I worked with a truly lovely couple this weekend on their wedding. It was at the magnificent South Shore Cultural Center. I have been to many events there and I was delighted finally to be able to work on a wedding there. It is one of the nicest sites for a wedding in the Chicago area, if you want my opinion.
My amateur photo of the wedding program. Better pictures to come soon.
It was one of those days when everything goes perfectly. That was partly due to the rigorous planning the bride and groom insisted on. (You should have seen their spreadsheet with everyone’s schedule on it. I was most impressed!) And it was partly just good luck. Well, the linens were an hour late being delivered (and you can’t start to put things on tables until the linens arrive), but the caterer, Wolfgang Puck, had twenty servers, so there were plenty of pairs of hands to get everything done in time.
And then everything ran like clockwork: Ceremony, photographs, cocktail hour, toasts, cake cutting, dinner, dancing, bouquet toss…. The highlight of the reception, as far as I was concerned, was the bride’s father’s toast. He had written and performed a song for his daughter and son-in-law about how they met. It was humorous and very well done. He’s clearly no amateur at these things. It was a surprise for the bride and groom, and I was standing where I could see their faces. They were clearly enjoying it. The groom had expected his father-in-law to do something unusual, but I think even he was pleasantly surprised by the form it took.
The other thing that was unusual about this wedding was the bride’s attitude. Even though she had planned everything down to the last detail, at the rehearsal the day before when she handed me the last of the paperwork, she said, “I don’t care if you do everything exactly the way I drew it. Just make it pretty.” She knew what she wanted, but she also trusted me enough to let me make the last-minute decisions. That was a real blessing when we were setting up. Sometimes a bride’s vision doesn’t quite fit with the reality of, say, the amount of space on a table, or the size of the floral centerpieces. But, since I could use my best judgment, everything was pretty, very pretty.
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