I have officially been a married woman for a week and a day. WOW!
Looking back, there was just one thing, one little thing that I wish I had done better at. Being prepared to pay bills on the spot.
I had read through all of those blogs from former brides that said to prep your money envelopes with tips for all of your vendors before the wedding day. Well, we had squared away who we owed what, how much to tip and everything for all of our vendors with the exception of our hair/make-up artist. I had overpaid on my trial fee and lost track of what I deposited to know exactly what I still owed. I figured I could figure it out the day of the wedding. Bad choice!
We were running ahead of schedule on the day of the wedding by like a full hour and a half with hair & make-up, pretty crazy! It was about 10am and I kept calling next door to my parents room to try and hurry my mom up to come over so we could get her started-up. My brother kept telling me that she was coming over, just hold on. About 30 minutes later my mom came over and sat me down and told me she had been on the phone with my uncle who was on his way to the hospital, my grandmother had passed out. My mom had been on the phone with my grandmother who had been planning to get a ride down to the wedding, my mom wanted to make sure my grandmother still felt OK and was all set to come. While they were on the phone my grandmother kept saying, “i’m hot, I feel really hot” and then she passed out while on the phone. She is OK. The ambulance came and my grandmother’s neighbors were able to come and find her. After a lot of tests she is fine and is back home. But the whole commotion of the day threw me off a bit. Fortunately we were able to get our tears out and keep moving on with the day. I hope no bride and her mother has to go through that the day of the wedding! I was really blessed to have everyone there with me, it helped me to clear my head, I knew she was OK.
We kept on a good schedule from there on out however somehow right towards the end we slowed down. Michelle, our photographer, was supposed wrap-up with us girls and go over to Benmarl with the guys but we were running behind and then all the sudden we were trying to get done, trying to clean-up with the hair/make-up and then I realized we still needed to pay off the balance of the hair/make-up. I cleared-up the final payment amount, or so I thought, and then tried to do the quick math of what I owed, what I put down as a deposit less the over payment from the trial fee and add in the tip. My brain was going a thousand miles a minute and I was getting anxious about the day. I ended-up OVER PAYING the bill and realized I never got airbrushed make-up like we had agreed to in our contract.
I knew that something felt wrong when we were heading down to the hotel lobby to go over to Benmarl but I didn’t let it phase me and made a mental note to resolve this later.
Two days later while we were on our mini-honeymoon at Buttermilk Inn & Spa I decided to try and figure this out, but how? I re-did the math and I did overpay by about $150, a decent chunk of change. From my work experience I know it is always good to have everything in writing so I put together an e-mail to her. I knew that it sometimes took up to a week to hear back from her and not knowing what kind of potential issues we could run into I put through a stop payment on our check I wrote. I received a response later that day from the hair & make-up artist who was very upset but after a phone call we were able to resolve it.
Lessons learned:
1. ALWAYS know what you owe before the day of your wedding. No matter how good you are and how good your notes are, your brain will NOT be functioning 100% the day of your wedding, trust me!
2. I owe this one to Bonny Moua, she sat me down and as a just-married woman she advised me to: always have all important e-mail correspondences and contracts printed with you the day of the wedding, again, your brain will not always remember those little details
3. If you have any issues, resolve them right away. When it comes to agreements and payments these are all business matters, nothing personal. If you have a dispute like I did, acknowledge it, discuss it, resolve it and move on so you can enjoy your married life!
