So there are a few bullet points you need to understand before we get too knee deep into all of this. Some of these are just context for the amount of crazy that went into yesterday.
-The videographer that was on the vendor team is the same videographer that shot Zilch and I's wedding. She is out of Austin, TX.
-This is only the first of many things this bride stole from my wedding. (I have known her since high school, she was in attendance at our wedding.)
-The videographer also happens to be the ex-fiance of our very own StripeThree. I've been given permission to say whatever I want.
-This bride is not a virgin. Neither is the groom. The bride has lived with males in the past. In fact, her and the groom were living together before the wedding. She claims they had not had sex yet. They were together for three years and she had been pushing for a ring since month three. They were engaged in November of last year and got married yesterday. If you ask Zilch, who has met her, he says she's fake and full of shit. Which I can't argue. I think if I had asked the groom yesterday if he had had sex his answer would have been "..yes." If they, in fact, haven't, I think they've done everything but. Emphasis on the butt.
-The Bride’s name was Ashley. The Groom’s name was Geoff.
And here we go.
Things started months ago with this bitch. I quickly realized I was being single white femaled by her. She strategically copied very personal details of the 1+1 wedding. Example one:
This is ⅕ cocktail napkins she had printed. Read it carefully.
This is one of the cocktail napkins that was at Zilch and I’s wedding last June.
Now, I am not the first person ever to put fun facts on cocktail napkins. You can log onto any wedding printing site and find them. But the fact that she chose the same fact seemed odd…
Again, this had started with her hiring our videographer. Who had to be brought in from Austin, TX. It quickly snowballed into her requesting our signature cocktail (a gin in tonic but it had lemon, basil and blueberries) recipe from our wedding. A ballpark nacho late night snack. A Ritter’s Frozen Custard (local joint) cart. The same caterer we used. Several of the same songs we used and a relation to a very personal touch of the word “favorite” throughout the day. About three weeks ago while browsing Instagram, I realized this bitch has started following some of my close friends on socials. Friends from elementary school that I haven’t seen in 25+ years. Zilch’s cousin’s wife? Weird shit.
So fast forward to the rehearsal dinner.
It’s common to have an open mic at the rehearsal for a more casual opportunity for speeches. I was not at rehearsal but I heard the story from several people and the videographer caught it on film. A family friend of the Groom, also named Ashley, smashed out of her mind, grabbed the mic and started her speech with “Well, I was the first Ashley in Geoff’s life.”
This speech proceeded with her going into how her and Geoff had made pacts to get married to each other. And at 22, they decided to wait it out until 25. And then at 25 they decided to wait again. And so on. And that the only reason this wasn’t their wedding rehearsal was because Geoff met the other Ashley.
You can imagine how this went down. The Maid of Honor ended up bitching the girl out and asked her to leave. In a strange turn of events, Ashley-not-marrying-Geoff still showed her face at the wedding. As a second note, ANMG is also already married herself. Husband was in attendance to witness the whole shit show.
Moving on to the wedding day…
I check in with Bride at the hotel, she’s still in tears over the speech the night before. I had to make things worse by telling her we had to implement her rain plan.
The idea was an outdoor ceremony with an indoor reception after. The weather was looking sketchy as fuck. On Sunday night, I had to make a rain call for the venue at 9:00 pm so they could staff properly. I went with outside. We talked about it together and decided we’d take a second look at it the next morning at 9:00 am because staff would start set up at that time and we could wait until that last minute for that. So at 9:00 am yesterday morning, after the weather report took a turn for the worse, I changed my mind and had it moved inside. We proceeded with this plan.
So bride is heart broken. Sobbing. We’re off to a stellar start.
Enter Stage right Stripethree’s ex.
We’ll call her A. So A is very good at what she does, I hired her for my own wedding, after all. But she is the world’s most unorganized person. She’s not new to the wedding industry but she is new to owning her own business and she is hand’s down the neediest vendor I have ever met. This girl asked me for a glass of ice water not once, but twice, in the middle of the ceremony. She also gave zero fucks in regards to the master timeline which has never happened to me. But she is the type of person that wants to take 20 minutes to wire a lapel mic under your shirt and tape it to your chest instead of just clipping one to your lapel. I understand the dedication to quality but when the wedding day is already running 1.5 hours behind because of this same shit all day, I’m going to end you.
The photographer called me at one point in tears because she had never been so behind on a wedding and to tell me that she was so sorry but they were going to be late, have to skip downtown photos and head straight for the ceremony because A had sucked up so much of the day.
