Friday, January 3, 2014

Love Potion #14.5: We Didn't Have a DOC

Alternate title: Some Things Went Sorta Kinda Wrong

Let me start by saying that I regret nothing about our wedding day.  If the Doctor showed up on my doorstep today and gave me the chance to have a conversation with pre-wedding day Miss Potion, I'd tell her to continue with her plans exactly as they are.  (I might tell her to stop stressing a bit, but it's sort of impossible for me to stop stressing, so that would be pointless.)

That's not to say that nothing went wrong, however.  I'm fairly certain that, had we hired a planner or DOC, the things that went wrong would not have gone wrong.  However, the things that went wrong were, in my opinion, rather minor in the grand scheme of things, and if I have a choice between small things going wrong and big things going wrong, I'll take the small things.  (And yes, with my luck, something has to go wrong- nothing can be perfect.)

Of the minor mishaps on our Big Day, two things were big enough to be noticed by the guests.

No Photos of Our First Dance

Both of our photographers made the journey from Atlanta to Alex City in one car.  Before the ceremony, I briefly chatted with our second shooter about how he could head to the reception early and take photos of guests arriving and making merry while we got our portraits done.  BM MrsF's husband was serving as our pseudo DJ (that is, he was chosen to press 'play' on the playlist on my computer) and would be leaving just after Communion, so I told our second shooter to ride with him.  The only problem was, in the hustle and bustle of the pre-wedding festivities, I sort of forgot to pass the same message along to our pseudo DJ.  If we'd had a coordinator, she would probably have made this arrangement without my having to think about it...

This wasn't such a disaster- both photographers could ride in the same car and follow the bridal party to the reception.

Except they got lost.


And I didn't notice they weren't there until after our first dance and our dances with our parents.  Oops.

As Mr. Potion and I grabbed some food, somebody asked me where our photographers were and that's when I realized they were missing.  I asked my sister, my fantastic MOH, to call them and see what was up, but by that point they had figured out their wrong turn and were almost at Spring House.

The Microphone Died

We didn't hire a DJ or band, and frankly, we didn't need to.  I created a "cocktail hour" playlist which played during the hour or so before we arrived, comprised of sweet, mellow songs like "The Gambler" by fun. and "Life Less Ordinary" by Carbon Leaf; I also created a dancing playlist for the rest of the reception with a variety of danceable songs- everything from "Glad You Came" by The Wanted, to "Good Morning Sunshine" by Alex Day, to "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz.  I created shortcuts to these two separate playlists and put them on my desktop, removing everything else, and wrote some very clear instructions on the desktop background:

*personal image*
 It says, "If the bride has not given you permission to touch this computer, DON'T TOUCH THIS COMPUTER."

Finally, I adjusted the power settings on my laptop so that it would stay on when the lid was closed, and hooked it up to the restaurant's sound system using an adapter we bought at Radio Shack.  All our pseudo DJ had to do was double click on the appropriate playlist and then close the lid.  Simple!

We also bought a wireless microphone at Radio Shack for the honor attendants and my dad who would be giving speeches during the reception.  We tested it thoroughly during our night-before set-up party...and then we forgot to turn it off.

The mic was completely dead when speech-time rolled around.  This meant that the only people who could hear what was being said were those standing within a few paces of the speech-givers.

Could a coordinator have prevented this?  Maybe, if the coordinator had been the one setting everything up.  It's likely that this would have gone wrong either way, though.

So there's your warning, folks- if you're going for a DEY (Do EVERYTHING Yourselves) wedding, be prepared for a few hiccups along the way.  Luckily for us, this was the worst that happened and we were able to continue with the celebration completely unfazed.  (Perhaps that's because they happened after the actual getting married part happened and we were in a permanent state of happy.  Also there was alcohol.)

Have you hired a planner or day-of coordinator?  Married ladies- were there any mishaps on your big day?  Did they stress you out or were you able to keep partying?

 Miss a Potion Recap?

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