A Wedding Planner Reveals the Wildest Ways It All Went Wrong

Transcript of the video

[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Calder Clark. I’m a destination wedding designer, and we’re based out of Charleston, South Carolina. We are here today to talk about how we saved the day. There’s too many. I wouldn’t know where to begin, but I’ve got a few that spring to mind. Okay one of my most favorite ones. Shout out to Haskell Harris for remembering this one that I thought I had put so far back in my subconscious that it wouldn’t be dredged back up. We had a wonderful wedding downtown Charleston many, many moons ago, and I hope that you take something away from this. I hope that this teaches you something about the engineering behind any given lantern on the open market today. We had this brilliant idea to hang thousands of lanterns above people’s heads in this wonderful sort of alfresco tented environment. When you see it in your mind’s eye, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful night. It was in October, and it was crisp and cool out. Which it could have been 85. You know, October is a little bit unruly in Charleston. It was a great night. And we’re under this gorgeous clear top tent and my lighting and sound team had hung airline cable. Very strong. And from that, all of our lanterns were hanging perfectly placed. And they were acting sort of like pin spots on the florals and on the people, on their pretty faces and on their food. It was just, it was glorious.

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[00:01:34] And they were lit with real candles because I am obviously a sadist. And yeah, everything was kind of going great and dinner was underway. We served the first course and then we heard sort of this crashing sound. And so the first lantern fell, and I think we thought it was just because the wind was coming bouncing through the tent. All the lanterns were hung on S hooks. And the S hooks didn’t clamp all the way shut like a carabiner when you’re going hiking, you know, like the kids these days put their water bottle in their backpack. No, it had a little bit of an opening. So it was our theory that the S hooks were allowing the top of the lantern to kind of pop off of its hook and fall onto people’s heads, but we didn’t know. So the first lantern fell. Nobody was hurt. Everybody laughed. It was no big deal. Things happen. Things happen. Okay, so at this point we go immediately into triage. We have, we always travel with a sort of a heavy handed staff. And this is why it takes a village. And we deployed the village. There was a woman or a man as part of our team, about every five guests throughout the tent. Just kind of subtly walking among the guests, pretending to sort of relight a candle, refill the wine glass, but secretly looking at every single lantern, waiting for the next, you know, axe to fall.

[00:02:54] And then we heard another crash. So another lantern fell. Shattered glass all over this poor sweet older man’s place setting. Again, he was not hurt. He’s laughing. I don’t know why these guests were so good natured, but I got really lucky. And then we realized it wasn’t that they were coming off of their S hooks because there was no movement. We were watching the airline cables. And so we carefully, deftly got on peripheral perimeter ladders and withdrew all of the lanterns that we could get to. No other lanterns fell. Guests had a blast. Bride didn’t know. Mom didn’t know. No one seemed to care. And we’re like, everyone’s having a minor heart attack. And now I’ve made these two guests my best friends. We’re paying for dry cleaning. We’re bringing them copious cocktails. We’re hugging them. You know, it’s all hands on deck. Come to find out that a lot of lanterns are glued. These were wooden lanterns. And there’s the top and there’s the base, and there was just wood glue between the top and the base. And if you heat up a lantern with a real live candle, that heat then makes the wood glue kind of die effectively. So the top was coming loose from the base, so the bases were just falling willy nilly as bases do. I’ve never hung lanterns over people’s heads again, certainly not with real candlelight, and certainly not on S hooks in that environment.

[00:04:11] And I’m just here to say, what’s the moral of the story? You need a planner. We are not a luxury. And you better have a big team to pinch hit, because you just don’t know what you don’t know. Let’s jump into another little backstory about weather events and how they affect weddings. You must know by now if you’ve been listening to me or anybody else, that you have to have a plan B. In fact, honestly, in my line of work, it’s plans C, D and E, and you’re just ready with all these contingencies. And it’s not because you’re a fearful person or don’t know what you’re doing. It’s just because you’re smart and you know that you might have to unfurl those plans. And even in the best of plans, it’s about your attitude and how you approach these problems, because there is always going to be something, no matter how well you plan these things. So we were at a private estate in the heart of Tennessee and a beautiful piece of land, and it decided to monsoon. And when I say monsoon, it was like out of some sort of movie. You know movie rain, how it falls really hard? It fell like that for so many days leading up to the tented outdoor wedding, with a floor that there wasn’t much we could do.

[00:05:21] I remember when our teams kind of got on site right before we did. They called and said, whatever you do, and this is like the pre Amazon days, they said, “Get Wellies for the entire team. Like everybody needs a Hunter boot because you’re going to be up to your knees in it, the muck and the mud.” And we’re like, “Great. We’re gung ho.” I bought everybody Hunter boots. 12 strong women and men racing into this environment with all kinds of boots. So now we’re covered in North Face jackets and boots and we’re ready to roll. And it was time to put our tent into place. And tents have metal in them and we don’t want to electrocute anyone. There’s so many liabilities and insurance policies and problems and hurdles with tents. So I remember it was Thursday night and I went to bed. Our tent was in place. We had our floor installed, it was still pouring, but everything was dry inside the tent as best as it could be. And we were humming along toward Saturday wedding day. And in the middle of the night, it was probably 2:00 in the morning, and I think I had like a Nextel flip phone, and it went [cellphone buzz]. It was my very favorite tenting vendor who still to this day is my ride or die go to. And they said, our forklift is stuck in the mud.

