dude.” “Cool. I’ll look up the date and let you know.…” That’s not going to work for you.
If you’re freaking out about who to include in your list of bridesmaids, don’t split hairs over the number. Looking back on my wedding day, having a few more girls there did not affect my experience of the day—but regret from not having asked a dear friend would have lingered like the stench of cheap perfume.
----
7
ENTOURAGE
…all the people you need to be the best bride you can be. Wedding planners, photographers, videographers, hairstylists
Our wedding planners: how we found them, how we couldn’t live without them.
ELIZABETH
T he average couple will spend 250 hours planning a wedding. Don’t you wish I hadn’t told you that? If it makes you want to race straight to Reno, hang in there. Help is on the way.
Four months after we were engaged, Dave and I quit our jobs, pulled up stakes and moved to Chicago so that we could start grad school. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, how amazing that you planned your whole wedding in the four months after Dave proposed to you!” Well, lemme get right to bursting your bubble: my wedding was barely a glimmer in my eye by the time I hopped onto the Amtrak Empire Builder (we rode the train to our new city because my fear of flying is such that horse tranquilizers barely take the edge off ). In fact, here’s the list of what we had accomplished as we pulled out of Union Station in Seattle:
Venue reserved
Menu theme chosen (although not yet battled-out with my mother)
Dress purchased
…um, that’s it.
See? If I had attempted to plan the rest of the wedding by myself, from fifteen hundred miles away, my head would have exploded. Dave and I quickly realized the vital importance of getting some foot soldiers on the ground, if you will, in Seattle. I wasn’t about to lean on my localbridesmaids (I hadn’t even officially asked them yet), and asking my mother was out of the question unless we were prepared to relinquish every last scrap of control we had over the wedding.
Yes, despite my pathological need to micromanage our Big Day (the apple doesn’t fall far from the overbearing tree in the Wiggs household), I admitted that I was powerless over long-distance wedding planning and that my life had become unmanageable. I needed professional help.
Enter Good Taste Events. Even their company name inspired visions of an elegant, classic bride, sparkling from head to toe with happiness and grace. The home page of their website showed an unsteady-looking young man giving a toast to a newly married couple, with the caption, “Your wedding will be in good taste. The best man will be cut off early.” With images of Dave’s drunken cross-country team and their No-Shirts-Jägermeister-Circle-of-Death game flitting through my head, I called Good Taste and scheduled a meeting.
I mentioned “foot soldiers” a minute ago, but what we ended up finding was the Alexander the Great of wedding planners. Jody and her team deftly wrangled all our crazy ideas (“Breakfast for dinner? No problem. How do you feel about cardamom-scented French toast?”), consolidated eighteen versions of the guest list (“We noticed there are twelve different Susans invited. Do you want us to color-code them so you don’t get them confused?”) and dealt with our budding dramas (“The twins get into fistfights when they drink Pinot Grigio? We’ll alert the waitstaff.”)
And that was just the first meeting.
Throughout the wedding planning process, Jody and the Good Taste gals saved our lily-white hineys time and time again.
The first heroic rescue took place eight months before the wedding, when I received two save-the-dates for the weddings of college friends. Not only were their guest lists sure to overlap with mine by about twenty of my nearest and dearest, but they were both getting married within a month of Dave and me. As my arms broke out inhives and my throat began to constrict with
If you’re freaking out about who to include in your list of bridesmaids, don’t split hairs over the number. Looking back on my wedding day, having a few more girls there did not affect my experience of the day—but regret from not having asked a dear friend would have lingered like the stench of cheap perfume.
----
7
ENTOURAGE
…all the people you need to be the best bride you can be. Wedding planners, photographers, videographers, hairstylists
Our wedding planners: how we found them, how we couldn’t live without them.
ELIZABETH
T he average couple will spend 250 hours planning a wedding. Don’t you wish I hadn’t told you that? If it makes you want to race straight to Reno, hang in there. Help is on the way.
Four months after we were engaged, Dave and I quit our jobs, pulled up stakes and moved to Chicago so that we could start grad school. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, how amazing that you planned your whole wedding in the four months after Dave proposed to you!” Well, lemme get right to bursting your bubble: my wedding was barely a glimmer in my eye by the time I hopped onto the Amtrak Empire Builder (we rode the train to our new city because my fear of flying is such that horse tranquilizers barely take the edge off ). In fact, here’s the list of what we had accomplished as we pulled out of Union Station in Seattle:
Venue reserved
Menu theme chosen (although not yet battled-out with my mother)
Dress purchased
…um, that’s it.
See? If I had attempted to plan the rest of the wedding by myself, from fifteen hundred miles away, my head would have exploded. Dave and I quickly realized the vital importance of getting some foot soldiers on the ground, if you will, in Seattle. I wasn’t about to lean on my localbridesmaids (I hadn’t even officially asked them yet), and asking my mother was out of the question unless we were prepared to relinquish every last scrap of control we had over the wedding.
Yes, despite my pathological need to micromanage our Big Day (the apple doesn’t fall far from the overbearing tree in the Wiggs household), I admitted that I was powerless over long-distance wedding planning and that my life had become unmanageable. I needed professional help.
Enter Good Taste Events. Even their company name inspired visions of an elegant, classic bride, sparkling from head to toe with happiness and grace. The home page of their website showed an unsteady-looking young man giving a toast to a newly married couple, with the caption, “Your wedding will be in good taste. The best man will be cut off early.” With images of Dave’s drunken cross-country team and their No-Shirts-Jägermeister-Circle-of-Death game flitting through my head, I called Good Taste and scheduled a meeting.
I mentioned “foot soldiers” a minute ago, but what we ended up finding was the Alexander the Great of wedding planners. Jody and her team deftly wrangled all our crazy ideas (“Breakfast for dinner? No problem. How do you feel about cardamom-scented French toast?”), consolidated eighteen versions of the guest list (“We noticed there are twelve different Susans invited. Do you want us to color-code them so you don’t get them confused?”) and dealt with our budding dramas (“The twins get into fistfights when they drink Pinot Grigio? We’ll alert the waitstaff.”)
And that was just the first meeting.
Throughout the wedding planning process, Jody and the Good Taste gals saved our lily-white hineys time and time again.
The first heroic rescue took place eight months before the wedding, when I received two save-the-dates for the weddings of college friends. Not only were their guest lists sure to overlap with mine by about twenty of my nearest and dearest, but they were both getting married within a month of Dave and me. As my arms broke out inhives and my throat began to constrict with
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