I’m not sure if this actually counts as a “vendor” as the person in question was actually a teacher and friend of mine and wasn’t charging for his time, but he was performing in a professional fashion, and so I put it in that grouping.

My husband and I were trying to plan a very, very tightly budgeted wedding. I was 19 years old, and he was 21, and neither of us had professional careers, plus the fact that we are an international couple (he is Australian, I am American) and we met over the internet. We had both been in Australia and we were planning to have the wedding in America (my parents couldn’t swallow the price of traveling abroad for our wedding, and his could, plus the fact that we had a large engagement party in Australia for his relatives and friends, and we had a small, legal ceremony in Australia afterwards) and so, given the price of airfare, and our single income, we had to do our wedding on about $5,000 of our own money, plus a couple thousand my parents threw in.

That seems like a very small amount, but my mother, husband and I worked very hard and found really great deals. The wedding went off almost entirely without a hitch, and many commented on how quaint, simple and elegant it was. It was exactly as I would have wanted, despite the tight budget.

Because our budget was so tight, we had to call in a few favors from friends. Our wedding cake was made by a professional baker who was my mother’s friend, and so he cut us an amazing deal on it, and it arrived in perfect condition. The flowers were from a florist that my family had given custom to for years, and they did a brilliant job. The officiant was a very close family friend who stepped in at the last moment when our original officiant got very sick. My veil was borrowed from a good friend of my sister’s and mine (we called her a ’surrogate sister’), the man who played violin for the ceremony music, graciously at no charge, was my orchestra teacher and went to my parent’s church. We didn’t hire a DJ, but instead plugged in an iPod to the sound system at the location and used that. Our Best Man acted as the MC and did wonderfully for us. My sisters and mother helped to make finger food, mints, pasta- and fruit-salad for the reception to help supplement the catering so that I could keep the cost down. My in-laws bought a few cases of a variety of sodas and sparkling cider so that we didn’t have to pay the extra catering costs for that. A friend of my husband’s family, who traveled from Australia to make it, offered to do all of the videography for free.

And lastly, the photographer was my photography teacher in high school, whom I had spent a lot of time hanging out with and talking to, and whom I considered to be a friend.

Well, hiring him as the photographer was the worst mistake I ever made! I met with him three times regarding the photography, and he agreed to do it without charging me anything for time, just for the development fee of the color photos, photo-paper and the photo disk (he would do all black and whites in the lab at school), and told me he was very honored that I would ask him.

I was very happy, as photography can be such a huge cost and I was worrying about how I was ever going to afford something that was so necessary, but could so often be overpriced. Over the course of our meetings, I saw him write on his calendar and put into his pda and cell phone the time and date of the wedding, and write himself many notes concerning what I wanted, and what types of photos I wanted. He said he would go and scout the area to see what spots there were to take beautiful photos. I explained that my husband and I didn’t want to see each other before the ceremony, and so we wanted him to be there about 45 minutes to an hour before the ceremony to take pictures of each of us separately, and to photograph the ceremony, and then do all of the “together” poses between ceremony and reception, and then hang around and take a few candids at the reception, after and during which he was more than welcome to take part in the festivities and enjoy himself if he wanted, as he was a friend as well as the photographer.

I thought I was getting such a great deal and I was very happy to have such great friends who would so willingly put themselves out for two very money-strapped people in love. I gave him a call three days before the wedding to make sure that everything was still go, and to inquire about the various costs involved with getting the photos done. He gave me no indication of the atrocities to come.

Fast forward to the wedding day. My wedding took place at 2pm, so it was a very relaxed morning. We all got up in the mid-morning, dressed and were very relaxed and happy. Everything was going off without a hitch, and I was starting to think that those “wedding horror stories” were just that: stories.

We got to the location, everything was perfect. Everything arrived in a timely fashion and was exactly as I had planned it.

Except one thing.

My photographer was nowhere to be found.

I figured he might be a little late, and told my maid of honor (who was an absolute saint through the entire ordeal) to give him a call and see what was going on. She couldn’t get ahold of him, but kept trying.

I busied myself with other things because I thought I was going to die of worry if he didn’t get there on time.

10 minutes passes, no call, no photographer.
20 minutes, no call, no photographer.
30 minutes, no call, no photographer.

I am freaking out. My MOH diligently keeps calling over and over, leaving messages and trying to get ahold of him, while my dad, grandmother, mother-in-law and sister-in-law jump in and begin taking posed shots of me and my maids, and split up and start taking a few poses of my husband and his men.

