Matrimony Monday: Coordinator Query

Recently, one of my best friends got engaged and asked me to be a bridesmaid.

I am so thrilled for her and SO honored to be included, but most of all I'm excited to support her adventures in wedding planning. 

Since she's very kindly letting me chill as *just* a bridesmaid (rather than a professional one, but let's be honest...will I still have a clipboard in my tote bag? Maybe.) I'm going to get to enjoy her wedding week a little bit more than I might otherwise.

But the other night she posed a very good question about wedding management:

"The ceremony location has a venue coordinator and the reception venue has an AMAZINGLY detail oriented coordinator. Do I still need a Day-Of Wedding Coordinator?"

I get this ALL the time and it's a completely legitimate question. 

Weddings are expensive, so why spend more money on YET ANOTHER vendor who seems to be redundant? 

Here's why: you need someone to be your brain on your wedding day so that you can experience it with your heart. 

A wedding manager is your wedding day advocate and proxy. 

("Wedding manager" is so much more accurate than "wedding coordinator", which we still often use so that people might know what we're talking about.)

She/he will make sure that everything you've worked on for months or years is executed as perfectly as possible, so that you can focus on marrying the love of your life rather than on worrying about flower deliveries or making sure that table numbers are on the correct tables. 

Venue coordinators work for the venue. 

Of course they want to keep you happy, but ultimately their top priority is advocating for the interests of their employer: the venue. 

Trust me, my mom has two wedding venues. Working a wedding FOR her is very different than working a wedding with her. 

So yes, Virginia, you do need a wedding manager who will advocate for you and for your vision on the day of your wedding. That way you can relax and actually ENJOY one of the most important days of your life, just as you should. 

Matrimony Monday: Deciding to Get Married

First of all, let me be clear that I am decidedly not a marriage expert.
I'm not a sociologist, a counselor, a psychologist, a self help book author, or anything else.
I'm just a twentysomething who's been married, divorced, and is now engaged again- who spends a LOT of time immersed in the wedding industry and thinking about the nature of marriage. All of this is based on my own experiences and obsessive Hermione Granger style research.

When I was 22, I thought that I had found someone who would make a good teammate for life. 

Six years later, I can safely say that I still don't think I was wrong- I think he would have, if he'd wanted to be my (or anyone's) life teammate. 

But he didn't. 

More devastatingly, he didn't realize that (or tell me) until after we'd been married for a year. 

And so, we got divorced. 

I didn't want to get divorced- I wanted to stay married... but I eventually figured out that you can't force someone to be on your team. 

I know that seems pretty obvious, but everyone makes mistakes at 24. I'm just lucky that my mistake was something dumb but principled. I made the best decision I could with the information I had available to me at the time. As Maya Angelou said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
There are far worse mistakes I could have made.

Contrary to what our rom-com worshiping society tells us, marriage isn't for everyone. 
It's not that there isn't a lid for every pot, because it's not that hard to find a lid that will fit.
The trick is finding a lid that won't explode off of your pot when the water starts boiling.
I firmly believe that some pots are genuinely better off without lids.
Not every person is better off married or partnered.

For some people, life is better off if they're married as long as it's to the right person.
(This seems to be the overarching idea about marriage today.)
For other people, life is complete only when they're married, period.
(Look at most of the first half of the 20th Century in Western Culture for this concept.
Romantic marriage was necessary and for everyone!
This is still the pervasive idea in a lot of cultures and communities.)

For me personally, the point of dating has always been about finding someone who would be on my team permanently.
I've never been one for "casual" dating or hookup culture.
For me, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing seriously.



I relate to this scene a little too intensely.


Of course, when I actually WAS looking to date casually (I seriously just wanted to try new restaurants and talk to interesting people, which I did.) I found myself another husband.
Oops.

So how did we decide to get married?
It just rapidly became stunningly obvious that we needed to.

We're both pro-marriage people who want to build a family in the same ways.
We share the same values, principles, and almost all of the same priorities.
(He's more into spending money on cars than I am. *eyeroll* Can't win 'em all.)
He gets all of my references: Monty Python, most musical theatre jokes, weird stuff in Latin...

