Monday, September 12, 2011

Sometimes You Get What You Pay For

My husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Saturday.  Throughout the day, we spent some time reminiscing about what we were doing at that time a year ago.  "Ooh, right now I was getting my hair done" or "Right now we were running around like crazy people trying to get decorations up" or "It was ceremony time!" It was an emotional and fun look back at our special day, so I thought I'd share one of the more interesting stories almost no one knew about...

I was a VERY hands-on DIY bride (and let's face it... a total control freak), I had wanted as much as possible to be handmade. I was making most of the food, I had already hand-made every invitation and piece of wedding stationery, I was making my own flowers out of clay and I had collected every piece of glass for our centerpieces from multiple secondhand stores and rummage sales earlier that summer.  I had cut willow leaves for our "guest book" tree.  I had certain things in mind and wanted everything to come together in my "vision" from the beginning. 

Since I'm such a procrastinator, of course the few days before the wedding were filled with hectic decisions and I had to let a few things go.  We faced some major issues with my last-minute decision to hire a DJ.  We were already far over budget and neither of our families are big on dancing. To me, it was a silly way to spend money when we have things like iTunes, a laptop and a sound system.  After being continually badgered about it, I finally gave in and put an ad on craigslist to see if I got any bites. I wasn't paying much, but also was just looking for someone to basically hit the play button. Not rocket science by any means. The first reply I got was from a man who said he had professional experience but had been retired for a while now. He figured he would be able to manage hitting a couple buttons. I thought I had hit the jackpot!

He agreed to meet with me first and he picked a bar in a town just north of me. He never showed.  He called me later to say he had been waiting and I never showed.  Well, ok, so we just crossed some wires, right?  We chat some more and I ask how he is with technology and explain the laptop setup.  Seeing as he was communicating via email with me, one would assume he must know how to use a computer, right? We exchanged both emails and phone calls.  He seemed to ask the pertinent questions of me and I'm feeling good about the steal I got. When he asks whether I have a sound system or not, I say I might be able to get one but if he has one it would make things much easier since he should be familiar with his own equipment.  He says something about his equipment being in the basement, but he'd get it ready.

By this point, my time was valuable. My spare moments were spent making thousands of petals for my flowers, last minute panic at my dress being ready in time, food & favor prep and worrying about out of town guests.  I didn't have the time to be babysitting someone who should know what he was doing.  I start leaving confirmation messages about attire, start time, end time...all of the important details. I worried that I wasn't regularly hearing back from him, but again, I had more important things to worry about and in the end, if he wasn't there it wasn't going to be the end of the world to me.  I passed him off to my husband, thinking he could handle anything else that came up.

As the big day crept closer, Tom asked if I had talked to the guy about what to wear.  I told him yes, I had explained it was very formal.  After saying "Well, he's asking if he can show up in a tuxedo shirt", I said that was fine. I didn't care if he didn't wear a jacket as long as he was in a decent button shirt, so I had no issue with that. He was going to be a bit hidden in the background anyway. 
On our wedding day, my sister suddenly got a call in the afternoon saying Tom couldn't reach the DJ. What?!?!?! At this point, we had not arranged for the second set of sound equipment because Tom had already confirmed he was bringing his and that he would arrive at 4:30 for our ceremony which was supposed to start at 5:30.  It's now 3:30 and no DJ.  Now it's 4:00, 4:30, 5:00- no DJ.  I'm pretty sure the guy got a thousand phone calls before finally calling my husband back at 5:15.  Oops, he had gone fishing and had completely lost track of time and sorry, he wasn't going to make it for the ceremony.  Oh, and if we could just use our equipment it would probably be better because he has to dig for his.  What?!?!?! 

I had already had a few meltdowns earlier in the day and I wasn't going to get upset about this because we were so close to ceremony time. Big deal...we have no ceremony music. I don't love the idea, but at this point I don't exactly have a choice.  Onward.

When the DJ finally shows up, it's 7:20.  He was wearing a tuxedo shirt alright...a tuxedo T-SHIRT. A faded, 1982 black screen-printed tuxedo t-shirt.  Yeah.  And, he was drunk from his fishing adventures and could not figure out how to run the laptop.  He continued to get even more drunk during the reception, and groped my bridesmaid. Ah yes, you certainly do get what you pay for sometimes.  Lesson learned! 

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