Content edited for clarity. Wedding planners save the day! Or enable chaos. It is one or the other here and it just so happens that either way it can be a good thing! Whether it is a cake disaster or a wardrobe malfunction, possibly even a groom's indiscretion, the important people of the wedding had to decide how to handle the situation. The show must go on! Or not?
CIA Turned Wedding Planner?
“The wedding planner for one of my good friend’s weddings went above and beyond. My friend’s mother was a horrid woman. Very self-centered. Narcissistic. The way you feel about Umbridge the first minute into the HP movie. You feel that way in two seconds meeting her.
She was banned by a friend and uninvited a week before the big day. The final straw being her mother was going to wear a wedding dress (not a white dress which is bad enough. No. Actual wedding gown) to her daughter’s wedding. It was an insane week doing everything we could all do to help our friend and her soon-to-be husband relax, enjoy and get that witch out of their heads.
The day of the wedding was beautiful. In a beautiful church. Everything was fantastic. The wedding planner was like some magical fairy godfather. Just guiding and leading and managing one transition into another flawlessly. If there were hiccups, nobody knew or saw it. He even had set up professional child care in the church’s children’s room for those there with young ones. The vows ceremony flowed into the reception room.
Then the horrid beast showed up. Stomping up the hallway, wearing that dress, looking like a crazy cheap bridezilla. She didn’t even make it to the reception hallway. The wedding planner jumped her like a secret-service agent! I didn’t even know where he came from. One moment, crazy lady, next Wedding Planner silent ninja strike with his hand over her mouth. He dragged her out so fast that us maids and the groomsmen didn’t have time to even gasp.
The bride and groom never found out she got in. They think she was arrested in the church’s lot (She probably shouldn’t have done what she did, having out-of-state warrants out for her). And they didn’t find out even that much till after their month-long honeymoon, which was probably due to even the rest of the friend’s family wanting nothing to do with her mother. All of us have continued to recommend him or use his business for our events back in CO since then.
He looked bat crazy in the eyes, took it on like a boss, and then went about the rest of the day like a pro-Disney Cast member.”
The Bride Didn’t Need To Know Every Mistake
“My first wedding as an independent planner I took on because the bride had some major problems with her venue. This was a high-end hotel in a major city, so having these kinds of problems should be unexpected. She knew about some of the things they did wrong but not nearly everything. The wedding turned out OK so I didn’t need to tell her things that weren’t necessary. She already had enough trouble, I would have hated for her to be more upset than she already was.
The biggest problem was when she booked the room, she had a new staff member assisting her with the sale. She booked a blackout date which was a big no-no because most of the staff was on vacation. Then the salesperson assumed that ‘reception-style’ set up was appropriate for a wedding. Reception-style meant that most people would be standing and there would only be small drink tables and bars. Banquet style is appropriate for weddings since there are large round tables for everyone to be seated for dinner. So she booked a room that was way too small for all of the guests she had and there was no staff available on the day. I had them move bars out into the lobby, dessert table into the lobby. I had their head table set up on the dance floor and then broken down for dancing. I rearranged their whole itinerary to fit in the room. It was still too tight! I did tell her that the room was booked inappropriately so that she did know. But the venue was dead set on her not knowing. My biggest problem was how much I had to fight on the day of the event. The banquet manager was mad that my client was booked on a blackout date (not my fault, she had booked the event prior to me being involved). The banquet manager had all along been trying to make this wedding a disaster to prove herself right. That’s why there had been three coordinators quit over a nine-month period! I went and double-checked all their orders before the event and they had the wrong dessert order. Since the wedding was over a holiday, the bakery wasn’t even open. I finally understood why they seemed to refuse to have a tasting for the desserts. Also, this couple spent $75,000 on just this venue! If I had to guess, this whole wedding cost 20k. I didn’t have all their bills but it was definitely over 150k.
I went into the wedding business thinking it would be glamorous and I know a lot of people think that. You’re really managing people and their emotions. It’s a lot of money to spend on something that’s not really tangent. The amount of pressure brides can get from peers and family is insane. Or it’s the opposite, the pressure they put on their peers and family it’s just unacceptable. It wasn’t this way before bridal TV shows started. Those shows made things exceptionally difficult for me over a three-year period. Completely changed the game, and no it is not ‘reality’ TV.”
“She Can’t Know”
“The bride pulled me aside during rehearsal to tell me the groom’s brother (also the best man) was planning to find a girl he found online as his date. She was less than thrilled about all of this as apparently, he didn’t have a great track record. He had found someone and my bride was stressing.
