Ep 33 • The Last 2 Months Before Your Wedding: What Couples Don’t Realize They Still Have to Do

Transcript:

[00:00:55] Alex: Welcome to another episode of Weddings Unscripted. I’m joined by my fabulous co-host, Ali. How you doing today, Ali?

[00:01:04] Alison: I’m doing good. I’m loving this fall weather. It’s cooled down a little bit, but not too chilly yet.

[00:01:09] Alex: Yeah, it’s lovely. I have a wedding tomorrow, a tented wedding, so it’s gonna be like lovely in the daytime, a little cool at night, so I hope everyone’s on that dance floor, but a client has brought blankets and we have heaters. But I do love this weather.

[00:01:23] Alex: Alright, so today everyone, we thought we would jump into the last month or two before planning your wedding. So let’s say you’ve been planning, everything’s great. You’ve built a wonderful vendor team, you trust the band, you picked your meals, and RSVPs are now coming in and you’re collecting them.

[00:01:42] Alex: It feels like you’re getting to the finish line, but there’s actually quite a lot of work to do, and we bring this up because some of our clients are actually surprised at the amount of work that they have to do, even if they’ve hired us. There are certain things, we just cannot do. This is a collaboration, we are leading the charge, but there are just some assignments that you have to do. I’m sure everyone could agree that if we created your seating chart and placed guests at tables, it would not be nearly as successful as if you did that yourself since you know your guests.

[00:02:12] Alex: So we thought we would just run into it so that some of our engaged couples are prepared for what’s coming down the pike. And one thing that I always say is that the earlier you can make decisions on everything that is best, and the reason is because then your vendor team has more time to plan and prepare for what’s coming down the pike. If you are not giving them decisions until the week of the wedding, it’s like a fire drill trying to map out if things can happen.

[00:02:39] Alex: Let’s say you wanna change a time of dinner service, a week out well, I have to map that out with a caterer, with the venue, with rentals, with set up. Like, there’s just so many people to talk about it to and everyone has a lot of commitments. So, anyway, we thought we would just talk about this to help everyone out.

[00:02:56] Alex: All right, let’s set up the stage, set the scenario. So RSVPs are coming in and like what next? So I would say, I feel like it’s obvious, but sometimes it’s not. We have to keep track of these RSVPs, right? So we need a spreadsheet, guest name, the meal they selected, and any allergies.

[00:03:15] Alison: Yeah, those are the main columns that we ask for. So first and last name, allergies or any dietary restrictions to note especially sometimes if there’s a lot of children at a wedding or people under the age of 21, we want that noted as well, especially if you’re doing place cards.

[00:03:31] Alison: Because then we know who gets wine glasses? Who doesn’t get wine glasses? or we can keep all of them on the table for photos and stuff and then pull those later as we notice like someone underage sitting at the seat. But any note that you can give to the caterers within that chart would be extremely helpful.

[00:03:49] Alison: Another column that people don’t think about is with the place cards, you need a seat number. Individual chairs have to be assigned a number, and it works best to have in the same spot at every table. So if you have a stage where your band or DJ is going to be, then make that chair one and then go clockwise around there.

[00:04:09] Alison: And that’s the same at every table. And that way it’s like super easy for us on site to like go around and put the place cards down in place, the caterers automatically know before they even set the tables, where everyone’s going to be, they’ll go through, once everything is set and double check everything, but you have to create that seating chart. And for our vendors that are listening, going how does this episode kind of pertain to us?

[00:04:32] Alison: I think it’s important for you to note that if you need things from the client the month or two before their date is set, then you need to understand they are working on so much stuff and we are trying to get that to you. That is our goal. But sometimes there is a hierarchy of things that needs to get done, like a seating chart or like music selections or something like that, because a lot of other things depend on that.

[00:04:58] Alison: And then for clients that are like, why is this episode important? It’s you know, obviously so that you can see how much that you might need to do. Us as planners, we’re trying to like set everything that at least one to two weeks, depending on how soon you make your decisions. One to two weeks out, we’re hoping that we’re resting, we’re chilling, and that you get to go take nature walks or go take a nap in the middle of the day or finish out the work that you need to do because anyone that knows that works a corporate job or anything like that, your bosses are like, wait, you’re leaving?

[00:05:32] Alison: No. We have so much work to do or give you. And a lot of people have so many projects to close out or hand off, especially a lot of people take their honeymoons right after. So not only are you trying to plan your honeymoon, you’re also trying to pack for that and also try to finish all the things for the wedding. So it starts to become quite a lot.