45 minutes passes when my MOH finally gets a call from the photographer.

His first words: “Is that today?”

I am totally speechless. She gave him what-for, telling him of COURSE it was today, what did he think?! He needed to get here IMMEDIATELY and fulfil his obligation! Unfortunately, he informs her, HE IS 2 HOURS AWAY visiting his family. My MOH tells him that he better get on the road, and hangs up.

She tells me and I am livid. My wedding starts in 15 minutes! I push it from my mind, and told her to tell him to just get here as soon as he can. She does.

Throughout the wedding, everyone not involved in the actual ceremony and who is aware of the situation is snapping away, as many pictures as they can do, and the four people I mentioned before did as many poses as they could in the short time we had. Unfortunately, this meant that there were almost no formal shots of me, my husband and the wedding party, and only about 4 formal shots of my husband and his men.

After the wedding, one of the guests, a friend of mine and a photography student who knew that I had asked our teacher to be my photographer, asked where he was. I told her, and she was aghast. She asked if I wanted her to run home quickly and grab her camera and tripod. I was so grateful and she did right away, and spent the rest of the reception taking pictures. She did so many absolutely gorgeous pictures of my husband and I, and literally saved the day when it came to pictures.

Finally, the kicker is this: he did finally show up. Oh, yes. Halfway into the reception, this jerk shows up with a little gift bag in hand. I, pretty coldly, ask if he wouldn’t take a few shots now, if he had the time. And he responds with, GET THIS: HE DIDN’T EVEN BRING A CAMERA. He shows up 3 HOURS LATE, and doesn’t even bring a camera. Later on, I looked in his bag, and it was full of stuff made from honey, including honey-mead, which is traditionally drunk by a newlywed couple on their honeymoon. It seems like a nice gesture, unless you know what I know, which is that his parents (the ones he was visiting when he should have been doing his damn job) own a honey farm and organic store which sells products made from honey. He had just grabbed stuff on his way out the door, thrown it into a bag, and given it to me.

It would have been better to have just not come at all, in my opinion. The moral? When it comes to your wedding, try and get a real professional to do something as important as photography!! While most of my friends came through, I took a real gamble, and almost wound up with absolutely no memories of my wedding day!    0927-09

“….told me he was very honored that I would ask him.” Well, there’s the glitch in all this. You initiated the process by asking him to give you something for free. It isn’t really a sincere gift if the recipient has to go fishing for it. The proof is in the pudding…he just didn’t have his heart invested in executing his “job”.

“…at the reception, after and during which he was more than welcome to take part in the festivities and enjoy himself if he wanted, as he was a friend as well as the photographer.” And this is the second glitch which forecast this vendor debacle. One cannot expect quality, professional photography, or any professional service for that matter, from someone who is also being encouraged to be a guest. Either they are at your wedding to work or they are there to celebrate with you. One role serves the wedding couple, the other is entertained and served by the newlyweds. When I am offered volunteer labor at weddings, I make it very clear that these people are there to work, not socialize or entertain themselves. I’ve been in too many situations where a “volunteer” cannot distinguish between their roles as vendor/employee and guest and what suffers is their work.

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I have seen my share of etiquette goofs, but I have one story that should win a prize of some sort.    I wasn’t even a guest at this particular wedding (Praise Jesus).  Rather, I was attending a religious conference for young Catholic adults, and the keynote speaker at the conference used his own wedding as his subject matter.  Copies of his “Wedding Registry” were given as handouts.

For openers, the bride and groom decided they wanted a big wedding and to invite “everybody,” which would number more than 400 guests.  How do two hand-to-mouth lay ministers accomplish that?  Why, have a potluck wedding, of course.

But it was the registry that was the focal point.  Instead of traditional wedding gifts, the bride and groom announced they wanted all their guests to do good works instead.  The registry was homemade, with the introduction, “We will be accepting gifts from this registry only.  All gifts should be described in a wedding card and delivered at the wedding.  Thank you for respecting our wishes.”  Below was a list of things to do.  Sound nice?  Not quite…

For reasons I still can’t fathom, the bride and groom assigned *dollar values* to each item, ranging from $5 to $500,000, as means of demonstrating the value of the gift to them.  For example:

• Donate blood:  $72
• Support a single parent; i.e. food shopping, babysit:  $90
• Pray for the terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden:  $1,250

And so on.  The most valued item on the registry was “Go to Confession” (a Catholic Sacrament), appraised at $500,000.  So what is wrong with this picture?  Several things:

If this bride and groom are only accepting “registry gifts,” what if Great-Aunt Edna *wants* to give her heirloom crystal as a wedding present? Are they going to refuse that too?

