How I Planned Your Wedding (13 page)

That’s where the universe comes in. Pay attention, and all will be revealed, right?

In my family, there is an epic platter that is given to each woman on the occasion of her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We have a theory that this is because it takes twenty-five years to find someone willing to take on the silver filigree and crystal monstrosity. It’s exactly the sort of thing you don’t want around. Five minutes in the open air, and the thing is tarnished. It’s also fragile, and so it spends its life swaddled in bubble wrap, taking up space.

Clearly, there was one thing I knew I’d
never
give—a fragile anniversary platter of any sort. Seriously, no one needs such a thing, particularly a pair of newlyweds who will, according to statistics, move an average of four times before they buy their first home.

Unfortunately, as you’ve probably already guessed, the universe had another plan. Jay and I decided that, in honor of her wedding, our adored and only daughter was going to receive (wait for it) a
platter.

I
know,
right? But I don’t make the rules. I met artist Sally Mara Sturman in another context entirely, but when I saw her work, I was a goner and in-stantly commissioned a ceramic platter from her. Sally’s art is whimsical, personal, colorful and a perfect way to capture the joy of the occasion.

The universe gave me Sally, and I had to give Sally some idea of what to depict on the platter. Happily, she had visited our home and Seattle, so she was already familiar with the ferryboats, the mountains and Puget Sound, the gulls and eagles. In her inimitable, charming style, she created a panorama of these iconic images, with a small vignette of a couple sailing off into the sunset, toward a shining happily-ever-after. Every detail in the picture had meaning to the couple, from the name on the stern of the boat to the tiny depiction of Barkis the dog, paw raised in salute from the shore. On the back, she recorded the date and a personal message. Years from now, I hope they’ll use it to serve canapés or birthday cake or even a pizza pie to their friends and family.

Is it fragile? Sure it is, just like a marriage. This simply means is they’re going to have to work extra hard in order to make sure it doesn’t break.

B
rides, you know how excited and sparkly you feel right now? You’re probably over-the-moon at the prospect of
anything
wedding-related because, if you’re anything like me, you played the “when we’re engaged” game with yourself for at least a couple of months (okay, years) before your honey proposed to you. So here’s my advice: use that energy immediately. Do some of the nitpicky stuff now, while it still seems fun to you.

For example, make the guest list before you’re all wedding-ed out and you want to stab yourself in the eye with a dull butter knife whenever you think about it. Dave and I spent the first morning after we were engaged brainstorming all the people we wanted to have at our wedding. Later that week, we created an Excel file titled “Everyone Who’s Anyone–Wiggs-n-Dave’s Totally Awesome Guest List.” (Note: I highly recommend going overboard in the “Wedding!!!!!!” file you’ve probably just started on your computer. All our documents and spreadsheets had bodacious names, and as I grew more and more weary of dealing with the brass tacks of the wedding, those titles gave me a reason to smile and remember how excited I was about the whole process.)

If you’re such a saint that the idea of jay walking makes your unsullied-by-worldly-things skin crawl, skip this next part. We’re about to get a little dicey.

I know what you’re thinking: “But I don’t have
time
to make our guest list yet! I might be engaged, but I still have a fifty-hour-
a-week job, and a social life, and four episodes of
Gossip Girl
on my TiVo!”

Well, brides, I’ll share a little secret with ya. And I feel comfortable doing this, because any woman who has ever planned her wedding while holding down a full-time job will back me up.
Wedding planning can look just like work.
You know that spreadsheet your manager asked you to create to illustrate your firm’s operations budget allocation for the past six months? Be honest: you’ve been putting it off because it’s boring, even though you know it will only take you ten minutes once you get started. Well, do the flippin’ budget allocation. Now. And when it’s done, don’t say a word to anyone in your office. Open a second Excel file and start your guest list. When your manager stops by and asks how the budget spreadsheet is coming along, squint at your Aunt Matilda’s mailing address and say, “You know, I hit a couple of bumps with it, but I’ll get it to you by the end of today.”

Booya. Your guest list is coming together, your boss thinks you’re working your tail off and you’re actually already done with your boring project.

Is it ethical? No. Does every working bride do it? You bet.

Let’s be honest with each other here: chances are, you’re not working ’round the clock while you’re in the office. You’re playing Sudoku, emailing your girlfriends about the cute new shoes you just bought, refreshing the Nordstrom home page to see if that pair of True Religion jeans finally went on sale.

So (and let’s turn off our moral compasses here) you’re not
really
being unethical. You’re just replacing your old forms of procrastination with a new one: wedding planning. And, bonus, your wedding is probably all you can think about right now so you’ll be giving yourself an outlet for your obsession that will allow you to focus more fully on your job when you need to. Yeah…right. Planning your wedding at work will actually make you a
better
employee. Yep. Just keep telling yourself that.

I did.