[00:05:50] Alex: And also family starts arriving the week of the wedding, which can add a lot of stress. I’ve had plenty of very intelligent brides breakdown the week of the wedding, and I was like, all right, you got it out. All that was a little stress. We can handle this. We can absolutely handle all this, you just have to wrap it up at work and get all this stuff done. So the point is making decisions earlier and we will get questions farther out. So a client will say, but the caterer’s final numbers aren’t due till 10 days out. Why do I have to get this spreadsheet to you a month out? Well, We also use that spreadsheet to print place cards, menu cards, things like that. So we need actual guest meal counts.

[00:06:31]

[00:06:32] Alison: Final table numbers too. So like, it’s important to know your table numbers because then your florist is usually ordering flowers potentially a month out, depending on the florist. So then they need to know how many tables you’re going to have because you estimated those tables when you first were getting in the proposal process, so you were estimating, oh, I need 15 tables, and then you actually only need 12, or what if you need 18?

[00:06:54] Alison: So then you need to adjust that with them before they then order. So a lot is riding on creating like these final things that Alex is mentioning.

[00:07:04] Alex: And then also just printing also takes a lot of time. So getting that program, if you wanna program, which is funny ’cause I feel like half of our clients are doing programs and half are not. Lots of the Catholic masses do want a program ’cause it’s a lengthier ceremony and people wanna be able to follow through.

[00:07:20] Alex: But we’ve seen two different kinds. Some Catholic masses with our clients, they want the full printout and descriptions and reader’s names and others just want like a highlight of sections of what we’re going through. And that will determine how many pages. So, it just takes a long time to get all that laid out. Everyone needs to approve it and then printing it.

[00:07:41] Alison: And then two things there, catholic masses obviously have long booklets because you might be singing or, reading prayers or something, or just generally knowing the outline of what to expect because it’s an hour long. But for multicultural weddings where you have a mix of cultures or religions and the other half doesn’t know the other vice versa.

[00:08:03] Alison: So then they wanna put things in the program like you know, Jewish weddings or Indian weddings or something like that where they wanna explain the significance of things and explain why something is important. What is a HUPA and what does it represent, or what is a mandop and what are they doing under there?

[00:08:19] Alison: What does an orange mean? or what does the yogurt symbolize? So things like that also sometimes go into programs. And the second thing that a lot of people don’t know, and that also adds stress. And for vendors, obviously the ceremony is the biggest thing, right? This is why we’re all here, is to get these people married and then celebrate with a party.

[00:08:41] Alison: I just have to remember, this is about two people coming together that love each other. And yes, there’s gonna be beautiful decor that we got to have fun designing and all the logistics that go into it, but that is the main reason. But sometimes officiant through churches or temples or anything like that, they sometimes don’t want to even talk to the client until two to three months out to start planning the ceremony, to start creating the script.

[00:09:05] Alison: You can try to do it earlier, but some are set in their ways and won’t even start working on that. So then you had your officiant and who was going to do your ceremony for a long time, but now it’s time to build that. So just out of what we’ve talked about so far is you’re trying to build your ceremony and you’re trying to create your seating chart so then you can print all of your items.

[00:09:25] Alex: Yeah, so most of our clients work full-time. So let’s say you had your head in your computer at work all day, you have to come home and get your head back in your computer, which is really hard for some people, they need that mental break, but it’s sort of crunch time. It’s go time.

[00:09:38] Alison: I get it. I hate my personal email, like I never open up my app and when I do, it’s just mostly junk mail. So then like you have to weed through it. So then I’m trying to like picture clients also having to like weed through all this junk mail just to like find emails from us and stuff. And, most of our clients are like pretty organized. They probably have it set up in their email box and stuff, but like, I’m too lazy with my personal email ’cause I do sit on email all day.

[00:10:02] Alex: Yeah, and I will say that’s actually a really good tip for clients who are getting engaged. Setting up a separate wedding email address is so helpful. Like you do not understand the amount of emails and correspondence, you are going to have in the next 16 months. So just keeping a separate email that you and your fiance can log into and respond and both keep track of, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. It’s super, super helpful.

[00:10:30] Alison: But also make sure you check it after the wedding too. Because there’s still things that have to come in afterwards like, some vendors not all require a payment after. I just did a wedding where the person emailed me and they’re like, Hey, we don’t have record of this, like one payment.

