The Last Detail
She didn't think she cared about planning a wedding -- until she hired a wedding planner

By Sandy M. Fernández
Sunday, September 3, 2006

Two months before my April wedding, during some of the most frenzied days of prenuptial prep, I put down my list of to-do's and took a trip to meet two friends in Mexico. I hadn't seen them together in years, and this was my bachelorette getaway. At our tiny seaside hotel, I was relieved not to have to think about invitations, cake stands or RSVPs, and, for the most part, lost in conversation and margarita-ordering, I didn't. Only once in a while, my friends told me, would I withdraw and get quiet. My face would get cloudy. My nostrils might flare.

"Are you thinking about Natalie again?" one of them would ask.

Natalie. Light of my life, fire of my soul. They'd heard plenty about her. Whatever my gripes -- and they were numerous -- this was a relationship I was stuck in. Natalie was my wedding planner. Until the 150 people my fiance, Rob, and I had invited to Baltimore came, ate and took home the centerpieces, Natalie would continue to be the second-most important person in my life.

FROM THE BEGINNING, I knew I wouldn't be the easiest client Natalie ever had. I come from a very opinionated family, and the eight years I lived in New York City just made that tendency worse. Generally, people don't refer to me with adjectives like "easygoing" or "relaxed." If my fiance (now husband) weren't the most preternaturally calm man on the planet -- a genuinely laid-back Midwesterner -- well, you wouldn't be reading this piece right now.

Yet things with Natalie had started on a note of pure sunshine.

It was about seven months before the day Rob and I had chosen to get married. I had arranged to take a couple of weeks off between jobs, figuring that would allow me to take care of the big stuff myself: Book a church and a caterer, maybe even get a dress. We'd already found a reception site. How long could this take? I bought Wedding Planning for Dummies and an armload of bridal magazines and joined a couple of online bridal boards. Piece of cake, I thought.

Little did I know. According to my sources, I was late, late, late. The best vendors booked a year or more in advance. Dresses took months to get delivered. On the wedding Web site the Knot, my automated to-do list showed dozens of items already in arrears -- from finding an officiate to deciding on my "colors" -- and 100 more barreling down on me over the next few months.

The news on the money front was equally hair-raising. Rob and I had agreed to a budget of $20,000, a number that seemed more than adequate, considering it once had been my annual salary. But when estimates began coming in from caterers -- food being a wedding's largest expense -- I got the feeling that this number wasn't the bounty I'd imagined.

From my post-wedding vantage point now, it seems ridiculous that I let the situation frighten me. After all, many couples put together inexpensive weddings without Normandy invasion-level planning. But, at the time, I was already coming under the clouds of my own perfect storm of wedding insecurity.

In my immigrant family, my wedding would be the first in the United States and, on my father's side, the first traditional wedding since that of my very Catholic grandmother. One of her children had eloped, and another had married by proxy -- I wanted to give her, finally, the full church-and-reception experience she'd always wanted. My parents, I knew, had recently been to several weddings hosted by their lifelong friends. They'd be worried about breaches in etiquette and how ours stacked up. I didn't want to disappoint them.

And then there was the unfortunate question of taste, another personal weak spot. Traditionally, my idea of home decor has been of the mounted-deer head, fake-flowers variety. That is, honestly, what I like -- though I know most of the world doesn't. Now, too many hours getting punch-drunk on the perfect pictures in Martha Stewart Weddings had raised, to say the least, some unfortunate expectations. Understated chic it had to be, and if I couldn't pull it off, I'd hire someone who could.

Enter Natalie. I'd e-mailed her after coming across her company's Web site, which opened with a black-and-white photo of an exuberant young bride kicking up one high-heeled shoe. "Fresh, timeless, chic," said the tagline. I was hooked.

We met at a crepe restaurant in Pentagon Row in late September. In person, Natalie reminded me of a younger version of style icon Kate Spade. Petite in her little cardigan and sleek brunette ponytail, she looked like she drank gin-and-tonics in the Hamptons and owned the perfect, trendy little dog. She seemed efficient and organized -- important, because I am neither. She seemed, in fact, like someone I'd always wanted to be. "This woman," I thought, "will make sure we do this thing up right."

She asked me how I had imagined the Big Day, and I told her, honestly, that I was as surprised as anyone that I was actually getting married, and so the tulips-versus-dahlias details had never crossed my mind. I just wanted something simple and classy, I said. I'd be happy to hand the reins over to her. Finding vendors, addressing and mailing the invitations, keeping us on schedule both before and on the day of the wedding -- none of that would be my problem anymore.

That night, Rob initially balked at paying several thousand dollars for planning. Did we really need to hire additional help? I flared up. There were hundreds of things to do, I told him. Had he even finished that guest list I'd asked him for? Had he called the harpist? Did he think I would do it all just because I was the woman in this couple? Did he have any idea?

