Wowza. When did THAT happen?!
It has also been exactly four months since my last post. I apologize for that, but if it weren't for the snow today, it would have been longer still. This blog has most definitely fallen by the wayside, fortunately that has not entirely been the case with the actual planning of the wedding. More on that if I do decide to make this blog a priority again one of these days.
I'm writing beacuse have some sad and some somewhat disturbing news to report. The sad is not wedding-related. This past weekend we learned, through facebook (what else?), that a girl we went to York High School with passed away from an overdose. I don't know if it was accidental or intentional, but regardless, it was very sad news, made more so by the fact that her brother was once a good friend of mine in high school. I also learned from Johnny that she used to date his best buddy, Tristan, who is the best man in our wedding, and due to his current circumstances wasn't able to learn the news right away or attend her funeral. Johnny & I did attend yesterday, and despite that it was of course difficult, I am so glad we did. If nothing else, I feel we grew up in a fairly small and tight-knit community, and in a situation like this, we should come together to show our love & support for the family whether we knew them well or not. Furthermore, we should stop and reflect on this unfortunate and truly very sad loss of life too soon, and remind ourselves to never take a single day, or person in our lives for granted. April was only 27. She had a young daughter. In the grand scheme of things, of life, this kind of thing makes you stop and think. It makes you realize that the next thing I'm going to report on is quite frankly, not that big a deal.
Which leads me to topic number two, and it is wedding-related. Now, I said it was disturbing, and by that I primarily mean that it is disturbing to me that something like this would happen at this stage of the game. It is disturbing to me that people treat each other this way. It is disturbing to me that some people feel it is acceptable to do business this way, and are somehow able to remain in business when they do so. Today, it is six months until our wedding day, and we no longer have a caterer, because yesterday we received an email that they were no longer willing to work with us due to a difference of opinion on one point of their contract, and their belief that we no longer have the budget to afford to hire them.
Without going into all the details, let me just say that this was completely sudden, from our perspective, and despite this point of contention we had every reason to think that we would just sort it out and move forward with the deposit and contract. The point we are (well, were) at odds with was a fee we didn't feel they should be charging us. It would have amounted to somewhere in the neighborhood of $500-$1,000, possibly more. As I explained to my dear fiancé, I would have almost certainly been willing to pay that much more overall for the food & beverages they were providing us with, but not in the form of this fee, because it was for something we didn't need from them, and had already hired and paid our wedding planner/coordinator to do. He is now really mad at me that basically because of my "principle" on this, that we can't use these people as our caterers, and this was one of the few things he cared about and wanted for the wedding.
I don't really think I was wrong, but it's brought to my mind the fact that apparently some people think I can be a bit harsh or difficult to deal with. Okay, I will admit I'm pretty type A, you might even call me OCD, and some would definitely say I'm controlling. I have a pretty good idea what I want in general, let alone for my wedding, and I also have a pretty firm concept of our budget and what is and isn't realistic at this point. I tried to be really clear and firm with these people about our needs and expectations. I tried to communicate with them and ask questions to make sure we understood each other. They never responded. They never responded or answered my questions until they chose to do so at the same time saying they were no longer willing to work with us at all. I don't know, but I honestly feel like no matter how big of a bitch I am, that is complete BS.
So that's what I find disturbing, that after an almost complete lack of thorough communication, someone would just bail. Just quit, or essentially "fire" us, the CLIENTS, when we were still offering to pay quite a large sum of money for their services. Not to mention, we have now all spent 1 1/2 - 2 months of everyone's time planning this menu and trying to get a contract in place, only to now be left with absolutely nothing, at square one, with, apparently, no recourse.
Besides that the email telling us this came yesterday morning, just before we were to leave for the above mentioned funeral, and the fact that I was shocked, appalled, offended, etc. by it, I just really don't get how people in business, in customer service no less, can think it's okay to treat customers this way! I don't know how ignoring a question about something amounts to me supposedly knowing you aren't going to budge on it, or whatever, and I don't know how you can tell someone your "price points don't fit their budget" when it is obvious from their other materials and offerings they gave to us that our food choices definitely weren't the lowest price points they offer, we only disagreed with the additional fees tacked on after the fact.
Thank goodness for my wedding planner/coordinator, Diana, because without her, I would be lost and most likely beside myself right now. Before I even opened my email yesterday morning, I had a text from her telling me not to panic. Within hours she had reached out to another caterer about our date, and within 24 hours she & I had been on the phone, talked everything through and were ready to move forward, and put this unfortunate circumstance behind us. I guess the bottom line is that it does pay to have the right people on your side. Sometimes, you don't know who those people are until they show their true colors, but true colors do always show themselves eventually, huh? And better now than the week before the wedding!
The other point, of course, is that in the grand scheme of life and love and weddings and the world, what we eat and who provides it and how much it costs and whether we have a wedding at all really doesn't matter than much. Because yesterday we went to the funeral of a 27-year-old who shouldn't have been ripped from the lives of the people she loved so soon or so suddenly. So make sure you hug your loved ones extra tight tonight, and every night, and if you know someone who is hurting, or battling addiction, or anything of that nature, make especially sure they know that you know, that you love them, and that you are there.
<3