[00:10:44] Alison: And I was like, but I know my client paid it. Like we checked that off like what happened kind of thing. So then I’m having to email them on their wedding email to be like, Hey do you have any receipts for me to like show the payments that you made and stuff like that. And they sent them right over, so good, they were still checking their email. But if you’re not gonna check it, make sure we also have like your normal email. So like, we set up like a client questionnaire when they first start, so that we can get both people in the party get their emails, so that we can communicate with them, even if they do have a solid wedding email dedicated to just that, so that emergencies, like after the wedding, I can still reach them, or even like, let’s say a year from now be like, I have to tell them something, or, Hey, congratulations, or you were featured in this blog or something. I don’t know, like I still might need to reach you for something, but I love that advice Alex.

[00:11:34] Alex: Yeah, it just helps people stay organized, I think. One thing, is the band and the dj. Like we interviewed Jake Sherman from Washington. He was so helpful getting those songs as early as possible just helps them stay organized and on top of things and not feeling rushed.

[00:11:51] Alex: If you hire a band, they’ll typically learn like up to two songs for you. So they do need to know those songs in advance, and they might not actually learn the songs until two weeks out, but it’s on their to-do list. It’s in their pipeline of things that they have to do, so that they can balance their workload.

[00:12:07] Alex: My clients for tomorrow, they have some very specific versions of songs that they want for their special dances. And this is my mistake, I did not ask the band what file they need them in because when they have special songs like that are remakes of the song, you can Google and find it.

[00:12:24] Alex: But I just wanna be a hundred percent sure that it’s a version that clients want. So I usually ask the clients to send it, I think they sent over Spotify links to the songs and then the band threw it back and was like, we need YouTube versions of it, and I was like I don’t know the backends of their systems and why YouTube is better than Spotify with these songs, but if I had just asked the band like, what format, what file, you know, the clients would’ve given it. So I guess that was my fault, but it wasn’t too big of a deal, but it’s just these little things that can really start to add up.

[00:12:55] Alison: But what the client doesn’t see behind the scenes, luckily, you know, because that’s what we’re here to do, to troubleshoot and get the things, because then they would’ve had to do all of these emails. But you’re taking this outta their hands and making sure that this is getting taken care of and what the band needs and thinking about those things that others might not.

[00:13:13] Alison: So, that was probably what five emails right there of having to go back and forth and be like, alright, how do you need, here’s the song, oh, can you send it this way? Yeah, I can find it and send it so it’s like this back and forth. And that just saved the client like a bunch of emails in their inbox the week of their wedding.

[00:13:29] Alison: And that’s why I always joke when I used to work at a venue, and I even do it now as a planner, it’s you do not need to worry about what a circuit is, why the band needs this many circuits, where those dedicated circuits are, everything is like, you don’t need to know that, I’m doing all of that behind the scenes.

[00:13:46] Alison: We are making sure that the band has the mirror in the green room. The photographer email us like two weeks out or the day before sometimes and be like, hey, can we drop our equipment off at the venue early? And we have to be like, most of the time we can say yes, but there are some venues where we’re like, no, 100% no.

[00:14:03] Alison: Their load in is at one o’clock and you can step foot in there before you know, kind of thing. So that’s where it’s like, there’s a lot of last minute things that pop up too. Reorganizing load-in schedules making sure vendor meals are all organized. Double checking if anyone had any dietary restrictions for that.

[00:14:19] Alison: The printer by accidentally double embossed something. So then we’re looking at and being like, no, we have to reprint this. So it’s like a lot of things where we’re running around with a very strategic chicken with its head off to make sure that all of this is a nice little neat package before the client walks in on their wedding day, but they sometimes don’t know all or any of this, which is good.

[00:14:43] Alex: There’s just a lot of questions and clients have every right to ask all of the questions that they need to know. And one of the big ones is, I think with catering, if their guest count goes down, they think that it’s an apples to apples, like each guest costs $200, where it’s actually not, ’cause even if you reduce your guests by four, we still need the same amount of servers, catering, equipment in the kitchen, things like that.

[00:15:09] Alex: So your food cost is just a third of that proposal. So there’s a lot of education into some of these things, which we’re happy to do, but I do try to explain a lot of that, like before we get to this point.

