Meet with your officiant – make sure he/she knows your name

It happens.  Brides and grooms plan the “wedding” – usually a general term used to describe the day, not the actual ceremony.  A lot of times, the ceremony gets overlooked as a minute detail.  This usually means that the officiant/minister/judge is trying to come up with your ceremony without any input from you.  If this is the case, your rights to be disappointed have been waived.

I had an Asian couple with unusual (for Americans) first names and single syllable last names.  Their officiant had never met them and was flying blind with their expectations.  (I will also add that he didn’t appear to be diligent in his own findings to make sure he got it right.)

Halfway through the ceremony, he confused himself as to which name belonged to which person.  He stared blindly at his book for what seemed like a long time – honestly, it was probably only 30 seconds that passed, but as dead air, it felt longer.  When he finally recovered from that, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

At the end of the ceremony, he invited the groom to kiss the bride and introduced them as Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie… Uh, what happened to the single syllable Asian last name?  The bride whispered to him (loud enough for the microphone to capture it), “That’s not our name!”  Once again, we got a blank stare and dead air.  The bride and groom finally gave up, we started the recessional music and they proceeded back down the aisle.

As we got back inside to sign the marriage license, the officiant did what any red-blooded American man would do… he blamed it on his wife.

DIY often spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R

Cake.  How hard can it be?  Flour, eggs, water and frosting – right?  Unless you’re a pastry chef, an engineer or an architect – this is not a place to cut corners or think you can do it yourself.

I have had more than one occasion where the bride and/or her family or well-meaning friend baked the wedding cake.  In theory it sounds like a relatively easy task – everyone has baked a cake, cupcakes or cookies in their lifetime.   But let me tell you, wedding cakes are a whole different animal.

I have cut into cakes of amateurs who thought they were doing the bride a favor and found a myriad of sins – ranging from using frosting to mask holes and gaps, to stuffing plastic bags into the voids then frosting over them.  Not to mention the use of wooden pencils and plastic knives to stack the cake with.

A well-baked and well-built wedding cake can stand alone.  It has been baked with a consistency that allows a little bit of weight to be placed on it (i.e. cake topper) and has been built to withstand the weight of itself (stacked cake with columns, etc).

We haven’t even talked about cake flavors and fillings yet… Pastry chefs know (through their training) what you can fill a cake with and what never works.  Betty Crocker’s intent was never to be used for a wedding cake.  And Smucker’s didn’t make strawberry jelly to be used as cake filling.  These two things together are a recipe for a disaster.  A boxed cake mix doesn’t hold together well and strawberry jelly cake filling turns into a drippy, runny mess that causes the cake layers to slip off each other.

There is also engineering and architecture that goes into a wedding cake.  Although it may look like the cake is stacked on itself – it truly is not.  There are very specific plates, spacers and columns used to make sure your cake stays where it should.

Also, many DIY bakers don’t realize that those cute little pearls used to dot the cake are actually edible.  I have picked many plastic pearls off a cake before I served it to guests.

Do yourself a favor – shop around, taste lots of cakes and thank your friend/aunt/mother/neighbor very politely and say “no, thank you” when they offer to bake your wedding cake.  Remember – it’s an important “Kodak moment” accessory and it needs to look great.  And it’s the last thing your guests will eat at your reception – don’t leave a bad taste in their mouths.

My Invitation Ink Doesn’t Match My Bridesmaid’s Dresses

It really happened.  Early in my career of wedding planning and owning my venue, I had a bride call me in tears begging me to let her come by the office.  (Of course, I thought the worse – break-up, bounced check, lost job, car accident, etc.)  I told her to get right in and we’ll figure out what needed to be done based on the crisis at hand.  When she got here, she shoved a beautifully embossed wedding invitation into my hand and blurted, “LOOK!”

I read it.  Then read it again – expecting to see a misspelling, or an ex’s name or something, but I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  It was printed straight.  The spacing seemed to be fine.  I must have had a dumb look on my face because she then spouted, “The ink doesn’t match my bridesmaid’s dresses!”

Since I was holding the invitation, but not the bridesmaid’s dress – I couldn’t dispute this point with her.  But clearly she was upset about this.  The ink was black.  It wasn’t orange or turquoise or something blatantly obvious – just plain ol’ black.

So, in my effort to calm her down I told her how beautiful the invitation was, how well-worded it was, etc., etc. She continued to cry and point at it.  At my wits end I said, “Do you know what this means?!”

She sniffed and looked up.  (I’m sure she was expecting something brilliant…)

I said, “It means a DISCOUNT!”

She said, “What do you mean?”

I explained to her that because they had not been printed the way they had been ordered, the vendor owed her a discount or a reprint.  She opted for the discount.  Apparently, the color wasn’t as important as she had originally thought.