And the gal who sat next to me in the office—the one who had just gotten married a couple of months ago—kept giving me a knowing wink whenever I started to look abnormally captivated by the data compilation I’d just been assigned.

Just make sure you don’t miss any deadlines.

THE GUEST LIST—OR, THE ONLY TIME
YOU’LL EVER HAVE TO RANK YOUR FRIENDS
IN ORDER OF THEIR IMPORTANCE TO YOU

The wedding isn’t all about you. I mean, yeah, you’re the one in the big white dress, and sure, everyone keeps reminding you that it’s “your day.” But, look, it’s also a very important and moving day for your parents. After all, no matter what sort of relationship you have with your family now, you were once a little baby girl they never dreamed would be a wife. For your mom or dad, it’s like seeing that younger cousin who lives in Saskatchewan for the first time in ten years (“holy smokes, she’s tall…and old”), except a gazillion times more intense. Keep that in mind when you’re building your guest list. They might need some of their peeps around for support. If your venue has a strict limit on the number of people you can have, give your folks a concrete number of guests they’re allowed to invite. Don’t be stingy with them, either—especially if they’re paying for the wedding.

You want Mom and Dad to be comfortable and happy and not feel like they’re stuck at a college party. Our final guest list of 185 people (the rest of our 232 invited guests couldn’t make it) included 55 of my parents’ friends. So, yeah, maybe the Wiggses went a little overboard. I can say that with complete confidence now, after seeing the shoe-sized hole in the tulle underskirt of my dress, courtesy of my mom’s inebriated, close-talking friend. But it was better than having my parents feeling like they just paid through the nose to hang out with a bunch of krumping twenty-five-year-olds.

A good rule of thumb is to give each set of parents at least 10 percent of the head count. And no, this percentage does not include relatives you would invite anyway. Let your parents choose their people after you and your fiancé have formed your own guest list—that way you can’t screw them over by claiming that your sister counts as one of your mom’s guests. Think about it: for a 150-person wedding, your mom and dad get fifteen people they don’t have to clear with you. Fifteen people who will make your folks feel more at ease and special on their baby’s wedding day. Same goes for your in-laws. You and your fiancé, on the other hand, will still have a full 120 spots, and that’s not so shabby. Particularly if you’re not footing your own bill.

Another note: never invite someone thinking, “They’ll
never
come.” Those are always the people who show up with their unmedicated kids, a Jack Russell terrier with abandonment issues and your ex-boyfriend, whom they happen to know through their halitosis specialist. My mom convinced me to invite a ton of people this way. When I protested that we were already at capacity, and that additional guests would suck up the pennies left in our budget, she would say, “Just invite them—people hate coming to weddings. They’ll send you a gift and never actually show up.”

As you probably figured, many of these assumed no-shows not only ended up coming to the wedding but also were among the most demanding guests. Then again, I can say with absolute confidence that my wedding day was the happiest day of my life, and I wouldn’t want to toy with myself by wishing things could have been different. Maybe I would have had a worse time if my mom’s half-insane motivational speaker friend hadn’t shown up, gotten way too drunk and passed out in a chair next to the crepe station.

So if and when your mom’s zany acquaintance descends upon your wedding—when she brings your ex-boyfriend as her “plus one,” despite being thirty years his senior…and when your fortieth cousin thrice removed comes and brings all four of his teenaged daughters and their greasy, emo boyfriends…and when a crowd of your nemeses
from high school hears about your wedding from guests on the ferry on the way over and pretends that stopping by the reception to “say hi” and steal some cupcakes isn’t the same as crashing your wedding…you’ll just have to smile. Because, yes, this is the happiest day of your life, even when things go wrong. And all the people who show up—even the ex-boyfriend who’s glowering at your new husband from the corner of the room—are supporting your union just by being there. You’re celebrating the start of your married life, and everyone present will bear witness to that, adding their energy and spirit to fuel the joy you’re experiencing.

And bonus—you now have a spouse who will happily join you in talking major trash about the schmoes who executed epic wedding faux pas. Faux pases? Whatever.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD: DEVELOPING
YOUR MENU AND CHOOSING YOUR DESSERT

Remember, back in the chapter on budget, when I talked about making a list of wedding priorities? Dave and I made a list of all the elements we wanted in our celebration and then listed our priorities from most to least important. Stuff at the top of the list got lots of money; stuff at the bottom, if it ended up in the wedding at all, was as cheap as we could make it.

For us, menu was near the bottom. At one point, I considered putting boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios and pitchers of milk on the tables and calling it a day. Considering all the weddings I’ve ever attended, the only food I can remember is the clam linguini that gave me food poisoning.

I feel bad saying so, because I have vivid memories of my girlfriends agonizing over whether they should serve filet mignon with the lemon beurre blanc sauce or the red wine peppercorn reduction. I had a friend who nearly canceled her wedding over sourdough rolls.

And don’t even get me started on the cake dramas.

