Unfortunately, with my taking time off from the site leading into our wedding, my follow up to Vendor Potluck post, was left without conclusion!

I am sorry to report, it is indeed, a sad tragedy…  As I feared, the person that I had hired out to do a small sewing job for us, went completely awol.  I emailed & called this person to no avail.  At first, I honestly didn’t want to believe it.  I like to give each person the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to professional services.  When I first found this vendor, they were communication forward, & totally available.  This was also a heavy part of why I ultimately went with them for this job.  It took less then 48 hours of non-returned phone calls/VM’s & emails to realize this person was clearly trying to duck me.  Its a horrible feeling really.  Who needs this kind of drama and ultimately confrontation?  I am not afraid of confrontation, but seriously!?

My fiance and I realized that perhaps this person was simply too keen to my phone number, and purposely ducking  just my number, and not wiped clean from this earth after all!  As it turned out, that was sadly, exactly right.  When my fiance called from his cell, this person answered right away, and well, lets just say one hell of a confrontation ensued.  I have no intention of speaking ill about this person.  I will simply say that they clearly have some life problems & it was evident about 60 seconds into the call, that we were not to be doing business together.  Very strongly, my fiance let this person know that he would be coming by later in the day to pick our fabric back up and that was to be that.  I am sad to report that it was not without some fan fare later that evening, that my fiance did ultimately get our burlap back.

I wish I could say there was some grand life lesson, some great wedding/event planning lesson to be gleamed from this.  Honestly, maybe I am missing it, but I cant say that there is.  When we hire someone for a job, hire a new employee, a planner, a florist, a contractor, you name it, you expect people to be honest and forthright.  You anticipate that the items on their resume, the references they list, their portfolios are legit & are a true reflection of who they are professionally speaking and what you can expect from them.  Sadly, human nature is and always will be human nature.  For the most part in life, people are who they say they are.  There are always those however, whether its intentional or not, that can do you harm, or at the very least, make your life very difficult.  The best I can simply advise, is the things in life you do, always leave yourself enough to get out of trouble, if you do indeed get into it.  Our saving grace was that this was not something I had left until the last minute, so I had to time to figure out how to get this worked out.

The other thing I will say I did learn, always ask for help, even if you dont necessarily think your barking up the right tree.  After this situation unfolded we actually reached out to the company that was supplying all our rentals for our wedding, Weddings, Tents & Events.  This wasnt something that really fell under their umbrella but we had hoped that at the very least, maybe they would know which way to turn or someone they could recommend.  And guess what, as it turned out, they did, and they were great!

I wont let this sad tragedy scare me off for the future.  There are a lot of advantages to finding independent contractors for work, and clearly some risks.  All I can say is that I will do my best to vette them better moving forward!

Some days your the bug, some days your the windshield.  Wedding planning is no different, trust me!  An even more fitting phrase might be 2 Steps forward, 1 Step back.

I currently am having the pleasure of what I like to lovingly refer to as vendor potluck surprise.  When your planning any kind of event, especially one that you personally are handling all the details for, even the littlest ones, there are some tasks that simply aren’t met by your standard vendor.  Enter,  the Craigslist of Doom.  I kid I  kid.  Craigslist is great for anything from finding a place to live, to game day tickets, to services needed.  That is the area of my vendor potluck.  Granted the task is an extra add on type thing, something we could have done without, or more so simply gotten standard linens for.  However, we had a vision and we wanted to make it real.  So I suppose one could argue I brought this on myself, haha.

I posted an ad, got a response, corresponded back and forth many times & finally an accord was struck and my fiance was off to deliver the fabric.  As such began the adventure.  Let’s leave it to say that he had quite the entertaining time when he dropped the material off, & was questioning a tad my decision.  With all the back and forth however, that I had exchanged with the vendor, I felt confident it would be OK.  I called the following day, following up on the work that was required, ensuring we were all on the same page.  The conversation was left that we were to talk that coming weekend, and see a sample.

The weekend came and went without a word.  I emailed…..nothing.  Hum, I thought, odd for someone that was great at responding before.  Not wanting to seem stalkeresque, I waited a day to attempt to contact again.  This time I called, was able to have another phone conversation, again making plans to meet the following day.   Today is the following day, and the clock is ticking down.  I have now tried a few times, calling, to no avail.   I am beginning to wonder if it is a simple case of flakiness, that will ultimately work itself out, or ?