• Just what criteria were they using to calculate these values?  A single pint of blood that can save the lives of up to three people is only worth $72, but “Go back to church/synagogue/mosque,” which may only benefit the doer is $300,000.
• By making “Go to Confession” as their most valued gift, they are effectively shutting out that option to their non-Catholic guests.  Only in very dire circumstances will most priests hear confessions from non-Catholics.
• The couple effectively took public credit for the hard work and good deeds of others.  The groom became visibly emotional during his conference keynote speech when he described receiving a note of gratitude from a stranger who had benefited from one of the “wedding gifts.”

Frankly, I felt sick watching this display.  To me, the whole thing just flew right in the face of our Christian faith:  “When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others.  Amen, I say to you, they have their reward.  But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms giving may be secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”  (Matt 6:2-4) Needless to say, I left as soon as possible. 12-16-08

I asked the submission author to mail me the “Wedding Registry” conference material handout and she did.  It was even more worse than she describes.    There are 56 service “gifts” you can choose from.  My favorites are…

• Write a letter to your senator/congressional rep to lobby for legislature that supports morality and justice…$450
• Defer the cost of 2 buses from New Jersey chartered to carry wedding guests (teens) to Pensacola…$2000
• Cook for our potluck reception dinner…$250

But the submission author doesn’t even begin to cover the full extent of this “registry”.  After the 56 “gift items” there are two further sections, one titled, “Talents You Could Contribute to Wedding Mass” and the second, “Talents You Could Contribute to Our Reception”.

Wedding Mass Talents include instrumentalist, singers, flower arranging, transportation of wedding party, and even making homemade Eucharistic wine.

Receptions Talents include singing, cooking, reception coordinating, playing an instrument, teaching dancing, be the DJ, make the wedding cake, set up and clean up.

While the Gift Registry items could be interpreted as a good-hearted, well intentioned attempt to serve others, the inclusion of the request for gifts of labor to execute their version of what their wedding and reception should look like puts the registry way over the line for sheer “gimme-ness” sadly justified as religious duty.   From a Christian, Biblical perspective, the only required elements for a wedding is a groom, a bride, and an officiant (and a marriage license the government requires).  Two people are just as married in the eyes of God, the congregation and the law if they married quietly in the pastor’s office.   Having crossed the long-established etiquette line that one does not dictate to one’s guests how they are to bestow gifts upon you, it was an easy slippery slope to asking people to contribute labor for what appears to be a very large wedding.

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I recently received this email.  The sender is the new wife of my husband’s cousin. We have only met the cousin (turning 21) twice.  We met his new wife at a wedding (not theirs) two months ago.  We spent all of 15 minutes with her at the reception. We live across the country from them, so we won’t see them again soon.  She is almost 40 and should know better!  Here is the email (sent to a large list of us, including his parents).  Names changed -and at least she closes it with “thank you”.

Hey guys I am sending this to you for Jake so that you know what he would like for his birthday!!! That and he can’t remember his password for his email address….

Vaccum cleaner (dison ball or the one like his parents have) if you

thank you and love you all

1021-09

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I got together for lunch with two acquaintances.  One of the women brought along her 3-year old son, Randy.  It was a beautiful summer day and we chose a table outside.  Andy’s mother got a bottled root beer with a twist off metal cap like the cap on a bottle of beer.  Randy took the bottle cap from his mother’s tray, put it in his mouth and jumped down from his chair and started running around the concrete patio area.  He entertained himself by spitting out the bottle cap, shooting it as far as he could, then running to retrieve it, popping it back in his mouth, running to another spot and spitting/shooting it again.

While his mother sat there talking and eating, unconcerned about her toddler running around with a dirty, sharp bottle cap in his mouth, I watched him out of the corner of my eye, nervous about all the things that could go wrong, like him choking or falling and cutting his mouth and contemplated whether I should say something since I didn’t know this woman very well and it’s hard to know when it is okay to comment on someone else’s child or someone else’s parenting.  I decided this really was potentially dangerous and was just about to say something when a businessman walked by and interrupted my plans.

He approached a table near us and asked if the child belonged to anyone at that table.  They also expressed their concern about what the child was doing, but told him that the boy was not with them.  He approached our table and asked if the child belonged to any of us and his mother said that he was hers.  He was extremely upset and said, “Oh my god, he’s running around and he’s got something in his mouth!”