Most of all, I finally understood that line from Wuthering Heights-
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."




It wasn't so much a decision to get married as it was an obvious necessity given who we are as people.
Honestly it felt like a "well, DUH" moment when I realized that this weird-like-me Philly guy was the one I didn't know I'd been waiting for.
(Ugh, I know, gross again, sorry.)
Unlike many other choices in my life, I didn't draw up a list of pros and cons, I didn't give a weighted point value to practical items that weigh in favor of my long term goals, and I didn't even consider how things would look in pictures first.
(Ok, well, I might have for a second, but you would too if you had the potential for cop/flight attendant engagement photos.)

So here's my point: if you have to weigh the pros and cons about marrying someone, you need to be honest with yourself about why you want to get married.

Is it simply because it's the next "logical" step?
Is it because they check boxes on a list?
Is it because you want the fun and spectacle of a wedding?
Is it because you're at a point in your life where you feel like you "should" be hitting certain goals and you haven't yet?
Is it in spite of fundamental differences that make your life consistently challenging that you're trying to ignore?

If you thought about any of these and then added the phrase "yeah, but..." then I think the situation bears discussion with someone who knows you really well and/or is a professional at helping people work through hard life things. 
If you're a traveler with a weird schedule like me, allow me to recommend BetterHelp or TalkSpace.


There's definitely no "right" timeline for deciding to marry someone.
Some people know after two weeks.
Some people know they're ready after two years of (metaphorically) kicking the tires and working through stuff.
Some people know they DON'T EVER want to get married, and that's ok too!
(As long as they're honest with their potential partners about it.)

That's pretty much what I've got so far.
Check back with me in another few years to see if anything has changed...because goodness knows my thoughts on this topic were VERY different when I was in my early twenties vs. now in my well seasoned late twenties when I am finally so wise.

Matrimony Monday: Wait, I'm Engaged?

The last nine months have been quite the whirlwind. 

At the end of October/ beginning of November, the long term relationship I'd been in ended suddenly and not through my choice- I was blindsided and thoroughly devastated. 

Thanks to some amazingly kind friends in New Jersey and supportive friends and family across the country, I got through the worst of it. I didn't make any big Facebook announcements or put out a press release, because I figured the people who needed to know, knew.

Spoiler alert: Martin and I are now friends. We hang out (sometimes with my fiancé), and share snaps and videos of the dogs, depending on which one of us they're with. He sends me local sour beer tip offs when he's at a brewery and I let him know when I feel like throwing axes at a wall, since that's his side gig.
I get that it seems weird to a lot of people, but a friend summed it up nicely this way: "You're an awesome person and Martin's an awesome person. It makes sense."

But anyway... in the last five years I've gotten pretty good at reassembling my life after it implodes, and by the middle of December I felt ready to gingerly dip my toes back in the dating pool as the last phase of moving on.

After a few dates/interactions (some incredibly boring, some surprisingly interesting, none life changing or truly awful) one morning I swiped right on a cop with an Ivy League degree in Linguistics, whose political leanings lined up with mine, and who advertised himself as having "one dog and two cats, one of whom has zero respect for personal space".

By that evening, we were spending three hours in a car together to get pizza, by the end of that week it was clear this was the start of something big, and by the end of the 2017 my life had done a complete 180. Again. 

Look, within an hour of matching he was sharing interesting facts about the history of the Marsh Arabs with me and we were discussing Calvinism twenty minutes into our first date- how could I do anything but fall in love with him? 

"Well sure, Caroline," I can hear you thinking, "It's fine to fall head over heels, but why on EARTH did you have to agree to MARRY a guy you barely know?"

As frustrating and obnoxious as this answer is, when you know, you just know. 

To be blunt, I've been divorced once. I know what that special type of hell is like, and I'm not excited about the idea of repeating it, but I am SO sure about this man that I'm willing to be open to that possibility.
Yeah, it's scary.