[00:06:36] And I was like, “Is that a problem?” Um, yes, it’s a problem because we still had many things left to put in place, not the least of which was our restroom trailer tent and our restroom trailer. And these things have to be forklifted. So he said, our forklift is stuck. And I’m like, “Well, let’s think about that. You know, this is let’s strategize. We got this. We’re good at what we do. What’s the solution?” He’s like, “I need a backhoe. I need a backhoe to dig my forklift out so that my forklift then can take the restroom and put it into place so people can go to the potty.” And I was like, “Awesome, I got you.” We’re in farm country. You can take the girl out of Tennessee, but you can’t take the Tennessee out of the girl. I got the literal yellow pages and went page by page until I find someone who has, like a John Deere facility or something. I don’t actually remember, but I do remember I called like Randy, Andy and God knows whom. And by 5 o’clock in the morning on no sleep, I had a precious farmer from nearby come use his backhoe gratis, mind you, to unearth our forklift from, you know, 14 feet of mud so that our forklift could put our restroom trailer in place. Now, unfortunately or fortunately, we had this, like, grand plan for how guests would approach the wedding tent.

[00:07:51] It was going to be multi terraced and multi stepped with an al fresco cocktail deck and all these glorious pieces to the puzzle. And because of the land and how saturated it was, which no one could have avoided, we had to forklift the restroom trailer onto the front of the tent, so that you basically had to almost enter the restroom trailer to get to cocktails. Which you know what? Thank God for draping and beauty and an amazing floral and production team. That was the prettiest restroom trailer we’ve ever done. It looked like Versailles. It was fantastic. And guests were never the wiser until they chose to use the restroom hours into the night and they’re like, “Oh, it’s at the entrance. Interesting. Interesting location for the restroom trailer tent.” At least we were able to put it in place. The moral of the story being always have a contingency plan and be ready to pinch hit. You’ve got to be flexible and tractable, calm, cool, and ready to have a good time no matter what a wedding can throw at you. Okay, this one’s a doozy. We’re talking shop. We’re talking the backstory, the pinch hitting stories, the how we saved the day stories. And I think this one will either raise your blood pressure or make you very calm because, you know people like me exist to fix everything for you. We’re obviously fixers.

[00:09:06] Anyway. This one brings back so much pain and also laughter at the same time. So a client once told me, “You know, I don’t know what I don’t know, but you do.” And I thought, wow, what a prudent, true, beautiful way to put it. And this is such an example of once it happens to you once, it will never happen again. But you can’t have anticipated it. Okay. An 800 guest wedding in a far flung destination. 800 divided by ten means we have 80 tables. Let’s say we have ten tops, which we did. And then I have sort of this, like reputation for having Calder Clark level service. I’m a service nut. I think half of the problems that ever arise at a wedding or any kind of party are because you don’t have enough service and you certainly don’t have enough high quality servers. And so two per table is my rule of thumb. I will, I will do nothing less than that. Come hell or high water. So that’s 160 servers, not counting bartenders and chefs and that kind of thing. And so these awesome guys and girls came to the party, and they were prepping and doing all the things that our service staff does on the day of a wedding. And our caterer had forgotten wine keys. And so when they were able to procure enough wine keys to start opening all the wine that our guests would drink, which is minimum, two reds, two whites per table.

[00:10:27] So 320 bottles, I think, is the math. We had very little time left to do that. Well, you know, it’s sort of like, remember when train A leaves Boston going 60mph, and then train B leaves Los Angeles going 40mph. When will the trains pass? It’s like it’s a sixth grade math problem that makes you want to, like gives you a migraine. And so we realized, like they were barely going to get all of the wine open in time, even for the guests to arrive. They started four hours before and it took them all four hours. And so by the time they’d gotten all the wine open under duress, their hands were bleeding. And so we were dispatched as a team to get white gloves thick enough to not show the problems underneath. So now everyone has to be white gloved because otherwise it would just be very unsightly. And on top of that, I start to look around, and you know, again, recovering perfectionist, I noticed that a lot of our servers have like a rental tuxedo, which is totally fine. Why would all of these people own tuxedos and five colors to please a wedding planner, a crazy wedding planner? But the problem with that is a lot of them look like a flood is coming, and it’s just not very polished. And I think to myself, while we’re out getting wine keys and white gloves, we also need to get spray paint.

[00:11:40] And so I lined up 160 servers because, you know, you’re not off the hook if yours were gracing the ground. You need to line up too. And I said, pull up your pants and push down your socks, or leave your socks alone. Or if you have no socks, sorry for you. And I went along with my team, spray painting their legs black so that it would look like the extension of a black tuxedo pant, and no one was ever the wiser. And they’re dying laughing as we’re doing it. And they’re saying, do you think this is going to come out? I’m like, I don’t care, and you don’t care either. And this is how we’re going to present our best selves at this beautiful wedding. And so still to this day, we laugh about are there enough wine keys to open the wine, and when are y’all starting to open the wine? Because it better start at 10 a.m. on a wedding day, not 4 p.m.. Number two: do we have white gloves at the ready? We do. I always have them now. Cummerbunds, extra cufflinks, of course I have extra white gloves. And then I always bring black spray paint because it’s been 15 years. But you never know when you’re going to need it.

Also see: What Sets a Southern Wedding Apart? A Top Planner Tells All.

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