Chapter 6: My first wedding

I don't know about you but when I was a little girl I used to watch the film 'The Wedding Planner' and it was my favorite film which helped me to discover what I wanted to do career-wise. It looked so glamorous and sophisticated, the perfect career for romance to spark. Little did I know how much Hollywood had played with the job title to make it look so easy; FYI: Wedding Planning is NOT easy!!! Nevertheless nothing has put me off and even though I have found that it wasn't what I had expected, I still love my job.

I still get the thrill of telling people what I do, most people expect me to be unsure of what career I want to get into but when I tell them what I do, how long I have wanted to do it and how much I love it, they are always pleasantly surprised. I think that is what will make me successful; being able to come across as a professional but having that passion for the role. Passion is a key ingredient to a successful business because if you don't love what you do then how can you expect your customers to either? 

I had my first wedding with West Country Wedding Planner on Saturday 2nd August 2014. I went in feeling nervous that I would mess something up and that the couple would blame me but my boss, Emma, assured me that everything would be fine and that I had nothing to worry about. At the start there weren't too many jobs needed to be done, but something that I had never expected to do on that fine day was that I would be dusting and cleaning an old church gate. I had to get rid of all of the cobwebs (hoping that I wouldn't come across a big mean looking spider and trying not to get the web in my hair, eww). Then I used baby wipes to get off as much of the moss that I could (at which point a local lady told me that she hadn't seen anyone clean those gates for years, my thoughts were 'No kidding'). I then helped put out some of the decorations and went down to start my other duties at the welcome drinks area. 

I had been briefed in the morning on what was going to happen on our part 'behind the scenes'. My role was to go down before the ceremony started to start making the welcome drinks and to set up the tables and chairs. I started with the tables and chairs, I arranged them as best as I could but as soon as I had finished it started chucking it down raining. I had a slight panic for a few seconds and then decided to put them all back under the marquee as nobody would want to sit on wet chairs, this took me quite a while as I am not a very strong person and the table legs were getting literally 'stuck in the mud'. After struggling with that and being completely drenched so that my dress stuck to me like cling film, once all of the tables and chairs were under the marquee, it automatically stopped raining. As there were still grey clouds ahead, I decided to leave them where they were and move on to the next task: making the welcome drinks.

Inside the kitchen on the side was the recipe for the welcome drinks, I was thankful for having this as I had not the slightest clue on how to make Pimms...
So I started making the Pimms to the recipe given in all six of the jugs, I followed the instructions to what they said or at least I thought I did until I had finished. I had been told that a couple of the boys from the wedding would come down halfway through the ceremony to come and help me out. When they arrived, I realised that I had made a mistake when reading the recipe. I realised that there were supposed to be half of the jugs with Pimms and the other half of jugs with Elderflower cordial and I had put the Pimms and cordial together. When I told the two boys what I had done, they weren't overly impressed and had to go and get more Pimms as it had all been used in the mistake batch. 

The time was coming near to the end of the ceremony so we wiped down the tables and chairs with cloths and set them in place outside again as by now it was looking like a lovely sunny day. The new batch of Pimms had been made and were sat in the fridge ready to go out for when the guests arrived. When they came down to the welcome drinks area, everything looked perfect and no one would have ever known what events had happened earlier in trying to set up the area. Not too long after the guests had arrived, we ran out of the good Pimms and had to use the mistake batch that I had accidentally made up previously, thankfully it was a hit with the guests and they kept coming back for more. 

Me and Emma had to leave the welcome drinks area swiftly as we needed to get to the reception venue to set up some last minute decorations before the guests got there. We managed to get there in time and have the decorations up before anyone got there. When the guests did start to arrive to the reception venue, my job was to direct them to look at the seating plan and I had memorised where all of the tables were so that I could direct them to where their table was. After all of this, it was time for me to go home. I had seen the day as a whole, very successful and I can't wait for the next wedding that I get to be apart of. 

Until next time, 
The Aspiring Wedding Planner 

1 comment:

  1. Well done, Carys! A well written account. How great that your mistake (we all make them!) turned out OK on the end...

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