Hello!

The pictures from this wedding have been sitting on my desktop for a couple of weeks now, and I figured that if I didn’t write something about it today, I’d probably never get to it.

Ken and Catarina contacted me last winter, for a small intimate wedding in Montreal. They were from Macao; it was a same-sex wedding; needless to say, I was on board.

Since the couple lived so far away, we never got to actually meet until the very few last days before their wedding. But oh, were they worth the wait! Ken and Catarina had met in elementary school, and had been on and off sweethearts ever since. They were so young, but their love was so strong and sweet, they just had to travel halfway across the globe to have the marriage made official {for those of you who don’t know, Macao is under Chinese rule and same-sex marriage is not recognized over there}.

Because of the difficulty to obtain travel visas, they were only able to take one of their friends with them. So I stepped in as their second witness. This was a wedding with no hooplas. We spent the day sipping wine, then celebrated the small ceremony in a garden in Old Montreal. They were kind and generous, and insisted that the photographer and I join them at their table for dinner. Then I took them out dancing.

I plan so many different weddings every year, and most of them involve more or less elaborate decor, extensive guest lists, and tons of drama. I love those. But Ken and Catarina took on intense family disapproval, government blindness, and a 36-hr flight because they love each other so much. And isn’t that what marriage is all about?

Oh, and obviously, I cried like a baby when Catarina walked down the aisle to Elvis Presley’s “Fools Rush In”. Like the song goes: Old men say, only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.

Photos graciously provided by Annalie Young

xoxo

Hello!

So, you got the rock on your finger, the man by your side, and every detail of your wedding down and under control. You’ve even got a pro {i.e. a wedding planner} standing by your side to make sure the big day goes down smoothly. Think you’re covered, right? Think again. I have nearly 70 weddings under my belt, but as I count down the days to my 2011 season opening, I still find myself telling my brides: “97% is planned, 3% is entirely up to chance”.

By chance, I mean the “old man up in the sky”, or whatever other name you want to give him/her/it. You know, the force that decides it will pour buckets when you’ve planned an outdoor ceremony…

In the last five years, I’ve had a lot of unforeseen potential disasters happen to me during my weddings. Most of them were due to the inexperience of my earlier years, but some were complete flukes, even as I look back on them today. Now, when I prep my brides for their big day, I always sit them down and mentally prepare them for what I call the “worst-case scenario”. Trust me, having a wedding planner there to help fix the situation is a great thing, but I sometimes wish we, the wedding planners, could also bring shrinks along to help us fix, well, us.

Here’s a rundown of my top 10 worst case scenarios. Yup, they all happened to me.

1- A guest forgot to mention he was allergic to shrimp. At a Chinese wedding. How one forgets to mention something like that boggles my mind, but all I can say is that the outcome involved an ambulance, and me frantically scavenging the kitchen for a new knife, fork, plate, glass, and something, anything, that hadn’t come into contact with the darned crustacean so that said guest could enjoy the rest of the reception.

2- This one happened a while ago, but thinking of it still sends the bad kind of shivers up and down my spine. Imagine a beautiful vineyard, about 40min from the city. Imagine it’s midnight, and the party’s raging. Now imagine one of the main sound wires gives out. Yes, my friends, burns out and dies. All I can say is that the 10 minutes it took us to rewire the entire sound system were the longest 10 minutes of my life.

3- My number 3 is a classic, fit for a romantic comedy. The bride and groom sit next to each other at the head table. The groom is holding a full glass of red wine in his hand. The groom spots a long-lost friend and waves to him. The entire contents of his glass of red wine end up on his bride’s immaculately white dress. That is the night I discovered the magic powers of Ginger Ale.

4- This mishap is most likely due to me still being a bit of a newby, as it happened 3 years ago. I had a countryside wedding almost 2 hours away from Montreal. And I realized I forgot the box of favors {I had so painstakingly wrapped} at home. Two hours before the ceremony. I was very lucky there were no cops on the highway that day, because I performed some crazy maneuvers on the road and managed to get everything back to the reception site on time.

5- Some of you have definitely heard this story, so please forgive me if I repeat myself. But here goes anyways: I ripped out my belly piercing during a big installation at the Marche Bonsecours. At 9am. Nearly fainted, and had to call for the security guy over the walkie-talkie; he came to my rescue and applied a full bandage. That wedding lasted until 5am, and that bandage was very much soaked in blood at the end of the night. Yes, I love my job. And no, for those of you who are curious, I did not muster the courage to have my belly re-pierced.

6- Last May, I had a pretty big wedding at the Montreal Science Center. I was expecting a big truck of deliveries {tables, chairs, linens, etc} to show up at 9am. They showed up at noon, with the wrong delivery. This is the story I tell all my potential clients when they ask me why they need a wedding planner. Needless to say, I also no longer use that rental company.

