While most wedding planning experiences don't go as horribly as movies sometimes portray (think Bridesmaids), no one is immune to unforeseeable complications.
Last week was one of the most stressful in my life.
In one sentence: the church where we're getting married cancelled our wedding. Yes, they CANCELLED it. What do I mean? I mean that my mother reserved the church more than a year ago, right after we got engaged, and somehow they lost our reservation in their books. I am guessing they forgot to pencil us in to the new 2012 calendar. That's what we get for booking early!
The only reason why I found this out was because I emailed the priest to double check about the ceremony time. We were thinking 2:00 or 2:30 would work since there is a 4:00PM mass on Saturdays. The priest responded quickly and told us that a new rule had been put in place that weddings could start no later than 1PM on Saturdays due to confessions etc. While surprised, we weren't too concerned. We could make 1PM work.
Then, about an hour later, we get another email. "Sorry, but someone is already booked for 1PM on August 18th, 2012. The only available slot is 11:00AM."
WHAT?!?!?!
Mind you, this email came to us at about 1:30 in the morning, just as I was drifting off to sleep. We checked emails one last time, and there it was. To get an email like this is devastating. 11:00AM? There is NO way we could make that work with a late afternoon BBQ reception. Another booking? How in the world could somebody reserve the 1PM slot when we booked the church more than 17 months before the wedding?
What was truly aggravating was that my mother, who has been the liason between the church and us, was NEVER informed about different time slots. She has been attending mass almost every Sunday. She knows the women who work in the rectory, she has known them for years. She has had plenty of conversations with the deacon, and no one ever mentioned that there were two time slots.
To say that we were pissed, upset, devastated, was an understatement. I don't think Matt has ever seen me cry that hard. Looking back on this situation it seems foolish of me to react that way, but I just couldn't believe it. I was sobbing, Matt was growling with anger, and we got just a few measly hours of sleep that night.
After my mom met with the deacon and the other residing priest, they agreed that it was their fault entirely and decided to ask the other couple if they could move their wedding, since we reserved first. While we weren't too optimistic, it was all they could offer. If the other couple wasn't willing, we would have to settle for the 11AM slot and re-structure our entire reception.
48 hours after getting the first bits of news, we got a few happy emails from my mom and the priests letting us know that the other couple has graciously agreed to move their ceremony to 12PM so we could have ours at 2:30! Not only did they move their ceremony, but the church has agreed to let us have a later ceremony that we would have had otherwise.
Things do happen to work out for the best in the end. It is hard in the heat of the moment to see past all of the anger, frustration, and complete dismay, but things did settle themselves out. Matt and I had a long talk during this fiasco about the possibility of an earlier wedding, and we came to the conclusion that we were going to have an amazing day regardless.
One thing I've learned is to try to stay calm and understand that things will go wrong during the planning process, but that doesn't mean things won't work out. A wedding is a wedding!
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