Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Have you ever planned a wedding? For about 350 people? Who had to be assigned seating? Then you know what a headache it can be, dealing with hotels and making sure your drunk uncle doesn't grope a member of the other family. It's enough to make you want to elope.

I have an event tomorrow which is kind of like that. But for my wedding, I don't have the option of running to Vegas. We're going to do it loud, proud, and with lots of pomp and circumstance. And we're doing it tomorrow.

On Monday, I had 350 people coming. Last night we worked for 3 hours figuring out who deserved the front row, who would accept the outskirts, and where we'd shove the stragglers. Success right? Until we realized today that we actually had 430 people coming. Cue a call to the hotel to increase the guarantee, plus a request for a new schematic of the room so we'd know how to make use of the new real estate. I had to leave a message. I immediately followed up with an email.

That was at noon. At 5:30 pm, I suddenly received an out-of-office email back. WHAT THE FUCK? That's a hell of a delay. I called again. Got someone else's voicemail. Left a slightly frantic message. You can imagine the minor heart attack I was experiencing. Visions of people being forced to stand while eating their three courses started to drive me insane. That's if there was even enough food! What if there wasn't enough staff to even plate/serve/remove the extra 80 meals? What the hell was I going to do?!

Thankfully--mercifully!--about 30 minutes later, the hotel called back and assured me they had enough banquet staff, food, and my diagram was on its way momentarily. We were back on track. I started breathing normally soon after that.

And now it's nearly midnight and I just wandered home. The upside of leaving work in the middle of the night is you can make 13 miles in about 15 minutes. Now I have to get my beauty sleep. Lest I look like hell for my "wedding" tomorrow.

And that is what I do for a living. Every, single day. So when it comes to planning my actual wedding, you can understand why I'll be paying someone else to carry that burden.

And I don't like to bring my work home with me.