Thursday, April 29, 2010

Aspiring Challenge: What Would You Do?

Trying something fun...there's a prize involved so here goes...

Wedding Ceremony and Reception Venue: The Bride's Parent's home. Beautiful twelve acre horse property with a lush lawn and lovely fruit and shade trees throughout. Large, air-conditioned tent with more than twenty different potted plants, flowering bushes and trees brought in to create a tropical theme.

Valet Service to park guests' cars at a nearby church.

Five Star Caribbean Caterer serving a delicious, Cajun meal with a decadent 4 tier, lemon mousse wedding cake. Oh, and an ice cream truck will show up later, on this warm, June night. (It's Phoenix...and it's HOT in June!)

Guest List: 300+ including several professional athlete's with security detail. (Oye!)

Sounds perfect, right? This was our first tent wedding back in 2006 and as newbie's, we tried to make sure we covered everything! Alas, we made some mistakes that night.

Here's one of the things that went wrong...

The ceremony was held in the front yard and the reception in the back. The chairs for the ceremony needed to be moved to the backyard afterwards for the reception during the cocktail hour being held in the Arizona room at the back of the house.

The bride assured the planner that the groom had it covered. Supposedly, he enlisted the help of several friends to move the chairs down to the tent right after the ceremony.

When it was time to move the chairs, there was no one around.

What did we do to make sure the wedding reception was a success?

Leave a comment below, describing briefly what you think we did to get the chairs moved to the tent and what we learned NEVER to do again. Comments will stay open until Sunday at 12 midnight. I'll announce the winner, on Monday afternoon.

The comment that comes closet to the actual solution, will win an autographed copy of Mindy Weiss' book, "The Wedding Book". I think it's a great resource book for planners, especially those of you just starting out.

And by the way...if you want to know what else went wrong that night, you'll have to email me privately. Trade secrets, ya know? :)

Good Luck!

Until next time...

Aspire to Plan!

11 comments:

Ashley said...

Put them in your vehicle and drove them to the back of house?

Amanda Galbreath said...

have everyone who sat in that chair pick it up and move it to the back

Jadana said...

Gathered your team and some members of the waitstaff and everyone moved some chairs to the reception area while guests mingled in the cocktail hour and no one noticed a thing. :-)

Melissa Abeyta said...

You and your team had to physically move each chair perhaps getting help from other vendors. The lesson learned is to not trust "friends of the groom" would help but to be sure enough hired staff is available to help.

Marie T. said...

Enlist the help of the valet service? Or play a big game of musical chairs, and have the guest that loses bring a chair back each round? And learn NEVER to be without a backup plan!

Courtney - Alpha Prosperity Events said...

Paid the valet service folks to help move the chairs to back yard

Sherri - Planned to Perfection said...

Did you possibly request any available assistance from the valet and caterer? and then I'm sure that you learned to NEVER assume, ALWAYS confirm. Thanks for your constant willingness to teach others Wendy! I'd love to hear the other details, I'm always eager to learn from my colleagues.

The Mareks said...

moved them all yourself

Yara @ Bridal Horizons said...

Did you enlist the valet people to help?
Then after that you made sure never to count on the bridal party to lend a hand! Am I close?

Anonymous said...

Paid the friends to move the chairs! You learned to take "the bull by the horns" and be responsible for all details.

Cloud9_Raquel said...

Okay, here's my guess...might be a little out there.

You went to the FOB with the situation; he had some kind of equipment from the 12-acre farm (i.e. flatbed truck/trailer, etc.) and let you use that to load the chairs onto and get them to the back of the house. Ultimately you and your team had to load/unload the chairs (with the help of other vendors that were on-site).

Lesson learned: Do not allow the bride/groom to be responsible for any coordination responsibilities on the day of their wedding.

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