[00:15:20] Alison: Yeah, especially like with rentals, sometimes they do packs of 10 or five. So then if you only had four people drop, then we still need that full pack. So you’re still paying full price for the rentals needed, and sometimes you get four chargers in a crate, or something like that.

[00:15:35] Alison: So you aren’t really reducing your rentals at that point. Some things aren’t as itemized as we think. But the other thing to think of is sometimes with a wedding, you want your client to feel like, they’re your only client. You want them to feel super special and taken care of, and that you’re answering all their needs and stuff like that.

[00:15:53] Alison: But then your vendors are working with 15 other million people that aren’t just weddings, but also social, birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, corporate, nonprofit, government, you know stuff. But with the government shutdown happening right now, ’cause it is a big thing happening a lot of our clients are impacted with this and we’re seeing that a lot, but a lot of vendors like, lighting production companies, tenting companies, venues like the smithsonians and stuff, a lot of people are having to like either move their venue or reschedule or figure out how to get crafty with things, and I’ve had a bunch of vendors come to me recently and been like, I know I owe you contracts, but I am in the thick of it trying to like move and maneuver and all of these things. So if you could just give me some grace, I promise I’ll get this to you. And I’m like, I totally understand. But then trying to explain that to a client who is like , hey, it’s been four weeks since we thought we were gonna get this proposal.

[00:16:47] Alison: I totally get that. And I think that’s what’s weird about the wedding industry is that in any other industry, if you want something you get it, right? And that’s where that instant gratification comes from with the younger generation, and even millennials and stuff like that.

[00:17:01] Alison: Like we’ve just all grown up on technology now that you can click and buy something on Amazon with the snap of your finger and it would arrive to your house sometimes in the same day, which is wild, like I ordered prescription dog food. My dog now has like health issues.

[00:17:17] Alison: I literally ordered from chewy.com. My vet approved it like an hour later, and then I had the food sitting on my doorstep the next morning. So it was less than 24 hours of ordering approval and food delivery. So in the wedding industry, when it’s not instant like that, people start to like stress and worry and stuff like that, especially the month of the wedding, if they’re trying to add something last minute or change something, so it starts to become a little bit stressful.

[00:17:47] Alex: It really does, and another slightly stressful point is another thing we cannot control, is the weather. So a solid rain plan. Now if you’re getting married inside that’s amazing.

[00:18:01] Alison: But even sometimes a completely indoor venue, there are still small things that we have to do. Like, Is it cold outside? Is it gonna be pouring rain? Do we need coat check?

[00:18:12] Alex: Are we as a team, running guests back and forth with umbrellas. Who’s bringing those umbrellas?

[00:18:18] Alison: And 90% of the time, photos are outside, and a lot of people will get permits for special monuments, or gardens or something like that. And then you’ve hired a bus to strictly just take you to that location. So coming up with an indoor backup plan for photos with your photographer and your planner is just as important.

[00:18:37] Alison: So you can be sitting there as an in completely indoor wedding and be like, all right, the weather’s not gonna touch me. This is why I did it. So I won’t be stressed. Oh wait, I can’t have my photos at this garden. Oh, okay. So the week of the wedding, we wanna have the plan in place. So that you don’t have to be like, well now where are we gonna go do photos. But yeah, go ahead with the rain plan. ’cause I think it’s so important, and I know we’ve talked about this in other podcast, so it’s just stressing how important it really is.

[00:19:04] Alex: Yeah, and it’s always the plan B, so nobody wants it, but you just can’t control the weather, like tomorrow it’s not supposed to rain, maybe touch in the morning, but it could always just shift. So having that solid rain plan, which as a planner, it’s an exercise, I don’t really want to do, but you have to do it so that everyone knows, including the guests.

[00:19:25] Alex: So like tomorrow we are doing first look, and then bridal party and immediate family pictures before the ceremony. So we have a very clear indoor rain plan and a very clear outdoor plan because we have small children that have to travel in the car with their car seats. So we have drivers, we have shuttles, like everyone has to be clear about the two plans that are going on.

[00:19:48] Alex: The reception is not nearly as bad, it’s not great, but we have large family photos, which are just gonna have to happen on the dance floor if we can’t utilize the property. So that rain plan is what it is. But again with lots of moving parts, again, babies, small kids, car seats, different drivers, shuttles. You just have to be super clear where everyone has to be Plan A, Plan B.

[00:20:11] Alison: And one of the most important things I wanna stress is don’t think or assume that your venue or your church is gonna let you come in early to take photos.

