It is commonly said that weddings are one of the most stressful experiences in life, along with moving and death.
Well, people, I’m here to tell you WHY weddings can be so stressful…
It’s the darn wedding vendors. It’s all about them. I have been amazed at the utter LACK of interest and follow-up shown by the majority of the wedding vendors to which I have talked. And I’ve determined that they really don’t give a damn about customer service, because you really don’t need to worry about repeat customers in this industry.
When I first started planning our wedding, I thought that my web-savvy would save me a ton of work. I surfed around and submitted countless online contact forms.
No one responded.
Which meant that I had to go back and call these people.
And most of the time, they weren’t available, and didn’t return my calls, so I had to keep calling them.
Seriously, these people have created three times the work that should really be required for planning a wedding. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why wedding planners are in business. Wedding planners make careers out of contacting these incompetent people.
Here are the issues I’ve had:
- The original church, which couldn’t figure out for a month and a half whether or not the pastor would be available on my date. The church was available, and they don’t allow other pastors to conduct the ceremony, but gee, we just can’t seem to figure out if our pastor will be available.
- The cake/flower lady, whom I’ve called THREE TIMES. My mother has managed to talk with her on the phone and meet with her in person (how, I have now idea). Mom also put a deposit down on the cake. I was told to call the cake/flower lady in July to schedule an appointment in August for a cake tasting and flower talk. She can’t manage to return my calls, which honestly makes me a bit nervous.
- Travel agents for the honeymoon. I’ve now talked to THREE travel agents. I gave them our budget, where we wanted to go, etc., and was told they’d get back to me with some options. THEY AREN’T CALLING ME BACK. Finally, on the third agent, I made sure to get his name, and of course, after he said he would get back to me yesterday, he didn’t, and when I called for him, he was on the other line and would call me back. Of course, he hasn’t called me back.
- In the quest for the perfect band, JB came up with a band that plays weekly in South Lake Tahoe. I have Googled the heck out of this band, and can’t find any contact information for them online. And believe me, people, if someone is online, I can find them. So, we have been resorting to calling the bars where he plays. The main bar where he plays doesn’t have an answering machine, and for 5 attempts, their phone just rang and rang and rang and, well, you get the point. Finally, last night, someone picked up. We were told to go to the band’s website, that they gave us. Of course, we did, and found out that the website they gave us was for a real estate broker with the same name as the lead singer. AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I swear, it’s the clueless people that will drive me over the edge. I don’t have time to keep following up with them because they don’t know how to run a business. But I don’t really have a choice, now, do I?
As a disclaimer here, I do have to say that the banquet coordinator at the reception facility and my photographer so far have had excellent customer service. The rest of the ding-dongs could learn a lot from those two.