So back to the rain plan. It’s now 4:20 pm. Ceremony is at 5:30 (ended up starting at 5:52 due to videographer) and with any wedding, guests show up 30 minutes early (so 5:00 pm) and things need set and final. I’m still looking at a fully set ceremony inside. There is fabric hung from the ceiling. 118 chairs. A settee sofa placed for a foot washing ceremony. It’s also blue skies and gorgeous outside…
I pull the trigger, grab my staff and tell them we’re moving the entire thing outside. In 40 minutes. Including hanging 15 yards of draping fabric from a tree on a 16’ ladder. I couldn’t ,in good conscious, force this girl to get married inside with gorgeous weather outside (In my defense, it had stormed all morning and opened up again at about 9:00 pm last night) after what she had endured the night before with the speech and as a decent planner. We managed to get the bride on site without knowing we had moved it back outside. I met her at the party bus when it arrived, walked her out to the ceremony site and she lost her shit. The photographer got photos of it that I can’t wait to see. Under promise, over deliver.
Which brings me to the caterer. I’ve worked him more than any other caterer in the local industry and things have progressively gotten worse over the past year or so. He constantly over promises and under delivers. He cuts so many corners he basically works in a circle.. He likes to say he “says yes.” Want to serve your grandmother’s lime jello salad at the reception? He’ll make it for you and have it. But this frequently leads to saying yes to brides on decisions that are going to make the quality of the food or service suffer.
Ashley doesn’t eat gluten and the guest list was full of dietary restricted guests, vegetarians, pescetarians, celiac, vegans, you name it. We had them. When we first started planning, she stated how much she always hated feeling like an inconvenience at weddings because of her diet, or worse, doesn’t eat. So she wanted to take that into account with the menu.
She hires the caterer and they decide on a menu that includes beef short ribs, a seafood paella and several vegetable sides. The seafood paella was supposed to serve as a second entree/protein option in a family style service. (Family style service at weddings means platters of food are brought out and you pass it amongst your table, allowing each guest to take their own.) But here’s the thing, we’re in southern Indiana. No one but the restricted diets are going to have any interest in the seafood paella. They’re all going for the short rib.
I notice issues when I walk into the kitchen to get a status update on vendor meals (dinner for the team working the wedding, us, photographers, etc.) He tells me they’re coming but they won’t have any beef.
I’m sorry, what? You ran out of beef?
I give a bit of side eye but chose to not make a big deal out of it and had already given in to the fact that I was going to have to order pizza for our team. My 22 year old interns are never going to eat seafood paella. They’re grown up in Indiana, they’ve never even seen an oyster.
On my walk back to where our team was staged, i have THREE guests, including the bride’s sister, stop me to tell me their table did not receive beef.
Excusemewhat?
I walked into the kitchen and lit the fire of a thousand suns with the caterer. You ran out of food?! At a fucking wedding!? He quickly tries to make excuses, telling me they portioned it correctly and that it’s not his fault that the bride chose the seafood paella as the second protein and that people just didn’t want it. No, it’s your job and responsibility to explain to her moooooonths before the wedding as to why this might not work or we maybe need to not serve it family style where guests are allowed to chose their own portion size. I quickly followed it up with the reasoning that there is no way in hell he portioned it correctly because there wasn’t beef for the vendors and those meals were accounted for and paid for by the bride just like guest meals.
The conversation ended with me telling him in front of his entire staff and his father, who tags along to weddings frequently, that he would never be on another one of my weddings again. (this is not the first time he has fucked up royally. We had issues with a plated taco service at the beginning of May that he had to fully refund the bride on.)
We ended this evening with him asking if he could break down the beverage station early and go home (a frequent request of his). I told him no, that the bride paid for the beverage station and I would be saving the one corner I had control of that night.
All in all, crazy ass bride was thrilled with the day. She had heard about the catering issues by the time we left from rumblings from her family but I told her we would discuss compensation after she returns from the honeymoon. I’m fucking exhausted and don’t want to move. And glad it’s over.
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shit because that’s all I had. I ended up with enough concentrate to make about 1.25 liters of cold brew once diluted, but decided against diluting it ahead of time because I knew that A. made her own as well and assumed she would prefer to dilute to her own tastes.
) that once held the glorious single origin concentrate. A. had made her Keto coffee milkshake thing with the entire batch of concentrate.
either wash them a throw them in the dishwasher.
but you coming home and bitching is all 