[00:20:21] Alex: Nope. We were dealing with that with tomorrow, so our photographer was like, listen, I think the best plan if it rains is do all these pictures at the church beforehand. It’s a very strict Catholic church, so the rule is you cannot do pictures before they get married anyway. Then we learn that there’s a quinceanera ceremony before ours anyway. So you don’t make assumptions that things can just happen.

[00:20:45] Alison: Because even like we’ve had clients come to us and be like, just tell the venue that we’re gonna come early, and I’m like I can email them and ask, but with this particular venue, they’re gonna say no. So we do wanna come up with other locations.

[00:20:57] Alex: Or there could be another extra hour fee, which could be $500,000 to come in early.

[00:21:03] Alison: Yeah, and we had a wedding where we had this beautiful place set up for photos and then something happened. This job destroys my past memory, so I don’t really remember what happened, but we were like, oh, that’s so frustrating. So then we went to the venue and we’re like, hey, this happened. Could we come early? Is it even possible?

[00:21:22] Alison: They didn’t have anything before, and they were just like, no, and I’m like, okay, I will respect that. So then I have to go back to the client and be like we can’t, and they’re like, but there’s nothing there before. I’m like, yeah, but you have to think they have to have an event person come in sooner. So then they’re having to pay all these people to come in sooner. So it’s not just easy as like walking into the space. It’s someone opening the doors and getting situated. Maybe they had something personal, like the venue person that was coming in.

[00:21:46] Alison: Maybe they had something personal before and they knew, okay, I need to be at the space at one, but I have before then to go here or do this or run this errand or something like that. So that could be sometimes the answer. I’m not saying that is the answer every time. It just could be the venue just says no, ’cause they’re in power.

[00:22:04] Alex: Yeah, but that does go back to like pre-planning like, hey, if you could think about a rain plan well in advance, an asset that venue, they might have the capacity to make a few changes to let you do that, or if you’re fine paying that $500 fee they have time to staff up.

[00:22:19] Alison: And I wanna stress how rainy the month of May has been the last eight to 10 years, and I think I remember like a may or two ago, it rained every single day almost, and it was like we have to prepare if you are getting married in April or May, that is likely we will need your plan B.

[00:22:39] Alison: And if you can work with us and trust us, then we can make it happen. I have two stories. One is from another planner and one is from me. So I hope it’s okay that I’m telling the story for the other planner, I’ll even give them a shout out. But I saw on Instagram evoke amazing talented team in the DC area.

[00:22:59] Alison: They do a lot of destination weddings and stuff like that. I saw on Instagram that it was going to rain, i’m telling this off of my memory from Instagram, so if it’s wrong I apologize. But it was supposed to rain or some crazy storm or something the next day for the wedding. So they talked out a plan with the client, came up with an action plan, I think the week of the wedding or the day before, and was like they contacted every single one of their guests and made it work to have the wedding ceremony. I don’t know if it was the whole wedding, if it was the whole reception, but the wedding ceremony happened. They moved it one day ahead. They moved the whole day, now that was a miracle. That was all the vendors lined up, I don’t want anyone to think that this can happen every time or that it should happen every time.

[00:23:46] Alison: it was a crazy wild design. All of the vendors must have been available. All of the guests must have been able to make it work, and the client was game for it. So for all three of those things to match up. That is magic work right there.

[00:24:00] Alex: I think that’s interesting. I would assume that they do a lot of full weekend events. So if guests are all actually in town on Thursday, they could probably make that work to shift a Saturday ceremony to a Friday. So that is interesting. And I applaud evoke that’s a great team to like, jump in action like that, make something so remarkable happen.

[00:24:19] Alison: But for the most part, the second story I have is from my experience. So we had a wedding a couple years ago, there’s this one family that I’ve done all three of the children’s weddings, over my whole career which has been amazing. And to get to know this family, I wish they had more kids so I could keep going, doing their weddings.

[00:24:38] Alison: Maybe their grandchildren. I’ll just be a grandmother being like organizing weddings for them. But it was an outdoor tented wedding. It had like a fun theme and everything, but it was reception style. So we are dance when you want to eat, when you want to mingle when you want to, there’s no formal sit down dinner.

[00:24:55] Alison: There’s food stations and lounge seating and we had multiple performers and stuff like that, so it was really fun. Literally we’re up in the mountains in Virginia, storms can come out of nowhere. We had planned for it just in case 30 minutes before we’re supposed to have the ceremony with guests arriving and stuff like that.