So when I sat down over brunch with my mom to talk about the menu for our wedding, I really couldn’t have cared less what we ended up serving. If my guests were anything like me (a decent possibility since most of them were either friends or relatives), they would only remember the food if they ended up seeing it a second time as it arced from their mouths to the porcelain god in the bathroom. Seriously—think back to the weddings you’ve been to: do you remember what you ate? Can you get any more specific than what type of animal was on your plate?

I’d done enough research to know that catering could cost me the equivalent of a one-bedroom condo with a balcony and stainless steel appliances in New York City. No T-bone steak and lobster tail for me. Still, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t serve anything so lame (Spam and Miracle Whip sand wiches?) that my guests would walk out.

My mom and I were seated in one of Seattle’s most famous brunch spots as we started tossing out ideas for the menu. I wasn’t exactly inspired by anything we came up with, though. Chicken breast? Too dry and boring. Salmon? The taste makes me gag, so, uh, no. Halibut? Too expensive. Duck? Ever read
Make Way for Ducklings?
No way was I gonna eat something that had once been a fuzzy yellow ball of adorable.

I looked down at the giant brunch menu our waiter had just plopped on the table and, as usual, couldn’t make a decision about what to order because it all just seemed so
yummy.
God, breakfast food is good.

“I wish I could just have
this
be the menu for our wedding,” I muttered.

And then sucked in my breath.

“What’s wrong?” my mom asked, looking at me cross-eyed from behind her 85 times magnification menu-reading glasses. She leaned in conspiratorially. “DO YOU NEED A TAMPON?” she whispered loudly, “BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ONE ON ME.”

“Ugh, Mom! No!” I said, swiveling my head to see if any of our
fellow brunchgoers had heard. “But I just realized…
everybody
loves brunch. Why don’t we just forget about fancy food and serve breakfast for dinner?”

I looked at her expectantly, waiting for the “Ah-ha! My daughter is a genius!” moment.

She took off her glasses and blinked owlishly at me.

“Breakfast…for dinner?” she said slowly. “But…that’s so
weird.
”

“No, it’s not!” I insisted. “Think about it—we can have an omelet bar, and serve crepes, and fruit, and bacon—I mean, who doesn’t love bacon?—and…and…we can have a French toast mountain instead of a cake!!!”

I looked down at the menu in my hands and another thought hit me, one that I was sure would send my mother into paroxysms of gratitude and happiness.

“AND—breakfast food is cheap! We won’t be serving meat for the main course, so just think—it can’t cost more than fifteen or twenty bucks a head!”

My mother looked at me blankly.

I didn’t care. In my mind, the matter was settled. I knew Dave, the box-and-a-half-a-day cereal eater, would love the idea. That afternoon, when I told him about my stroke of brilliance, the look of adoration he gave me let me know I was right. We would serve breakfast for dinner, have French toast instead of cake, and my mom would have to deal.

OH. CUPCAKES.

Yeah, we were planning to have a pile o’ French toast for dessert, but as soon as my mother realized that this crazy idea was actually going to happen, she called me up and told me that cake was “required.” Apparently, one of her friends had thrown a hissy fit about it and she bowed to peer pressure. Then, HORROR, she decided that not only was cake required, but we had to serve cupcakes—the one wedding dessert that made my stomach turn in disgust.

Cupcake towers just don’t do it for me. They’re inelegant, busy and generally childish. But up till that point, my mom’s input for the wedding had been largely restrictive: you can’t have that many guests, you can’t have nice invitations, you can’t have six bridesmaids. I was determined to say yes to the one positive command my mother had issued.

So I started researching. And I realized that cupcakes don’t
have
to be tacky. I could serve cupcakes, keep my mom happy and stay true to my modern vintage style. Forget cartoony cupcake towers splashed with all the colors in the Crayola box; there were cupcake bakers who could create elegant, subtle arrangements in an array of mouthwatering flavors that would have guests begging for more.

My wedding planners caught wind of the idea and sent me a flurry of photographs from past weddings featuring—even better—
mini
cupcakes! Each little cake was two bites of moist, flavorful goodness and the caterers didn’t go around the dining room afterward throwing away the dry bottoms of large cupcakes that guests discarded after making themselves queasy from eating the icing first.

And lucky me—Seattle was quickly becoming a cupcake capital. People in the Emerald City had taken notice of the powers of the cupcake, and sweet little independent shops were popping up all over the place with vintage signs and inspiring names like Cupcake Royale, Trophy Cupcakes, the Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company and—with an evil cupcake as their logo—Look Cupcake. Being an evil cupcake myself, I was instantly sold on Look. But their logo was only the beginning of the awesomeness. Look Cupcake was the only cupcake company in Seattle to offer “filled” cupcakes—in other words, not only was there delicious buttercream icing adorning the dome of the cakes, but the bakers had piped filling into the center of each in flavors like mojito cheesecake, salted caramel and chocolate ganache.