Wedding Hell

Saturday afternoon, Hoop and I went to finalize the details of our wedding at the restaurant hosting our ceremony/reception. I'd diligently written a list of questions the night before, determined not to leave anything out. The moment we arrived, I felt uneasy. The coordinator, Bridget, looked all of seventeen. "Let me show you the upstairs room," she said airily. "We don't need to see it," I said. "We've already booked it. For the eighth of November?" Red flags were popping up in my head. I willed her to remember. "Oh!" She replied, looking confused. She took us upstairs anyway.

"I have a question about the seating," I started off. Originally, we were told this room could seat seventy-five. Then we were told only sixty. I was wondering if that was the max capacity of the room? Does that include the servers and the DJ?" "You don't have to feed your guests if you don't want to." She answered. I tried again. "No, we WANT to feed them. I was just trying to figure out how many people we could invite." "Um..." It was obvious she had no idea what I was asking. "We don't have a fire code or anything. But it would probably be too crowded to have a dance floor if you invited sixty people."

"Are you serious?" My throat was starting to constrict. "I wish someone had told us this before we reserved the room." Trying to diffuse the situation, Bridget took us back into her tiny office to look over the calendar. "Unfortunately, these other two rooms are booked. This one has a reception at four-" "-At four?" Hoop interjected. "But... Won't that conflict with our ceremony? They'd have to walk through where we're having it to get to their room." "Oh!" Bridget gasped. "Well, that's not going to work! Who booked this?"

"YOU booked this," Hoop snapped. "I booked it with you on the phone about two months ago." I was starting to feel dizzy. "Can we just go home?" I pleaded with Hoop. "You could always change your date." The girl suggested, pointing at the next weekend. "But we've already ordered the cake and the flowers and the favors-" I answered weakly. "That's not going to work," Hoop replied. "We've already put in for the next week off and booked a cruise." Bridget shrugged and looked at me pityingly. "You could always have the ceremony at 4:30." Great. Right as the Saturday dinner crowd is arriving.

I suddenly had a vision of what the place would look like with two ceremonies, three receptions, and a normal dinner crowd all going on at the same time. Would anyone even know which party they belonged to? I begged Hoop again to go home. I wanted to leave before I cried. There was no way I was going to let this little ignorant girl push me overboard. It was either cry or leap across the room and beat her with her own toothpick arm. That's doesn't make me a Bridezilla, does it? I suddenly understood my florist's reaction when I'd told her where we were getting married.

"Oh, the Hilltop." Said as if it were a synonym of "puke" or "herpes". "What's wrong?" My Mom had asked, suddenly going very white. "Nothing," Quick recovery. "It's just... They have a slight problem with double booking or overbooking their venues. You just make sure they do things right by you." I blew it off as just a bad experience. How could a lovely place like that, which makes most of it's revenue from weddings, possibly screw this up? So here I am, four and a half months to go, looking for a new location for our ceremony and reception.

Thank God I hadn't made the invitations yet! Just cross your fingers these assholes give us our deposit back. While you're at it, cross your other fingers that the rest of this goes smoothly. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. Remember, I wanted to elope! Poor Hoop. Last night, as he was falling asleep, he mumbled into my hair. "I knew the moment that girl opened her mouth that she was going to ruin my weekend. I just knew it. That's why I was so mad." Well I'm glad he has this whole thing in perspective. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from him.