We made it through the ceremony and drinks hour without incident, dinner was going great and we were about to do toasts when I couldn’t find the brother anywhere. Lo and behold, the girl was gone too. I had the DJ stall a bit and recruited some people to go find them.
I walked into the bathroom and under a stall, I saw a guy’s shoes with a girl squatting down between them. So I pretended to be on the phone and said, ‘Ya we’re about to do toasts, I just have to find the best man then I’ll be right there.’
I heard an ‘oh shtick!’ as I walked out and he was in giving his toast five minutes later.
As everyone was out dancing and having a grand old time, one of the resort staff pulled me aside and said there was a situation. I went to talk with them and they had also snagged my groom. Come to find out, the brother and the girl had been removed from the property because they were found in a less than discrete spot, with his head up her dress going down on her. The groom looked at me and all he said was, ‘She can’t know.’
So my sweet bride not only didn’t find out that her brother-in-law was getting head in a bathroom stall five minutes before the speech, but she also doesn’t know he was kicked out for going down on the class act Tinder girl he found.
Thank Gawd for great staff and vendors who are flexible!!”
She Had To Reveal This Secret
“I was an almost bride. My wedding planner saved the day.
Friday before my wedding (destination wedding in the Keys), my wedding planner told me and my fiancee to hand over our phones so that we could enjoy our night and relax before the craziness that would ensue the next day. My fiancee was a little hesitant but she talked him into it and I don’t think he wanted to look suspicious. (You can tell where this is going). We had two bottles of bubbly, room service for dinner and dessert, and massages! She went all out for us and it was truly amazing. Still, he didn’t look fully relaxed like I was and I honestly assumed he was just nervous.
My bridal party had an early wake-up call since we had more to do than the groom’s party, so my maid of honor (MOH) came to get me at around 7:00 am. She looked awful and just told me I needed to hurry to our bridal suite. I thought for sure this was some kind of prank. I didn’t see any of my bridal party there yet, just my planner and my pregnant best friend (who didn’t want to partake understandably). It looked like an intervention, but I knew it had to do with my fiancee. Must have been intuition. My planner told me that there was an issue and she had a backup plan if I decided to call the wedding off! I am now almost hyperventilating.
Apparently, at some point in the night, my fiancée’s phone kept going off, she wanted to silence it but saw messages popping up on the screen. They were not innocent, obviously. She called MOH who then called our other best friend. MOH being a baller, unlocked his phone (it was literally his birthday) and started going through his phone looking for the texts but didn’t find them. The planner insisted on what she saw and they all concluded there must be a hidden app in a folder somewhere. They find a dating app and holy cow, my military macho man fiancée was seeking out men. He had men over to our home! He had one guy who was ‘in love’ with him and wanted to come down to the Keys to see him, on our honeymoon weekend! This was the message my planner saw pop up on his phone. The guy was threatening him because my fiancée wasn’t responding.
Everything was called off! Some of my friends who were in attendance told me they thought he was into men, one even thinks he saw him at a club in SoBe but didn’t want to instigate anything. Anyway, my fiancee was kicked out, but our families were allowed to stay to party because I wasn’t going to lose that money. Most of his family left angry at me. He had denied everything so of course, his family was supporting him. By the way, he still refuses to admit any of it to this day! He tries to manipulate the story or gaslight people about the facts. But I am so glad that my wedding planner decided to tell me.”
It Was A Close Call And She Had No Idea
“My best friend and his now ex-wife got married in January after only being engaged for three months. He asked me to be the best man for the wedding! I said ‘totally!’ That was when the wedding was planned for May, not January. I had a week-long training for work in Florida the same week they moved the wedding to. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move flights around and had to pay a $200 change flight fee. But got things worked out. Yet in the midst of trying to figure out plane tickets and travel plans, I had gotten bumped to ‘groomsmen’ which I was and am still chill with.
So the Friday before this Saturday wedding I was supposed to fly from FL to TX to Nashville to Chicago, and a friend was gonna meet me and drive me to a small town about four and a half hours south of Chicago. All told three flights and a long car ride, but I should be there by the morning of the wedding.
So the Friday afternoon of these travel plans came, and I was ready to leave. The tux had been picked up, and I was on my way to my first flight from Florida to Texas but on the way to the airport, I got a message telling me the flight would be delayed. No big deal! I had and one and a half hour layover and just my carry-on, I’d be fine. About 20 minutes later they messaged me again. This time to let me know the flight was gonna be delayed for much longer.
