So here’s is a cautionary tale of how you should always make sure you have everything you need the night before your wedding, lay everything out and check it’s all there as it should be, especially if you’re staying away the night before. And how having a wedding planner there, really can save the day!
It was September 2019 and we were at a venue where the bridal party had stayed over the night before but all the set up was to be done the day of. I’d started early in the morning and we’d got everything set up for the ceremony, the bridal party were all in great spirits and busy getting ready! Now this was a large wedding party which involved 5 bridesmaids, several flower girls and page boys.
I was down stairs getting the last bits laid out when I got a panicked call from the wedding party asking me to come upstairs. They’d realised that they had left one of the bridesmaid’s dresses at home and not being local, no one could nip back for it!! This was three hours before the ceremony was due to start!
First attempt to resolve it involved ringing wedding guests to see if anyone could pick it up en-route. Unfortunately, everyone had already set off so there was no way of retrieving the missing dress!
They had been bought from a high street shop and so I started ringing around to see if we could locate another one (though the Lake District is a little limited in your high street shops!). Still no luck!
I then started ringing local wedding dress shops in off chance they might have something similar. I found a shop in Kendal that had a very near identical dress, in the right colour and amazingly right size!!!! So off I sped to Kendal, where the ladies at A Family Affair had packaged up the dress ready for me to collect. A quick dash back and we had a complete set of fully dressed bridesmaids with time to spare!
I was able to take the problem away from the Bride and respond in a calm way, stopping the wedding party from panicking and allowing them to still all enjoy the morning together! You would never have known anything had happened as they all walked down the aisle looking amazing!
Bride Tribe Disaster adverted! A great example of how it pays to be organised and how having a wedding planner there on the day can really help when any crisis arises, in a calm, efficient manner!
HS