I happened to be thinking about my first wedding recently as I saw the bride of that wedding show up on a friend’s Facebook feed. She’s still married. I was very happy to see that.
I don’t remember a lot of the details about the wedding, although I still have the couple’s photo in a frame in my office. I remember that the couple knew that I hadn’t been planning weddings on my own for very long, but that I had experience planning events on a big scale. They had confidence in me, which did wonders for the confidence I had on myself.
Everything was done on paper, in person. There was no email. As I reflect on that now, I think I was lucky that the lack of email made the planning pace much slower than it is today. There was plenty of time to check and recheck my work, which ensured no errors…or, if I found an error, there was plenty of opportunity to fix it before my client saw it.
The planning went smoothly, but I remember being a little anxious on the wedding day. Incredibly, I coordinated the wedding by myself on the day. Now we send at least three people on site. How did I manage that? Were my duties fewer? Were the expectations less? I honestly don’t know.
I do remember the wedding day was a success. I clearly remember standing near the cake table after instructing the couple on how to cut their first slice and feeding it to each other, and looking around the room thinking how amazing it was that I helped make this happen. I fell in love with my career right there. I was exhausted, but so excited about the thought of doing this for the rest of my working life. Almost twenty-three years later, I still get that feeling when I look around the room, and I hope that never goes away.