I called my buddy and let him know. He said no worries just to do my best to get there. So I found a travel agent. They told me the flight I was on was still heading over to Nashville, but my connection to Chicago will have left and they’d be willing to rebook me. So I found the earliest flight I could from Nashville. It wasn’t until 6:30 am the next morning.
So I flew to Texas onto Nashville to stay the night. The next morning my flight was Chicago then St. Louis where my dad would meet me and whisk me to the church. The tux would be waiting there and I’d be able to get dressed and go right into photos. That night in Nashville I didn’t sleep at all. The next morning I jumped on my flight for Chicago. Had a short layover that seemed to be going well. I was going to make it on time. But then over the loudspeaker I heard, ‘Flight (my flight number) for STL has been canceled due to plane malfunction.’
At this point, I was just about to give up when the ticket agent says another flight that’s about to leave is open. I grabbed my bag and rush to the gate to get in line and luckily it seemed I would be in the air on my way with a couple of hours to spare. But we got stuck stalling for over an hour. When the plane finally took off we were getting off the ground right when we were meant to be touching down in STL. It was a short flight I think 45 minutes but I’d lost a ton of time.
I met my dad in baggage claim and we raced to the church. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive. We were leaving at 1:00 pm for a 3:30 pm wedding start time. I made it to the church at 3:15 pm. I dressed quickly, met my bridesmaid, and walked down the aisle. I stayed up until 1:30 am. And then told the bride, ‘Sorry I almost didn’t make it.’
She asked, ‘What do you mean?’
The whole time I had been telling my friend what had been going on and he never told his wife, she never knew how close I was to not making it and I think it was totally the right call.”
Wedding Planner To The Rescue
“At my step-sister’s wedding, her grandfather had a mild stroke right in the middle of the vows. He’s pretty loud and a touch belligerent anyways, but it became much more obvious something wasn’t right as we were having the formal photos done. With barely a word, the wedding planner booked a taxi for my parents to take him to the hospital nearby to have him checked over quickly, promising to keep an eye on us kids. It came to light that it was a little more serious than they’d thought, and that they wanted him to be admitted to the hospital near where we lived (a four-hour drive away).
Queue him phoning about ten car rental places (the Saturday before Christmas no less) to have a car delivered to them at the hospital so they could leave immediately, whilst speaking to the hotel to have their bags packed up. He then delivered them to us and waited for us to finish dinner and toast the happy couple before driving us to the train station himself and booking us train tickets back home, even slipping us a tenner from his own pocket for the taxi to our house at the other end.
The whole time he was keeping up to date with my parents so he could update my step-sister from worrying too much. I can only imagine how out of her mind with worry she would have been without him telling her he was okay.
Gramps ended up being just fine, and even joked that it was the only way of getting out of giving a speech. The whole situation was dealt with such professionalism and care, and made what could have been a nightmare so much less stressful that he went on to plan several other family and friends weddings on the back of that story alone.”
She Had No Clue!
“Many years ago, I was sitting in my office making some last-minute signage at the Country Club I used to work at as the wedding cake was being delivered. One of the bridesmaids walked into my office and told me that the baker dropped the cake. I thought she was kidding. I walked into the ballroom and found the cake on the floor and all over one of the columns in the room, with the delivery girl in tears. Publix grocery store in Florida makes wonderful wedding cakes and they were the ones who made and delivered this one. I looked at the girl and told her she had two and a half hours before the ceremony started to bring me a new cake. It was a simple three-layer cake that just needed the bride’s topper and some simple flowers, which I could add very quickly once the cake was delivered. I swore all of the family and bridesmaids to silence so no one told the Bride.
Right before the ceremony started, a new cake was delivered. The Bride was none the wiser. She even walked past the empty cake table a bunch of times on her way outside to take pictures and didn’t even notice. It all worked out. After that, if I ever needed a last-minute cake I would call Publix and they would always come through!”
The Whole Family Was In On It
“I didn’t have a wedding planner, but my whole family kept me from finding out about a huge issue.
My wedding was a little rough from the start. We were on a shoestring budget (14k start to finish, including all incidentals in an area where 30k is considered a cheap wedding) and things were not always going well. The photographer didn’t commit until a week before the wedding and on the day of, the bus carrying my husband, stepdaughter, groomsmen, and bridesmaids crashed into the venue (No one was hurt and my MOH is a paramedic. More than half of my guests are nurses, first responders, and paramedics. We were covered).
Just before I was set to walk down the aisle, my dad said to me, ‘Just so you know, your grandma was feeling a little sick so she had to stay home today.’
She was 94. It made total sense to me. One of my cousins was missing from the wedding, but they said she took my grandma to the doctor (Grandma couldn’t drive, made sense.).
