This is the first day of the last multi-day wedding of my 2019 side-hustle-season.
I still have three more single-day weddings after this one, but who’s counting?
(Um… I am?!)
But I think most people who work in the wedding industry feel like I do right now once the fall rolls around. And while I realize I don’t carry the weight on my shoulders that an actual wedding planner feels when pulling off a full-blown wedding, I’ve worked 28 weddings so far this year, and then when you add the one I start today, and then add the three more still on my calendar, I think it’s only fair for me to feel the burn a real planner feels right now.
And I can tell ya…
That burn is deep.
Even though I’m kind of mentally tired heading into this wedding, I’m so thankful for this very weird job I’ve stumbled into. And, I’m also so thankful for all of the various planners who hire me to assist them each season. I’ve gotten pretty good at picking up the short-hand lingo involved when executing a wedding, and sometimes, I can even read the minds of the planners I work for and do things before they even ask. (I love it when I can pull that kind of thing off!!)
I’ve been doing this side gig for four full seasons now, and at the end of each year so far, I always look back and try to sum up the experience in my journal by finding a thru-line or common thread to tie up the year for myself. This season had some memorably tricky grooms… Maybe I’ve just grown to expect complicated brides, but a complicated groom is so much worse in my opinion. But that’s all fodder for some future thoughts, I suppose.
And this season has had some common themes I suspect I can blame on Pinterest. They must have been featuring cigar bars with tiny matchstick boxes with cute sayings like, “The Perfect Match: Katie & Will 2019” as one of their most “inspired” wedding trends this season. Just so you know, I have an entire stack of matchstick boxes in a basket near my fireplace with the names of eight different couples who were all the perfect match this year! And dessert bars instead of traditional cakes were also kind of hot this year. (Three years ago, it seemed like pies were the trend, and last season, there were A LOT of hot fresh donut stations at the weddings I worked.) So I gotta wonder:
What will Pinterest come up with for 2020?
I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough…
But beyond the repeat trends, each season has distinct memories in my mind and an archive of these intense moments where truly stressful and sometimes ridiculous things transpire — and it’s that collection of thoughts that make this job entertaining and engaging for me as a storyteller for sure!
Anyway.
I won’t have any time to post new content on my blog until next week, but I can absolutely promise you this: While I’m working my ass off carrying lounge seating from one location to another…and while I’m dealing with all of the high-maintenance female guests who will no doubt wear spiked heels to this wedding with gravel walkways and a five-minute, down-hill trek to the ceremony site, followed by an eight-minute uphill trek to cocktail hour, followed by a four-minute stumble over to the reception — despite every effort to caution them not to wear high-heels at this venue — I will be collecting new stories and weird observations to add to the mix of things as the 2019 Wine Country Wedding Season finally comes to a close.