That is the really difficult part about hiring out work like this.  It seems so up in the air, and there is no safety net.  There is nothing to guard you if you do end up getting, well, screwed.  Its not like I can call Craigslist and say Hey!  Do something about this!!  I am hoping that I hear something soon, it does all work out, and that will simply be that.  At least on the bright side, I still have just a tad over 3 weeks.  If this thing really does fall through, I have time to scramble.  I will be out material, but lets be honest, it could be way worse.

You gotta love Vendor Potluck & being at the mercy of others….

Sometimes ambition can be our very own undoing.  This is a lesson that I am slowly starting to realize.  We are in our under 30 days to the wedding countdown, slowly realizing that trying to juggle so much, makes for a frazzled brain!  Sometimes I am feeling like this:

Well, maybe not quite as fabulous as Ms. Giselle, but you get my point.  I feel like there are days I am literally fighting myself.  Planning a wedding is hard.  If anyone ever told you differently, they were lying.  True it can be as complicated, and detail orientated as you make it, but no matter what, there are lots of moving parts, lots of various things going on, that you are always trying to juggle all at once.

Our engagement has been over a year now, by design.  Not because we thought we needed more time, but literally there was a logistical issue.  We got engaged on July 4, 2010, and wanted to get married in the summer.  So either pull a crazy celeb move and get married a month after our engagement, or, do the typical move, and take a year to plan it.  Clearly, we choose the later.  This has resulted in a blessing and a curse all in one shot.  While we have never felt time pressure to get things done, I felt another pressure entirely.

I have spent the last year contacting/acquiring vendors and endlessly searching decor designs/ideas/arrangements, etc.  Sorting out what I can do myself, what I need to buy to DIY, what I cant make so I need to buy, finding more ideas, rinse and repeat!  Its has become and endless cycle that I cant quite seem to break.  Its a funny thing, as you often hear, when you find your dress, stop looking!  Don’t go to stores, don’t look in magazines, leave it alone.  What no one ever told me was, that can easily apply to the other elements of your wedding as well!  With so much time before the wedding, and general interest in it all, well, it easily spirals out of control!

Not to mention, solidifying various elements with your different vendors.  A lot of decisions cant be made until closer to your wedding date.  Your final number of guest can greatly effect different parts, & easily effect the way they end up being.  A perfect example is we are waiting on a few more RSVP’s to trickle in.  Until I get those I cant lock down my caterer, cant exactly finalize our  dessert bar, won’t know the number of tables that we need ,which effects not only our rentals, but floral for centerpieces.  I feel like so much is still left hanging in the air!  I am desperately at a point where I not want, but need to start to close some circles, cement exactly what is needed, know that I can finally cross things off my list!  It also sounds crazy, but I am desperate to pay my vendors too! I just want the monkey off my back, if you will.

And lists, dont get me started!  I have started countless lists of To-Do’s, projects, items for those projects, things to buy and so on!  I have a folder that I swear is hanging on for dear life.  I am even considering having a retirement ceremony for it after this puppy is over!  This coming weekend is a big DIY weekend for me (posts to come!) & I am beyond thrilled to knock things off my list.  I feel like if nothing, I simply mentally need it!

Of course like most of us, we try to balance planning our wedding, with our work!  I work like anyone else Mon-Fri.  So lets throw that into the mix shall we!  The irony of it all, that ambition that has actually trapped me, is….. Storyboard Wedding!  Apparently doing all the things that I already had on my plate was not exactly just enough for me!  I loved my wedding planning tool and site idea so much, that I had to get it going, like now!  I am beyond thrilled when I look at it everyday, and dreamily look into the near future when I can turn my full attention to it, I currently almost cringe at it now.  I want it to be great, I want readers to like it and come back for more.  Did I take off too fast, did I put too much on my own plate?  Is one thing suffering to make the other stronger?  Likely so to all of those questions.

Ambition drives us in life, and it can also be our own undoing.  It takes a strong person to know when what drives them, might be taking them in a direction that they hadn’t really wanted to go.  Feeling like a circus juggler with balls, scarves, bottles, plates, and axes in the air, is a frightening feeling.  Try to realize what you can and can not take on, and by all means I must stress, ask for help when and where you can!  Planning a wedding alone, is stressful.  So many moving parts and elements make for a pretty soupy mix sometimes.  Lean on those that want to be there for you, and know, no matter what, you will get through it….. all of it.  I intend to!