On April 18th I was asked to help out at Jeff and Jessica’s wedding at Royalty Pecan Farms by Rebekah, the manager that I had previously worked with. More than anything, I was so excited and honored that their staff enjoyed having me for their Easter Egg Scramble so much that I was invited back!

Upon arriving to the farm in the morning I mainly helped with setup of the bar, cleaning the windows and sweeping the porches, and then a few factors came our way. We had a bit of a bride-zilla on our hands that did not understand her chance to order a tent to cover the porch in case of weather had passed. There was about a 50% chance of rain at the time of the ceremony that we were keeping an eye on, but it was very hard to communicate to the bride that a tent was no longer an option and if rain came we’d move the ceremony inside the gift shop. The gift shop was adequate for her size wedding, but ideally she did not want that to happen. Luckily, this conflict was resolved because the rain held off until after the ceremony and it was only the reception that was cut short and moved inside. The other factor, which occurred before the party’s arrival, was the dance floor. Party-Time had delivered and installed the dance floor on the back patio late the night before and due to the darkness the floor ended up far from centered. Our first attempt to fix called for all hands on deck to try and slide the floor over. Once we realized this was too heavy of an option, we called Party-Time and fortunately they had a few minutes to run out here and fix it before the bride and her mom went ballistic.

The event ended up swell and all things after ran smoothly. One big thing I would have done different is have the dance floor installed during the daytime and had a staff supervising so that a final say could be made before they contractors left. When it comes to managing weather, that’s almost impossible, but I do think having a tent as back-up would have been smart on the bride’s part. The only disadvantage to this is the cost, which is understandable. But the manager of the event at Royalty did not do a very assertive job at informing the bride of her options, and she actually let the bride think that a tent could be an option long after it actually was.

This was my first wedding to work, though, and I can say that it was much different because new factors of stress and precision and emotion come into play that are not normally as present at any other event I’ve previously worked.