Recently, a friend told me a story over coffee. It went a little like this: Once upon a time, two people met, fell in love and decided to marry. They spent hours planning the perfect wedding, which was to take place at a zoo in the city where they lived. They invited all their friends and family to the special event. On the afternoon of the ceremony, however, only a handful of guests had arrived at the appointed time. The bride and groom grew anxious. They worried that there had been a misprint in the invitations or that all their guests had simply decided to stay home.
Then, 15 minutes before the wedding was to begin, the bride’s phone rang.
“Darling,” said her mother, “There’s a car on fire that’s blocking the entrance to the zoo.”
Though the story ends happily—traffic was re-routed and the guests arrived only a little late—the moral of the tale is familiar to anyone who has ever been involved in planning a wedding. Even the most streamlined celebrations are not immune to unanticipated crises, often from the strangest sources. When disaster strikes, be it a tornado, a missing family member or even a flaming automobile, a quick and savvy professional could be your best bet for riding out the storm.
No rainchecks
To paraphrase the postal service, Minnesota wedding vendors persevere through rain, snow and heat. Every season has the potential for disaster, from summer tornados to February blizzards. Minneapolis wedding planner Amy Rubins of Fete Perfection recalls a summer when three separate ceremonies were stymied by severe thunderstorms. The worst storm cropped up at an outdoor wedding just as the string quartet began playing the processional. Rubins recalls seeing the sheet music, music stands, floral arrangements, chuppah, programs, chairs and tables flying across the tent where 180 guests were seated. She guided the guests and wedding party to shelter in a nearby structure and began the ceremony over again once the storm had passed. She learned later that the same storm had produced multiple tornadoes.
Planner Amy Fuerstenberg of Mi Mi Design tells a similar tale of a bride and groom caught in the rain while having their picture taken, just an hour before they were to walk down the aisle. “Both of them were drenched and filthy,” Fuerstenberg remembers. She had to spot-clean the bride’s entire dress, as well as arrange for the groom to switch suits with one of his brothers. The bride also had her hair and makeup quickly re-done. Fuerstenberg claims she’s lucky that “the reception was dark due to the storm, so you couldn’t tell what happened.”
Sometimes the damage is harder to hide. Sarah Trotter of Lasting Impressions Weddings has seen her share of grin-and-bear-it nuptial bumps, including a wedding on a riverboat that suffered unexpected turbulence. “The water was rockier than we wanted,” Trotter recalls, “the vases all started to fall over and the cake completely shifted and fell off the stand.” For a December wedding just a few months later, Trotter spent two hours struggling through the snow to arrive at the site—only to find that half the guests hadn’t shown. Through all of this, Trotter kept a calm head, patching together the riverboat bride’s fallen cake and reassuring the stressed December bride.
Of course, bad weather can wreak havoc on more than your cake or your makeup, as the DJs of Instant Request can attest. DJ Peter B. once worked a wedding at the Carlson Towers Rotunda in the middle of a freak storm. Rather than ducking inside, he says, he “stripped off all of his clothes except his pants, and brought in all of our [electronic] equipment from the island.” While he was at it, he carried in the decorations and flowers as well, and DJ’ed the rest of the night in “sopping wet pants” without complaint. How’s that for professional?
Where’s the beef?
Miscommunication is another major culprit in wedding hang-ups, from scheduling snafus to late deliveries. A good wedding planner will roll with the punches, taking mishaps in stride. Last year Trotter planned a wedding in conjunction with a rental company that was supposed to deliver the tent, chairs, and reception décor to the bride’s home the day before the wedding. The supplies never appeared. The next day, after numerous phone calls to the delinquent vendor (who kept insisting the furniture would be delivered “in two hours”) Trotter located another source for the materials—at a discount, to boot.
Amy Rubins showed similar panache dealing with a catering company that had timed its food preparation poorly. By the time guests has finished the first course, the caterer informed Rubins that the entrée would not be served for almost 30 minutes, even though the guests had already finished the first course. Rather than panic, Rubins simply suggested that the wedding party fill the lull with toasts instead of waiting until after the meal. “The timing was perfect,” she recalls. “There were some rather long toasts and by the time the last one was finished, the entrée was ready to be served.”
As the DJs of Instant Request can tell you, it’s not always the hired help that’s responsible for the biggest hitches in the process. Owner Shawn Plante’s staff has dealt with clients providing recordings of first-dance songs that “skipped horribly,” a bride who wanted a garter toss but didn’t have a garter, a couple who hired an unreliable music group that showed up late, and, memorably, a couple who planned an outdoor ceremony on a river bluff “a quarter of a mile away from a power source.” Luckily, the DJ in question was able to provide a generator at the last minute to power his equipment.
Words of wisdom
When your wedding guests hand you lemons, sometimes there’s nothing to do but smile and write a thank-you note. Wedding planners can deal with unexpected logistical problems, but their best advice for rampaging guests is often simply to remember that not everything can be controlled. But that doesn’t mean planners won’t be handy in a pinch—the professionals interviewed for this article have escorted out unauthorized Elvis impersonators, picked up overlooked family members, and even acted as nursemaids for drunken groomsmen.
Each of these wedding pros offers additional sage advice for brides and grooms. “Cut the cake early,” recommends one Instant Request DJ, who notes that cutting and serving many pieces of cake often takes longer than expected. Fuerstenberg suggests preparing “a wedding emergency kit that has everything to solve any wedding attire problem” including items such as white chalk, baby wipes, a sewing kit and a hair dryer. Above all, Rubins asserts, “accept the fact that no matter how organized a couple may be, something always goes wrong.” She urges brides not to fret about it, because guests likely won’t know what was planned and what went wrong. And remember: Even if your wedding isn’t seamless, following Plante’s advice to always hire a professional ensures that you’ve got someone there to put out the fires on your big day.
Saved by the pro
These local wedding vendors have seen it all. Read on for some terrible-but-true disasters and their happy endings.