[00:25:15] Alison: It starts sprinkling and I’m like, we’re looking at radar, when’s it gonna pass? Do I make the call to have this inside the tent? or can we keep it outside? cause it’s just, I really want these outside photos and i t wasn’t supposed to rain, so we end up having to make the call. Unfortunately, we told the client they were fine with it, and we had the wedding inside, but because of the way the format was with the tent, and the client agreed to it, that there wasn’t gonna be seating for everyone.

[00:25:42] Alison: That everyone would be standing. We would have a few chairs set on the dance floor for the grandparents and anyone that needed to sit, kind of thing. After the ceremony, the bride came to find me and she goes, I loved that 10 times more than our first plan. She goes, I’m so happy it rained because I got to walk through a sea of my friends and family.

[00:26:05] Alison: I got to touch them like I walked by and held some people’s hand, because they all were surrounding and kind of made a tunnel for her to walk down and it actually ended up being so beautiful and intimate and everyone was like standing around them. Yes, it probably made it a little bit trickier for the photographer.

[00:26:23] Alison: But they pulled it off perfectly and we got amazing photos. And in the end we didn’t even really mind that it was in the tent ‘ cause we ended up having such this special moment for her and h im that they’ll never forget that. And they’ll probably like tell their kids that, or, you know, when they got great video because then the videographer’s like trailing behind them filming. We had to create this over the planning process, but then hone in on it in the last two months. So I think the next thing we could kind of dive into with the other things that you have to do the month of the wedding outside of like thinking of the rain plan and printing and seeding chart and music selections is what are you bringing on the wedding day? And I think a lot of people, low key stress about this in their personal pack list, but then also the pack list that we need to take from them. And since Alex is in the weeds of it with her wedding, what are your kind of thoughts on like getting that ready advice, thoughts and feelings?

[00:27:20] Alex: We have some clients that don’t bring much at all, and we have some clients that bring a lot. So, anything that you want displayed, it needs to get to me earlier than the wedding day. I just like to go through it. I wanna make sure we have everything. So we’re talking about your card box, your guest book.

[00:27:37] Alex: A lot of people bring family photos to look at. Sometimes the client has the paper items like menu cards, place cards. Sometimes the printer brings them on site. It just depends who we’re working with. So yeah, you had mentioned like their personal pack list. So what do they need to bring to the hotel?

[00:27:54] Alex: Like everything from, do they have a special pajama shot with their girlfriends? Do they have a special dress for the rehearsal dinner? Are they having a brunch? Do we need an outfit for the brunch? So there’s a lot of little things that they need to map out so they don’t forget anything.

[00:28:08] Alex: And then again, once I’m in the hotel room, I can take anything that needs to go over to the reception. So maybe your extra makeup bag, maybe your pocketbook, you don’t wanna hold that for the moment. Most of our brides are doing a dress change, so we need to bring that over. Do we have different shoes?

[00:28:24] Alison: And don’t forget socks. A lot of people forget socks, and then they tell me afterwards they regretted that.

[00:28:29] Alex: Yeah, like you’re changing into cute sneakers or whatever. Do you have a veil link like, a lot of our clients are wearing, like these cathedral length veils where they wanna take it off for dinner service. So, I like it if I have that hanger so I can put it on and wrap it up so it’s safe and tucked away. So all of those little things are you bringing, like your vows?

[00:28:49] Alex: My clients this weekend, is that they have party favors. They’re from Houston and they have light up cowboy hats, which is going to be hysterical.

[00:28:57] Alex: So all those things, I mentioned it might be chili. So she gave me a big basket with blankets. So keeping track of all these things, and then what needs to leave the wedding as well. The pack up list, basically It’s basically the same list, but sometimes there’s other things, like this is the first time in a long time, I’m packing up the top layer of the cake.

[00:29:18] Alex: So I know the baker has boxes. So I asked her to deliver the cake tomorrow with a cake box so we can get that over to them. So there’s just spreadsheets lists for personal, lists for wedding, like pack lists, there’s a lot. And then for us, just so everyone’s clear, we wanna be as helpful as possible, but we drive regular cars and SUVs.

[00:29:37] Alex: So when we say we can bring reasonable amount of things, that’s usually everything I just talked about. Like your extra dress, your photos, your card box, things like that. We’ve definitely had some clients surprise us with an amount of items that would require two to three cars or trucks to bring it all.