7- Imagine a wedding, again, 2 hours away from the nearest city {I seem to have a lot of those}. Now, this wedding is very much in the middle of nowhere, at a quaint little B&B in the countryside. And now imagine that the absolute unthinkable happens: we run out of beer. At 10pm. Guess who emptied the beer stock of the nearest convenience store…

8- My number 8 is such a random fluke, I still can’t really believe it happened. I had a beautiful wedding at an art gallery, and we had hung tons of Chinese lanterns over the dance floor. For some random reason I still don’t quite fully understand {as the lanterns were attached with duct tape to some pipes along the ceiling}, half a dozen of them decided to get detached and smack down onto the heads of guests below. Thankfully, they were only made of paper, and no one was injured.

9- From time to time, a wedding venue with a solid reputation will miscalculate the number of bartenders it needs to serve 400 guests. And for some really strange reason, this has to happen at the one wedding where the groom requested there be absolutely no wait line at the bar. So, as it turns out, I can also mix a mean vodka-orange.

10- Last, but certainly not least, is the story so many of you have heard before. Two years ago, I had a wedding at a beautiful hall that was also part of a university campus here in Montreal. The university had been particularly strict with us in terms of what could and could not be done inside the room, and a very detailed, 12-page-long contract had been drawn up. What the university forgot to mention to me was that their security personnel did not actually work for the university. They were sub-contracted. And that Saturday, all 10-15 security guys banded together and decided they had much better things to do than to watch other people having fun. All I’ll say is this: I did not even know that someone who only stands 5’2″ tall {i.e. me} could yell so loud. I’m also pretty proud to say that I used every single insult I know of, or have heard since I was about 5 years old. Finally, I simply threatened to call the police. It ended up working, but it took me a full week to recuperate from the amount of harassment they gave us {can’t park here; can’t cook here; can’t flush this toilet; can’t burn candles; can’t put chairs on the grass; and the list goes on and on}

And there you have it! I hope I have not scared any of you out of getting married in the first place. I simply wanted to warn you that random things happen to the best of us, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the amount of dedication and preparation that goes into your wedding day.

So I hope that when your day comes, you’ll stay cool and calm, and remember to look at the big picture. Besides, you still get to keep your man {and that rock} even if some paper lanterns come crashing down.

xoxo

Hello everybody!

I’ve managed to go m.i.a. again… I guess November is the new July because I am swamped with work!I recently received these pictures from Isabelle Paille, and I am head over heels in love with Marie-Eve and Benoit all over again. This couple was the most amazing to work with, and needless to say, this was one wedding where I cried quite a bit {as you already know, I’m the crying kind of wedding planner}. I hope you enjoy the photos!

xoxo

tables and tabletops by Celebrations

cake by Jessica Berard Cakes

venue: The Hillsdale Golf Club

Hello!

It’s been a really hectic few weeks for me, prepping for all the gorgeous weddings coming this summer, working on decor ideas, meeting with various vendors, signing on new clients…

Owning and running a business can be very exhilarating, but it can also be tricky at times, especially if you are in a service-type industry. We, the self-employed kind, have to decide what we are worth. I mean, we deliver time, advice, expertise, planning, coordination, ideas, et al, but there is never anything tangible about it. In the end, the flowers are executed by a florist, the decor is set up by lighting technicians and rental companies, the photos are taken by photographers.

Most of the clients that come to us know exactly why they need a wedding planner, but I sometimes get phone calls where I find myself justifying my fees and almost convincing a bride that she does, indeed, need a wedding planner. I really, really don’t like doing that.

To us, wedding planners, our work seems pretty logical and obviously very necessary. Why else would we be in this business? So I’ve decided to share with you some insight on, well, why it is that we do what we do.

When it comes to your wedding, your wedding planner is, if you will, the thread that holds it all together. The planner can take a picture and turn it into reality. We know where to turn to make a vision come true. We spend inconsiderable amounts of time on the phone, in e-mails, and in meetings negotiating contracts, finalizing details, giving out important information, so that the busy bride and groom won’t need to take time out of their busy days.

We coordinate deliveries, juggle issues, avoid catastrophes. We act as buffers between you and everyone involved, so that if your limo is stuck in traffic, you don’t need to call your caterer, florist, baker, priest, and photographer to tell them that you are running late. We boss around mean security personnel and we make sure that your bitterly-divorced parents don’t run into each other. We make sure the vegetarian guests get their vegetarian meals and we help your having-recently-given-birth maid of honor find a quiet spot to breastfeed her baby.

We hand out tissues when your father’s speech has everyone in tears, we hold your big beautiful white dress while you pee (yes, it’s true). We help you find the perfect shoes to go with your perfect dress, we sneak out to spread rose petals around your honeymoon suite, we distribute payments while you and your bridal party are doing shots at the bar.

A wedding is single-handedly one of the most important days in one’s life, and I sincerely believe that it should always be perfect and flawlessly executed, no matter the size and budget.

An experienced wedding planner who shares your vision can help you achieve exactly that. Wouldn’t you say it’s almost priceless?

xoxo