When it became clear that this was going to be a SERIOUS thing so quickly, I turned to my friend Shannon over at Generation grannY  for advice because I knew she'd been through this whirlwind thing with her own husband. Pageant friends are the BEST, you guys, especially when they're brilliant. She's so great. Read her blog.

I could sit here and list a hundred reasons Joel is a phenomenal human being (AND the person I'm excited to be stuck with) but that still wouldn't explain all the ways in which this is sickeningly perfect.
The twinkley schmoop is strong over here, I tell ya.
It's gross.

A few anecdotes:

When he comes home from work he brings me flowers and the groceries he noticed we were almost out of.
This morning he started singing "Give My Regards To Broadway" as he headed out the door to work. (Oh, did I mention he can sing, play a couple of instruments passably, AND JUGGLE?)
No one can leave our house without being given something. Wine, a stack of paper plates, some cheese from Vermont- going to Joel's house is like going to the doctor's office as a kid: you know you're leaving with a prize.

Those are just a few tiny examples, but anyone who's been married knows that the little things truly are the big things. 

(And we're on the same page about the big things too, so that's good.)

So now we're planning a wedding and a couple of wedding celebrations, I have a shiny pink ring, and we're working together to map out our shared future.
For me, part of getting engaged was about being honest with the people in our lives about what we were planning. Sure, we could have waited longer for other people to get used to the idea that we were dating before announcing wedding plans, but that would have been lying by omission.


So that's the deal.
Now I have a new fun fact for every ice breaker game.
"I got engaged to a guy I met on the internet after knowing him for four months."
We have a pretty hilarious website.
We now have a house full of three dogs and two cats.
(We're like the animal Brady Bunch over here.)
We're tying the knot on June 1, 2019 and celebrating in Philly before we head up to Vermont for another party June 22. Invitees get to choose whichever event works best for their schedules - more on THAT decision making process later.
He's a gem.

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” 📷: @jenrice261 😍😆: @ricej259

A post shared by Caroline Bright (@carolinebright) on Jul 17, 2018 at 6:32am PDT

But You're Supposed To...

When it comes to wedding planning, one of the things that I am most frustrated by is that so many people have opinions about what you're "supposed" to do. 

You're supposed to wear a white dress, it's traditional.

You're supposed to serve alcohol, otherwise no one will have fun.

You're supposed to invite your parent's neighbor's niece, because she invited your parents to HER wedding. 

You're supposed to have dancing. 

You're supposed to have a cake.

You're supposed to have the kind of ceremony that everyone expects you to.

And on and on and on. 

If you've ever planned a wedding, you know how easy it can be to become overwhelmed by the expectations that other people have for your wedding. 

Too often it seems like weddings become about everyone EXCEPT the bride and groom. 

It becomes more about the party right now and less about the joining of two lives for always. 

Today I want to let you know that it's ok to make your wedding as weird, as wacky, or as basic as you want to. 

If there's something you hate, don't do it. 

If there's a "tradition" that doesn't feel right, tweak it or get rid of it. 

If you want to break every rule in the book, go for it. 

This is YOUR wedding.

No matter WHAT choices you make in life, you're always going to have people who are going to be critical of them.
You can't please everyone, and some people are just impossible to please, so go ahead and stick to your guns!

That said, you need to be aware that your choices have consequences. 

When you're making your unusual choices, keep in mind the manifesto of the Awesome Etiquette podcast from The Emily Post Institute: focus on the principles of consideration, respect, and honesty.

Great-Aunt Mildred might be hurt if you abruptly refuse to wear the family wedding veil, so break it to her kindly and explain your choice to her respectfully.
Your dad will probably be disappointed if you tell him you'd rather walk down the aisle alone, so be honest with him and considerate when you talk to him about it.
You're going to have to be ok with hurting a few feelings, but make sure you're polite about it.


If you need validation or a professional opinion, you can hit me up via A Professional Bridesmaid.

How to Give the Best Wedding Speech

All wedding speeches/toasts fall into one of these categories:

1. Hot mess.

The speech giver decided to wing it, downed a few shots, and/or it's unbearably raunchy.

Please let this end.

2. Boring.

Cliche. Blah. Cringe. Is he still talking?