She responded, very calmly and sarcastically, like she was counteracting his concern, “Um . . . yeah . . . I know.  It’s a bottle cap.”

His concern seemed to turn to disgust as he said, “So you are aware that your child is running around with a bottle cap in his mouth.  He could choke.  Nice parenting.”

She screamed back at him, “My son has never choked on anything in his life and when I want your f-ing opinion on how I f-ing raise my f-ing son, I will let you f-ing know, you son of a . . .”  I was suddenly relieved that a stranger had interrupted my plan to speak up and had gotten the tongue-lashing that would have no doubt been mine had I said anything.

I did nothing to encourage this acquaintance to blossom into a friendship and I have since lost touch with this woman, but often wonder how Randy, who would be about 20 now, turned out. 1106-09

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I was fourteen. At the time I was involved in the Girl Scouts. The troop I was in ranged from twelve to sixteen year old girls, and we met once a week in a church we had an agreement with.

Now, we weren’t BFFs or really close or anything like that, but we did still consider each other friends. When one of us, “A”, suddenly stopped coming to meetings, we tried to find out what had happened to her, but no one would pick up the phone and apparently she moved without telling us.

Fast forward six months later. It was going to be my last Girl Scout meeting there, since I was moving to another city. We decided to have a little going-away party, nothing big, just a cookie cake and snacks and drinks.

The day of the meeting came around, and I happened to get there at the same time as the troop leader (TL) and her daughter (M). While I went to help M bring the stuff in, TL went to unlock the door, only to find it unlocked. She opened the door and it was the first time I ever heard TL swear.

A was sitting in a chair, looking utterly miserable-and VISIBLY pregnant. Which came as a shock, since she was MY AGE. Her mother (GM) had been setting up the room for a BABY SHOWER to take place DURING THE GIRL SCOUT MEETING.

None of us even KNEW A was pregnant, much less that the shower was going to happen.

While TL laid into GM for decorating the walls (which not only did TL not approve of, but it violated the terms of agreement with the church), M, I, and the rest of the girls that were coming in stood around awkwardly. None of us said anything at first, mainly listening to GM and TM. We distinctly heard GM say that she wouldn’t let TL ruin the perfect day for her “blessing in disguise”. A broke down in tears and we tried to console her.

That’s when we found out that A was pregnant because she had been RAPED.

Her mother, a bit self centered, said that A would keep the baby, since GM always wanted grandchildren. Never mind that A didn’t want the baby (understandably), GM wouldn’t let her daughter take away what GM wanted.

None of us were in a mood to celebrate after that. Remember, we were just teenagers. For some of the younger ones, that was the first time they heard the term ‘rape’. The lucky ones got their parents on cell phones to come pick them up, but many of us (me included), didn’t have a way to reach our parents. So we were stuck at a baby shower we didn’t want to be at, for a mother-to-be that didn’t want to be.

Not to mention GM commandeered all the snacks we had planned for my going-away party, and threw away the cookie cake because it said ‘Goodbye *****’ and had nothing to do with her “blessing in disguise” as she always referred to A’s child as. She even tried to take away a present someone had gotten me to give to A, and only relented because it was something she considered ‘vile’. (It was an anime videotape.)

I’m not sure what was worse, that GM threw a party to celebrate something that came about under tragic circumstances, or that, as far as I know, they never caught the rapist.

(And as an added bonus, when our parents found out, one of them slipped A information about adoption. According to M, who I saw my last day of school, GM called to yell at TL and pulled A out of Girl Scouts permamently, saying we were an ‘evil influence’.) 1103-09

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Last week I had a dinner party for about 12 people.  As people usually arrive about half an hour before dinner, I arranged a table in the living room with some dips and bread for the guests to have whilst they caught up with each other.  This table was in the middle of living room and I had no other furniture around it, so that guest were able to circulate easily.

My nephew turned up with his girlfriend (they are 22 and 19).  His girlfriend went and got a chair from the set dining table, and pulled it up to the table in the living room thereby creating a table for one in the centre of the room.  There she stayed put, pulling the dips and bread towards her, elbow on the table and leaning on her hand, shoveling the dip into her mouth.

As she had blocked access to the table to every-one else in the room, I went up and assured her that dinner wouldn’t be long.  “But I’m so hungry” she said and proceeded to keep eating.

Funnily enough, when I served dinner about 10 minutes later, she wasn’t hungry at all.    1101-09

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