Who Controls Your Wedding Day? You or the Weddng Vendor?

Who Controls Your Wedding Day? You or the Wedding Vendor?

We’ve heard the nightmare stories. My introduction to problems with vendors was my sister-in-law’s wedding. I had just met my future husband at the time so I didn’t travel across the country to the wedding. But years later it still brings up a lot of emotion for my mother-in-law. She planned a beautiful wedding, great food, great reception space, and the photographer destroyed it all. He took so long that the bride almost fainted twice with heat exhaustion and when they all got to the reception, guests were actually starting to leave. The couple never got to see the food, let alone eat any. The care, time, attention and planning my mother-in-law put into her only daughter’s day was, in her mind, hijacked by this awful photographer. She didn’t even like the photos that he took – adding salt to the wound.

Most readers of this article have probably met with at least one wedding vendor. Hopefully the meeting went well and perhaps you even signed contracts. This is the best case scenario in a long process that feels like dating all over again: do my fiance(e) and I have similar views for the wedding, do we feel this is the “right” vendor for this important part of the wedding. For those of us who don’t like conflict or pressure, we cringe at every vendor meeting or perhaps we want to run and hide when our more assertive partner speaks up and asks either “stupid questions” or starts to rant about the prices. We all assume we’re hiring the vendor but in some ways they’re hiring us to show off their goods or services. We have weaker hand of cards because this is our first/only wedding compared to their tens or hundreds. They know the drill and the trends, and know how we stack up to their prior customers. Thus the struggle for control begins. The trick, I have learned, is figuring out when to take control yourself and when to yield to greater experience.

My husband and I had been forewarned by married friends how challenging meeting with vendors can be because it brings out your personalities in spades – both individually and as a couple. They were so right! Neither of us tend to want to create stress or conflict so we often let bad waiters ruin our meal and never say anything (except spend the entire meal and entire ride home complaining). This is not a good couple character trait when you’re planning a hugely expensive day and meeting with countless people who are trying to pitch their goods and services to you. In the case of my sister-in-law, they all felt helpless on the actual wedding day because if they complained about how slow the photographer was going, he might end up going even slower (he wasn’t very competent and was actually a last minute stand in for the man they had hired.) They wanted the photos he was taking, so walking out would only hurt them more.

My first experience with a controlling wedding vendor was getting my wedding dress. I went in, like many women do, saying I wanted simple, no frills, no lace, just a classy, simple wedding dress. When the sales lady started pulling these over-the-top wedding dresses off the shelves, I felt unheard and frustrated. But I felt completely out of my element and went along for the ride. She was also middle-age, had worked there for a long time, and I figured she must know a thing or two. I was taken by surprise by her obvious desire to find the right dress for me, but she had her own views of what looked best on me – even if the styles didn’t match my personality or wedding vision. I laughed when I left with a less-than-simple dress than I had gone in dreaming about, and she laughed saying, “happens all the time.” And she was right – I just looked awful in a simple dress and only certain people can really get away with that look.

Wedding vendors have been witness to countless weddings. They see the good, bad, and the ugly. It makes sense they have their opinions on the best ways to make things as smooth as possible for their part of the wedding. They also have to stay on top of the latest wedding trends both to meet the demands of engaged customers and also to ensure they are competitive in their industry. So how much does the vendor have a right to say how things should go? I wasn’t given any guidance on this when planning my own day.

The aha moment for me was meeting with the caterer and going over the flow of the entire event to make sure we had everything lined up. The catering owner was the one meeting with us. She was extremely high energy, enthusiastic, experienced and funny to boot. After getting the nitty gritty figured out, she casually starts with the entire flow: “So after the wedding and wedding photos you’ll head downstairs, get introduced with great fanfare, and the head for the cake cutting …” and we stopped her right there. “WHAT??” we asked. She explained how it’s easiest to cut the cake straight away, get the photos done, and let the servers get the cake ready for after dinner. My husband and I at this point were over our vendor-timidity and immediately said, “No!”

For us the cake represented the symbolic dessert of a wedding, NOT a photo shoot. It felt completely screwy to us to rearrange our entire wedding to make the photos turn out the best or to make the life of our servers a tiny bit easier. The catering owner looked at us a little goofy but let it go. I’m guessing she sensed in our voice raw confidence and conviction. That said, she refused to partake in the idea of a “sweetheart table” (the couple sitting by themselves) and she also immediately pushed against the idea of a sit down dinner. She had many good reasons as a caterer about why these ideas were not the best for our situation.

What was going on here? When do we know when to back down and when to stick up for ourselves?

It is said so often it’s rather trite: plan a day that represents your values. But what does that actually mean? Sometimes knowing our values is only possible when we get resistance to our ideas. Then our emotional reactivity prompts us to reassess our ideas, articulate ourselves more, and ultimately helps us clarify what we want. While I wanted the sweet heart table (to me it actually made sense because we wouldn’t be at the head table for long so why not let our wedding party sit with their dates and friends?), the caterer, with her 20+ years of experience and knowing the space we had to work with, thought it was just a bad idea. Her conviction was greater than mine, so I knew it wasn’t something I valued deeply. But knowing how strongly I felt about not letting the photos control our day, we confidently refused to cut the cake before dinner.

My brother and his new wife had a similar “stop!” moment on their actual wedding day. They hired a fabulous photographer who was doing his absolute finest work. At the point that all the “must-have” photos were taken and pictures kept being taken, my brother and his new wife had to finally say, “stop!” They wanted to get back to their guests and felt these extra photos were not necessary. It’s hard to tell whether the photographer felt obliged to keep taking photos or whether he was relieved. Either way, my brother and his wife got back to their wedding and the photographer was given permission to stop doing what he was being paid to do.

I love talking with wedding vendors in my local networking meetings with the Association of Bridal Consultants. What fascinates me is not only how much experience wedding vendors have but how they are at the mercy of engaged couples who make demands that end up not working out, and how some engaged couples try to put all the control onto the vendor. Many DJ’s are asked to control alcoholic relatives with music and microphone access. Some are fine with this, others say they are being paid to play music, not be a family counselor.

Just as our parents have their opinions on our wedding, so to do wedding vendors. The good part is that wedding vendors carry less emotional baggage than our parents, but the bad part is they can have more control over how well our event turns out. As my father and I like to say, wedding planning is like a dance. Many people are moving at the same time, often in different directions with different abilities and experience, but ultimately, if choregraphed well, the outcome is beautiful and the memories are everlasting. The trick is knowing when to lead and when to follow.

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- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty. The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning. Read Take Back Your Wedding: Managing the People Stress of Wedding Planning for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

Who Controls Your Wedding Day? You or the Wedding Vendor?

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