3. Thank goodness that's over.

"Well, at least she tried."

4. Delightful.

Short, sweet, heartfelt, effective.

5. Brilliant.

"VIRAL YOUTUBE STATUS ALERT"

Public speaking freaks people out, so it's understandable that sometimes people fall into one (or more) of the first three categories. 

You want your toast to be a four or a five, so let's make it happen.

Look, the reality is that not all of us can or should deliver a speech in the form of a rap, or a Disney song medley, so here's a basic formula for a speech that will take you from a 1 to at least a 4. 

(For the purposes of this example, let's assume you're making a speech on behalf of a bride.)

A Formula for a Solid Wedding Speech:

Introduce yourself and your role at the wedding.

+

Explain how you met the bride as briefly as possible.

+

Share a quick anecdote that showcases an excellent part of the bride's personality.

+

Share how the bride's new spouse brings that excellent thing out in her.

+ 

Share a story of the two of them together that exemplifies why they're a great fit as a couple.

+ 

If appropriate, add a quote or traditional proverb.

+

Finish strong with something simple like "To the happy couple!" 

Obviously if you're an experienced pro, add in some jokes (as long as they're rated G) and references to things the couple loves. Personalize it. 

Most importantly: write a speech that is focused on the couple you're celebrating. 

This is their day to shine together.

Have questions? Feel like you need some coaching on speech content or delivery? 

Hit me up, y'all. 

I'm a Professional Bridesmaid. 

caroline@aprofessionalbridesmaid.com

A Professional Bridesmaid

For the past decade or so, I've worked events. 

My mom has two inns/event venues in Northern Vermont, in college I worked as an event coordinator for a local gallery, and then there's the constant political/non-profit work... plus, all my friends keep getting married. 

I've been a bridesmaid in a Gatsby Theme wedding in Scotland. 

I've been a bridesmaid in my ex-husband's ex-girlfriend's wedding in Arkansas. 

(Yes, that story is as good as you think it is. The short version is that females are strong as hell.)

I've been a pre-ceremony announcer, an impromptu DJ, a flower girl wrangler, a day-of coordinator, a Bride's Enforcer, and I recently booked my first gig as a wedding officiant. 

Oh, and I even got married that one time too. 

Our dear friends Mark and Marleigh got married last week, and it seemed like a good time to slap a label on what I've been doing casually for a long time: being A Professional Bridesmaid. 

Essentially, I want to offer more broadly what I've been doing for my friends for years- help with wedding planning, resources, and coordination. 

I just think it's the weirdest thing that our wedding culture tells us that when a ring is put on your finger, it instantly imparts all the knowledge necessary to execute a "perfect" wedding day. 

Oh, and that perfect wedding day had better involve a trendy-but-also-timeless wedding color scheme, an open bar, and six creative uses of burlap. 

Photo Credit: Lauren Brimhall Photography

You know what makes a wedding perfect? 

Two people in love get married. 

But it's never that simple, is it? 

Society and family put so much pressure on what you "should" do, on what you're "supposed" to do, that it can often take the joy right out of marrying your person. 

Having help from someone with experience, knowledge, and a practical perspective will save you so much time, stress, and money. 

Photo Credit: Lauren Brimhall Photography

I am not a wedding planner. 

I don't want to design your event for you. I don't want to craft your center pieces. 

I want to empower you to make the best choices for your wedding, to the best choices for your role in someone else's wedding. 

Then on the day of your wedding, I want you to have all the tools to have a joy-filled and minimally stressful experience. 

Whether that means I'm there in person to answer last minute questions from your vendors and your great Aunt Susan, or that means I've made you a phenomenally detailed wedding day timeline, you deserve to be relaxed on the day you commit your life to another human being. 

The packages I've put together start at $15 for some quick answers, and they go all the way up to me putting on a chiffon dress and being in your wedding photos. Whatever you need, friend. 

If you're planning a wedding, if you're about to be a bridesmaid, or if you've got wedding questions, hit me up: caroline@aprofessionalbridesmaid.com 

Tell your friends. 

This is going to be a good time.