It wasn’t until two days later when I was in NYC with our out-of-state/out-of-country guests that I saw a post from my cousin with a picture of the view from Grandma’s hospital room.
She’d had a major heart attack the night before my wedding, had surgery the day of or after (can’t remember which) and all I was told was ‘she was feeling a little sick’ because no one wanted me sad on my wedding day. Aunts, Uncles, cousins were all there to celebrate with me, they all knew (you’re talking almost 40+ people) and they all kept it a secret.”
This Is Not The Candle You Are Looking For
“I used to date a wedding planner and would get roped into helping as free labor. She was doing a wedding for this really conservative couple who met through their church. The wedding reception was in the basement of the church which actually was huge. About 30 minutes before the ceremony while I’m downstairs setting up chairs, my ex-girlfriend came running down and tells me to run to Walmart and buy a huge white candle, as thick and tall as I can get.
Apparently, there was some ceremony after the couple get married where they light a candle and the bride had ordered a ‘special candle’ from somewhere. It was somehow never ordered, so here I was, sticking a common Walmart $2 candle in this display and gluing white lace to it while the groom stood there talking up this ‘beeswax and something-something candle, that’s ‘blessed’ by the Pope or whatever.
No one knew except me and my ex-girlfriend that it was a common Walmart candle.”
Her Uncle Became The Wedding Planner When There Was A Dress Emergency
“The girls in the family have made it tradition to wear my mom’s wedding dress for their weddings. It’s a beautiful mid-1960s dress with tons of pearls and lace and things and a crazy long train. It had been in a cedar chest for about 15 years since its last use and needed to be restored. Due to last-minute errors, my niece was to pick it up the morning before the wedding. As a gift to her, I paid for the restoration and the restitching and sizing, whatever it’s all called. She let me go with her to see it sized and fitted and it’s one of my favorite memories, I love that girl so much.
I had concerns about how flippant and lackadaisical the dressmaker had been during the whole evolution. Way too many ‘no problem,’ ‘of course,’ and ‘don’t worry!’s to make me feel like she knew what she was really doing. She finished two days early, sweet. I called her and paid, then asked her to hang on to it since I wanted it in safekeeping, not in my car or house.
I got there the next day, the day before the wedding and she didn’t have it. She made a mistake and shipped it to St Louis from Richmond, VA two days before. After a few minutes of finding out where it went and calling the recipient, another bride waiting for a dress, I checked google maps and got on the road, then and there with less than 30 hours until the wedding. I called my sister (mother of the bride) and told her what was happening and forbade her from telling my niece. There was a backup wedding dress so it wasn’t a total catastrophe, but tradition is tradition.
Twenty-six straight hours of driving later, the dress was getting unwrapped and my niece was putting it on for the big day. It was perfect and looked amazing on her. Then the group photo of all the other ladies who had worn it was taken. The dresses group photo since people have asked..so far it’s my mom, both sisters, my nephew’s wife, and two of my nieces. Also at the reception, they put out individual photos of the brides on the wedding day to show the evolution of the dress. I can’t even look at those photos anymore, they make me cry so fast these days. That old black and white photo of my mom looking all pretty on her wedding day, then my sisters and so on. So many feelings, I can’t even take it. I do worry the dress shouldn’t be cut up anymore. It’s not that different from the original, but I fear it’s becoming Theseus’ dress. The train is original though and I had the dressmaker add a thick silk bottom so it should last a few more weddings. I hope one day my wife and daughters can wear it if they want to. My niece never knew until months after the wedding when the dressmaker called her to apologize for the mix-up. I can’t believe that dafty dressmaker did that.
My niece is expecting a baby soon and I’m so stoked, I’ll go the extra mile for her too if needed.”
Do This Somewhere Else
“One of the bride’s guests flipped out in one of those ‘so when are we getting married?’ arguments with her boyfriend at the venue. She left the wedding, went to his parents home where their daughter was staying, took her daughter out of her grandmother’s lap while expounding upon their (her child’s grandparents) flaws the entire time before driving away, presumably in the direction of home on the other side of the state. Eventually, we were able to convince her to stay at a hotel and bring the daughter back to her grandparents the next day. The bride was quite close with the boyfriend of this madwoman and would absolutely have been distraught by these events. I wish I could say the couple separated after this, but as I worked their wedding too I just chucked it up to the (evidently) masochistic husband.
Ladies, don’t pick that battle. If you genuinely have to ask on such selfish and unfair terms (someone else’s wedding!) and can’t wait to fight till you get home, then you have other problems that are more important than the wedding you are seeking.”