[00:29:56] Alex: And you know, we sort of have to call time out, and at that point help them figure out who is gonna deliver that and set that up. That’s just out of our wheelhouse.

[00:30:04] Alison: Because we have to make sure that it can get back into our car at the end of the night. And another conversation we’re having the month out is when are we picking all this stuff up from you the week of the wedding, organizing that schedule with you usually takes about an hour, sometimes not, but sometimes it’s like we chitchat, we are loading the car, we’re opening some of the boxes just to make sure things are in there.

[00:30:25] Alison: And because some people like hide the invitation suite into layers and layers or it’s inside their card box and stuff. So I wanna make sure I see everything so that I can make sure that I then behind the scenes, can organize that later and make sure I put things that like, all right, this all goes to the church, or this goes all to the reception, this goes to the hotel and stuff like that to make it easier on myself.

[00:30:46] Alison: But then I also have to go through the escort cards, the place cards. And it is rare, and I think my whole career, I’ve only probably found on one hand like less than five times of mistakes. But that’s why we double check everything because you know, you could have made last minute decisions, so there might be a double card in there.

[00:31:05] Alison: So we try to go through those and weed those out. Make sure we do not want a seating chart debacle on site. We do not want someone standing in a corner arguing with the caterer being like, I’m supposed to sit at table five, but my seat isn’t here. And it’s like, oh, we’re so sorry. Let’s get this organized for you. So we are wanting to make sure that all of that matches up behind the scenes.

[00:31:25] Alex: Yeah, you just want the guest to feel welcome and everything is just taken care of. So having all of the tables set appropriately, you’re like, if somebody doesn’t show up on the day of the wedding and nobody realizes that there’s gonna be an extra seat, but that’s not that big of a deal.

[00:31:38] Alex: I’m talking about things being just a little bit mixed up and nobody knows where to sit and adds a layer of confusion and it delays dinner. So that’s why we like to take things from the client. First of all, I think it’s a mental break from them to get it out of their house, it like they’re not thinking about it anymore. It’s in our hands. We go through double check and after your rehearsal, we usually come home and if we do have the place cards and menu cards, we’ll go ahead and say, okay, table one there’s 10 seats. I’m gonna check the names and put that in a bundle, in a Ziplock bag, label table one. So when we’re on site, it’s just super quick and efficient.

[00:32:12] Alison: Yeah, and one of my favorite stories of picking up stuff, ‘ cause usually it’s uneventful, which is always good because you’re alright, I’m here to up your stuff. But this poor couple, I went to go pick up their stuff and their dog got really, really, really excited and kept like bashing its tail on the wall and it just kept so excited.

[00:32:31] Alison: I’m a new person in their apartment. We’re like moving things around and going through things and never really calmed down. Then I feel something wet on my leg and then on my hand and I look down and then I start looking at the floor, and then I follow the trail to the wall and I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s blood everywhere.

[00:32:51] Alison: So the dog got so excited that it busted its tail open, hitting it so hard against the like wall and corner of the walls and stuff like that. Literally blood spray all over their wedding stuff. So luckily everything was protected in these plastic bins, so none of their wedding stuff got blood on it, luckily. But, my outfit did. I think the groom’s outfit did, the wall suffered, the floor, the poor dog’s tail is coated. And so the rest of the time before we started moving packages into the car was the bride, the groom, the mother, and me trying to like put a bandage on the dog’s tail, cause he’s still so excited, he’s like wagging his tail. We’re like, all right, you hold here, and I used to be a lifeguard but never on a dog. So I was like, let’s just try to work together to get him to calm down and hold his tail, so then I’m wrapping the bandaid while everyone else is holding him, ’cause I was like, I don’t wanna hold the dog. What if he bites me?

[00:33:48] Alison: So outside of that, I think one of the biggest things is people always be like, oh, I’m so sorry my place is a mess, or like, I’m so sorry that we have dogs. And they’d be like, I love dogs, even if they’re tail bus open and they bleed everywhere.

[00:34:00] Alison: Like I wanna see your dog. I wanna hang out and look through your stuff while your dog is like sitting next to me. I love that. My only thing is if we have to open the door in the middle of DC, is your dog gonna run out the door? So that always stresses me out, especially when people are like, oh, he’ll follow us and we’re out like in the middle of the street, and I’m like, okay. But we know that your place is probably messy and that’s why we’re there to get the clutter out.

