So…You Want to be a Wedding Planner?

A guest post by author Raine Thomas
I’ve done guest blogs where I discussed my career as an author, so when Suzy approached me about doing a guest blog, I gave the topic some serious thought. And when we exchanged a few tweets wherein she pointed out that my day job as a wedding planner probably provides me with content for possible Chick Lit novels, I made my decision: this blog won’t focus on my writing career. Instead, I’ll write about being a wedding planner.
Here is where I might come across as a “J Lo” hater. I’m really not. But, Jennifer Lopez—you ruined the whole wedding planning gig for the rest of us. I can’t tell you how many weddings I’ve coordinated where one of the groomsmen (or uncles of the bride, or male cousins of the groom twice removed) turned to me and said, “Hey…you’re not J Lo!”
Golly. What do you know? I’m really not. And the last I checked, neither are any of the other real wedding planners out there in the world today. Hmm.
For those (one or two) of you who don’t know, Jennifer Lopez starred in a movie called “The Wedding Planner.” In this movie, Ms. Lopez wooed and won the adorable Matthew McConaughey. She was always calm, collected, perfectly coiffed and right on top of things (and, do I even need to mention?, absolutely gorgeous). 

As a result of this movie, the wedding industry across the country was inundated with young women seeking to pursue careers as wedding planners. I suspect they had images floating through their heads that they would get exposed to swoon-worthy male leads the equivalent of Matthew McConaughey (maybe a groomsman or estranged brother) and all they’d have to do was speak into an earpiece and have an assistant at the ready to make the magic happen.
Folks, that’s just not how it works.
The Hollywood hokum that makes explosions and whatnot appear realistic applies just as much to this film as it does many others. We actually do carry an “emergency kit” with us that contains everything from panty hose and hairspray to aspirin and safety pins. But it isn’t latched onto our shapely hips with a stylish belt. Instead, we wheel it around in a much less “glamorous” rolling suitcase.
And yes, we wedding planners usually do have faithful assistants. But we’re more often than not right there “in the trenches” with them, doing the dirty work. I’ve been out in a three-piece suit in 115-degree heat scrambling to reset an aisle runner that a guest ruined by spilling soda all over it as sweat dripped down my face and runs formed in my panty hose. I’ve been standing over a toilet holding a bride’s gown mere seconds before she was due to lift off in a helicopter for a grand ceremony entrance. I’ve scooped dog poop off the aisle when a bride insisted she had to have an outdoor wedding in what equated to a dog park.
Glamorous? I think not.
But it really is an amazing job. Regardless of the setting, I get to work with couples on what is essentially the happiest day of their lives. I can work my own Hollywood-type magic to make a bride and groom think about nothing besides each other and the life they’ll have together. There have been a few times when I’ve stood with a bride who couldn’t seem to get her hair “just right”—delaying the wedding, of course—who looked at me and said, “Don’t you EVER get stressed?”
And as I thought of the flowers that had only just arrived in the nick of time, the mother of the bride who had to be carefully sequestered from her ex (the father of the bride), the missing stack of place cards for the reception tables, and the four drunk groomsmen I’d had to force bottles of water upon, I just smiled and said, “What’s to be stressed about? Everything’s going exactly as planned.”
Am I J Lo? No. Have I worked magic to make weddings come to fruition? I’d like to think so. Life isn’t always a fairytale, as one of my popular characters, Skye, likes to think. But wedding planners can often make it seem like it is.
In my shameless plug part of this blog, I’ll say that my Daughters of Saraqael fantasy/romance trilogy is intended to appeal to anyone who appreciates the fairytale mystique introduced through movies like “The Wedding Planner.” And I’d love for you to check it out!

What a gorgeous post, Raine! I'm definitely even more intrigued to read Daughters of Saraquel now... and I'll never watch The Wedding Planner in quite the same light again! (Although I will always watch it because I am rather partial to the delicious Matthew McConaughey!!)