2009 Wedding Lessons Learned: Post Wedding - Dealing with Issues

Series: 2009 Wedding Lessons Learned

Every bride assumes that her wedding will go smoothly and seamlessly. And almost all do. Some minor snafu here and there may arise, but its normally dealt with very quickly and has no lasting affect. I, myself, endured such a thing on my own wedding day when our cocktail tent which was attached to the side of the house, came crashing down 1 hour before cocktails and pulled off most of the side of the house. I was very lucky to only find out about this weeks after the wedding and even luckier that my day of coordinator dealt with it and got the issue fixed before guests arrived.

Enough about my wedding, getting back to a 2009 lesson learned - at one of our weddings this year, the bride had carefully chosen with the florist these beautiful silk lamps to complement the short centerpieces. When the room set up was complete, the room did look amazing and the lampshades were lit up with candles. Unfortunately, right before the first dance, several of these silk lampshades went up in flames. It wasn't out of control or dramatic, but it did ruin the look of the table since we had to pull the burnt ones off the table and extinguish the candles in the ones that hadn't burned yet. The bride was not fussed and glad that we were able to remedy the situation quickly. The issue only really got out of hand when the florist arrived at evenings end and claimed that we were lying. It was evident that the shades had burned, but she still refused to believe us. In fact, she charged the bride to replace them. It became a match of she said / she said and it left a sour taste in both my mouth and the brides mouth.

The bride and I were left with repeatedly calling and explaining what had happened. We checked with the videographer in the hopes that they had caught it on film {sadly, not}. It took lots and lots of persistence to finally get the florist to see that it was simply just an accident. My bride was left with a poor impression of the florist because of the way she had handled the situation. Not exactly how she wanted to end things.

The lesson learned here is that things will happen on your wedding day that are out of your control, but that dealing with them quickly post wedding will give you a better lasting impression of that vendor ~ positive referrals speak volumes versus ending the relationship with a spat.