[00:34:25] Alison: But, obviously has been mostly for clients and couples listening on what they can do to like get ready the month or what to expect and stuff like that. And I think I’ve mentioned this earlier in this episode, but we are doing so much work with your vendors, and it’s a lot unseen and we’re fine with that.

[00:34:43] Alison: You know that we’re getting everything organized for you, but you might not realize how many emails we had to spend or how many phone calls we had to do, or maybe I had to run to the venue to do an in-person meeting, to do like a last minute like rig check with the florist or something like that for the ceiling, or like go look at color swatches because maybe something didn’t come in the exact color it was supposed to. So then we’re looking at it to make sure, do we have to bring this to the client’s attention or can we solve it behind the scenes.

[00:35:07] Alison: Because our main goal is to like put the fires out before we even have to like talk to you. And you might never know that something happened. So we’re finishing out your final rental order and sometimes, unfortunately, even the week of the wedding, I had a wedding a couple months ago where the couple messaged and was like, we have a table for the ceremony, right?

[00:35:26] Alison: It was like, no, like I didn’t say that to them, but it was like, no, what table are you talking about? And it was just one of those things where it’s like, all right, I just had to message the caterer really quick and I’m like, Hey, let’s put the table and the linen on the order. Go to them and be like, we didn’t originally have this, but now it’s on your order.

[00:35:42] Alison: So they came to me with a question. I came to them immediately with a solution, and then it was taken care of. Now that you’re adding that last minute, that is going to be an additional cost, but caterers may or may not, it just depends on did it already work into money allotted with this small addition, or is this something you’re going to owe?

[00:36:01] Alison: I can’t remember the last time I’ve had after a wedding where someone’s just owed like $25 by adding a table or something like that. So something has to be worked in behind the scenes with the caterers to be able to do those last minute ads or changes or something like that.

[00:36:14] Alison: And it probably adjusts with your guest count and stuff, and I think it was fascinating if you go back and listen to Mary Margaret and all the things that they’re doing behind the scenes that was a podcast with a caterer from Ridgewells who also helps manage the Mellon Auditorium, where she talked about why they need those numbers and why it’s so important. Because it’s not just we wanna know. We need to know because this impacts 15 other people on our team that then impacts 20 other people on their teams.

[00:36:42] Alex: Yep, planning early is just always best and we know it can’t always happen, but just in general, RSVPs aim for six weeks out. It just makes everyone’s life a little bit easier, gives you more time to do that seating chart, tables layout everything. Printed items, I’d say four weeks out if you can get that done. Song choices, I feel like this is one where everyone’s like, oh it’s not a big deal, we’ll make a choice. But if you just make a decision and just cross it off, because sometimes all those little decisions add up and then you get stressed out.

[00:37:14] Alison: Like i’ve had people that had their first dance song selected for like months, and I’m like, just tell me what it is and I’ll send it to the band. You don’t need everything at one time to send to the band. If we could just, yeah, send it. ’cause then I’ll just keep a log and then send it over.

[00:37:29] Alison: Oh, your photo list, I know we’re kind of wrapping up things, but you have to also think about photo list creation that happens in the last two months because now you know everyone that’s coming and you have to then organize by family group.

[00:37:42] Alison: You have to organize like who’s in each photo, the order of those photos, and that the couple has to do that. Your photographer might be able to go through and order it a little bit better for you, but for the most part you have to put all of those in.

[00:37:54] Alex: Yep, that’s another task. So there’s just a lot to do staying organized. A planner will obviously help you through all of these items. But doing all this work on the front end and early helps lead into a low stress morning of your wedding day and a great day because everybody knows what the plan is.

[00:38:13] Alex: It’s been set for a while. Everyone’s had time to think about it, digest it, and everyone’s like ready to go. So we hope this has been a little bit helpful and entertaining always. But yeah, if you all have any questions or topics you want us to address on the podcast, feel free to DM us or shoot us an email. Other than that, Ali, you have anything else for today?

[00:38:33] Alison: No, I’m all set. Thank you everyone for listening to us.

[00:38:36] Alex: So again, we hope this has helped you all a little bit or given you some insight of what’s gonna happen two months out before your wedding. It’s still a decent amount of work so, plan early, make decisions crossings off your list. And that’s it. Until next time, thank you so much again for tuning in everybody. Have a great day.

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