Avoiding Wedding Chaos: Operational Feasability

Back when I was a manager in a local grocery chain, I was in charge of an Event (note the capital "E"!). It was a promotion that we called "New York Block Party". We turned the front of the store into our version of a New York City street, complete with a stoop in front of an apartment building (built from 12 packs of Coke products) and New York style foods for sale. It was a lot of work and had a lot of moving parts. The planning was complete and we were well into the execution when a fellow manager had the idea to "turn the forklifts into taxis". Since I had no idea how something like that could be accomplished I asked him to describe the process. He also had no inkling how it would be done. He had the Big Idea (there's those aspirational capital letters again!) but he had not considered the "operational feasibility", i.e. the plan for getting it done. A Big Idea is only the start. (Don't get me started on the Meat Department managers who wanted to turn the refrigerated bunkers into a pirate ship and a whale). 

What Big Ideas do you have for your wedding?

Maybe you don't think that what you're doing for your wedding is "big" at all, just "traditional", but everything that you do takes planning and execution. Starting with your timeline.

Before you even get to the ceremony itself you're probably going to be doing a lot on wedding day. The two biggest items on the agenda are hair and makeup, and family photos. If you have hired experienced professionals for these responsibilities, trust their judgement on how long things are going to take. If you've asked your BFF who works in a salon to do the hair and makeup, you'll look absolutely amazing, but there's a good chance the process will take longer than you thought, which will put the next item on the schedule, and everything following it, behind. Photography is another big deal. Recently my stepdaughter got married, The photographer was a well-regarded local professional who knew exactly who was going to be in which photos with whom and kept things moving along smartly. She knew the best way to line people up and how to frame the shots. She also knew how long it should all take. On the other hand, at one of my weddings, things were so far behind that the photographer was still setting up shots with the bride while all the guests were in their seats and the wedding party and parents were lined up and ready to go. Somewhere along the way the timeline was disrupted and the result was that we were running late. 

A side note on photographers. Trying to save a few dollars and hiring an inexpensive photographer is not a good strategy. A veteran photographer knows what pictures to take and will discuss with you exactly what will be provided. They will be aware of opportunities for candid shots as well. During the ceremony a photographer should be virtually invisible. In a recent ceremony the photographer, a rookie, spent most of the ceremony itself standing in the center aisle, which blocked the view of some of the guests - mainly because he lacked a telephoto lens. He shared that space with the videographer - these two burly men were the most visible things in the room! 

Some couples have a personal assistant to the bride whose job is to take pressure off the bride and groom and coordinate with the wedding party and vendors. But unless that personal assistant is a professional, details will get missed. A professional wedding coordinator/planner knows what needs to be done, knows what you want, and makes sure it happens, the way you want it to happen and on time. They will also tell you if what you envision just isn't feasible. There's a lot of details before, during and after the ceremony itself. You have to ask yourself, once the big picture is in place - how am I going to accomplish all of it?

As an officiant I am mainly concerned with the ceremony itself. The majority of weddings that I do are fairly simple. The parents (and sometimes grandparents) are escorted to their seats, then the wedding party walks down the aisle in pairs and takes their places. Then the ring bearer and flower girl make their cute little way down the aisle. Finally the bride is escorted to her place. I say a few words, the couple exchanges vows and rings. Sometimes there is a simple "unity" ceremony, a few more words and then introduce them as a newly married couple. Everybody walks out. Tada! We're done. Let's assume that hair and makeup, family photos and all the other details have proceeded on time. What "simple" details still needed to have been taken care of? Where is the marriage license? (Recently I found it in a box of trash in a closet; occasionally it's back home or at the hotel) Who has the rings? (Once, the best man had the plastic rings that came with the ring bearer's pillow; a groom on another occasion dropped them in the grass and we spent 10 minutes looking for them). Do we have the sand, candles, roses, letter box or whatever is being used for the Unity Ceremony? Do the bride and groom, if they have written their own vows, have the vows? (I have had couples make a 2 hour round trip to go home and get their vows that they forgot) Where are the bridesmaid's flowers and bride's bouquet? Boutonnières? Flower girl baskets? Cute props for the ring bearers? The wagon for the little kid who is an "honorary" flower girl? Somebody has to be responsible for making sure all of this is taken care of. Not only taken care of, but taken care of in a timely fashion. A professional coordinator/planner will be on top of all this.

As an officiant, I'm going to be responsible for the wedding party knowing what order they're walking in and with whom, where they're standing during the service; cues such as when to present the rings or if there's a reader; I give advice on how to stand to allow the photographer to get the best photos and how to exit for the recessional. I make sure I'm on the same page with the photographer and deejay. If it's not too complicated and everyone is sober, it's pretty straightforward. But I'm assuming that somebody has taken care of all the details mentioned in the last paragraph, and taken care of well before it's time to start walking down the aisle!

Now imagine that you've thrown a few non-standard wrinkles into things: the processional involves alternating family and wedding party, some of whom sit and some of whom stand; the order that the wedding party walks up deviates from the order in which they're standing up front; you have an extra-large wedding party - 11 groomsmen and 11 bridesmaids and want to decide on the walking order by drawing names out of a hat; you want the processional cued precisely to specific parts of the music; you've decided on some variation on an "amusing" flower dude (don't get me started); the bride is arriving by helicopter...(all of these things have happened). You have now escalated from "short and simple" (everyone says that by the way) to Big Idea. Somebody needs to either be coordinating all of that, or at last communicating to me how it should go. (When the bride arrived by helicopter, believe it or not, the helicopter was the least disorganized part of that wedding)

So, whether your wedding is just you and your witnesses in your living room, or an extravaganza to rival a British Royal Wedding (you'd better believe somebody was on top of those millions of details) it's not enough to come up with a cool idea, you have to also consider the operational feasibility of your idea, i.e. how is this going to work?