trauma that I never saw coming.

Three months before my wedding, I embarked on a series of about ten different hair trials, each one a different ringlet of hell in Dante’s
Inferno
. Every time I called a salon, I would specify my hair type and describe the style I was looking for. Each curt, aloof receptionist would promise that Tina, or Jessica, or Brett, or whatever stylist got me was an “expert” at that sort of thing. And every time I went to the salon, I would leave with my hair teased within an inch of its life, cast in a frizzy shell on top of my head like a cross between a helmet and a ratty wig. My shiny, bouncy curls would be reduced to dull, lifeless strands that hung like rattails out the back of a tangled nest on the back of my head.

You probably think I’m exaggerating.

I’m not.

Each time I had a trial updo, I would call Lindsey and Molly, my most trusted friends and bridesmaids, and ask them to critique. Lindsey would dutifully take photos while Molly attempted to find something positive to say about my newest hair nightmare—but even she, the Pollyanna in my life, couldn’t make lemonade out of the lemons I kept ending up with. And Lindsey, the more blunt of the two, didn’t bother sugarcoating the truth: “Do you think she’s ever done anyone’s hair before? Ever?” she said after a particularly bad trial that ended with me looking like a drowned Marie Antoinette.

I posted Lindsey’s photos on my blog and my readers agreed—kindly, of course.

My mom, infuriatingly, found the whole thing hilarious. After the third bad updo, she cackled, “You look like George Washington!”

I had to be patient with her. She works from home, and sometimes goes weeks without being seen in public. So…her tact can be nonexistent from time to time. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that she was so lighthearted about it because she knew I would find the right stylist before the hair situation reached DEFCON 1 status.

A few weeks before the wedding, I had another hair trial at a posh salon in downtown Seattle. The receptionist who made the appointment assured me that this stylist was on the salon’s “runway updo team” (whatever
that
meant) and had years of experience with weddings. I had high hopes. Surely someone who was on an actual
team
would be a pro at the type of wedding hair I wanted.

I came to the salon that day armed with a pile of photographs: one of Eva Longoria on the red carpet as an example of how I wanted my hair to look, and then a stack of the images Lindsey had taken after my previous trial disasters. “Here’s what I
don’t
want,” I said firmly to the stylist. I went methodically through each of my other updos, pointing out exactly what I didn’t like about each.

“In short,” I concluded, having practiced my speech in the mirror before my appointment, “I want my hair to look exactly like this photo of Eva Longoria. I don’t want it to look fuzzy, or ratty, or dull, or straight, or lifeless, or anything like these other pictures of me.”

My stylist gave me a confident nod. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can tell you’ve had amateurs working on you. I know exactly how to give you what you want.”

I sighed, hoping she was right. I gazed down at the red carpet image resting in my lap. Eva’s dark hair was a mass of loopy, soft ringlets that were pulled loosely off her face and back into a romantic mass of shiny curls at the nape of her neck. Her hair looked like mine, only more styled. It should have been easy to re-create this look with my blond locks.

So you can imagine my horror when this woman—a member of the “runway updo team,” no less—began to tease my hair until the entirety of my skull was covered with a two-inch-thick mound of tangles. The ends of my curls struggled free of their teased roots, spiraling around my face like stringy Medusa snakes.

I should have said something at this point. But I have a deep-seated fear of confrontation (thanks, I’m sure, to the fact that I have no siblings and thus never learned how to fight). So I sat there in the
chair, a growing sense of dread developing in my gut, trying to convince myself that the stylist did, in fact, know what she was doing and her vision would be revealed shortly.

Sadly, things got worse from there.

She pulled a couple of straggly, limp pieces of hair out around my face, straightened them with a flat iron, and let them hang in parallel lines down my forehead in front of my eyes. She pulled the rest of my teased, frizzy tresses back into a severe ponytail high on the crown of my head, then began braiding random strands. A few minutes later, she attacked the ponytail with a curling iron, crimping it randomly so the fuzzy curls poked out behind my head like a fountain of pure, unadulterated ugly. My ears—which have always stuck out the teeniest bit—seemed to spread from the sides of my face as though trying to take flight and escape the heinous mess that my stylist was creating.