Together we agreed that Natalie could stay.

MONTHS LATER, another wedding planner would tell me that, coming into each project, she's aware that she's entering her client's life at a moment of high stress and vulnerability. Tensions crackle between bride- and groom-to-be, among family members, between everyone and the budget. The mantra of contemporary planning is that the wedding should, in the words of Natalie's Web site, "reflect your style, values and personality in every detail." So if a vendor or magazine suggests that your "presentation cake" be switched out for a sheet cake from Costco at serving time (cut discreetly in the kitchen so they'll never know) -- well, it can sting a little. And the planner -- either the tiny devil tempting you with things you can't afford or the realistic angel limiting you to things you can -- can feel like both a humiliating witness to your discomfort and the reason that you're uncomfortable in the first place.

Early on, chatty e-mails flowed between Natalie and me, and I merrily began filling out my "planning folder." The budget had ballooned -- to almost $34,000 -- because Rob and I had impulsively chosen a beyond-our-budget caterer: A tiny basement restaurant in Baltimore that one Sunday had served us an exquisite roasted-beet amuse-bouche. Without waiting for Natalie's blessing, we signed on the caterer.

I was still luxuriating in our choice -- would it be fois gras pops or mini squab burgers? -- when, in the middle of December, I sent Natalie a note. Our menu was pretty much a pork-o-rama, I'd realized: onion potage with pork belly, a tartlett with a prosciutto ham -- even the salad came with bacon herb dressing. Was this a problem? "Am I being crazy?" I wrote her.

"That's something that [the caterer] should've asked before putting together any kind of proposal, and something I would've covered had I been brought into the game at that point," she e-mailed back.

I stared at the screen a long time. Was I imagining it, or was I being scolded? By the very person meant to protect me from faux-pas-induced scoldings?

I should have then turned around and written Natalie, asking her what exactly she meant. Did she just want to reassure me that she was on top of it? But I didn't -- I internalized. And, just like that, something shifted.

NATALIE HAD WARNED US that if we were going to have friends help with our wedding, to avoid "awkwardness," we should check with all those volunteers about charges, if any, and scheduling. Good idea, I thought. After all, we were counting on friends for the invitation design, the cakes, some photography, setup and all the music.

The first things to go were the cakes. We'd asked a neighbor who co-owned a catering company to make them. But when she finally gave me her price, it was 40 percent higher than the area average.

Then, 10 days later, when the design was due, the friend creating the invitations -- one of my closest -- e-mailed. She'd been sick, she said, and hammered at work; for our sakes, she thought we ought to find someone else.

While the first fall-through had been dutifully reported to Natalie ("I was afraid of that," she wrote, simply), I just couldn't bring myself to share this one. I felt at fault for not checking in earlier -- and surprisingly upset that my friend was pulling out. I couldn't risk another scolding.

Embarrassed and under pressure, I started bristling at the slightest interactions -- and keeping Natalie out of the loop. In these situations, Rob is usually the calming factor in my life. But with Natalie, Rob didn't deflect -- he piled on. He'd hired her grudgingly, and her fee still stuck in his throat. One day, I e-mailed him an article on Virginia real estate titled "Lofty Goals in Little Orange." His response immediately veered into wedding talk. His subject line: "Little Orange, Big Natalie."

BIG NATALIE WAS STILL SENDING a dozen e-mails a day, trying to keep us on track as the wedding loomed. I could tell she was starting to strain at our delay in making decisions: The invitations, the music, our entire "planning timeline" were all late. "I'm pretty sure I've included these Qs on a few past e-mails, but now we really need to know if you have a preference," said a typical e-mail. I was torn between resentment -- at her and, frankly, the whole process -- and groveling gratitude, because I knew how many times she was pulling our butts out of the fire. But what was worse, my angst about it was making me feel revealed as one of those self-obsessed Bridezillas everyone loves to hate. I went looking for reassurance that, at least, my pettiness was normal. One day, I took a moment at the bathroom sink at work to sidle up to another getting-married co-worker and ask, insinuatingly, how it was going for her, how she liked the woman planning her wedding. By the open, concerned look she gave me, I knew that she had no idea what I was talking about. She liked her planner; it was all going fine; why was I asking?

I slunk back to my cubicle, to another e-mail from Natalie.

BY LATE FEBRUARY, the budget, unsurprisingly, had grown to $38,000, with plenty of purchasing still needed. And while Rob had begged me to stop reading wedding magazines, I couldn't kick the habit. Every fresh issue of a seemingly interminable stream -- Modern Bride, Brides, even Baltimore Magazine's Bride -- brought some new little detail that I was sure would make this wedding exactly right, exactly us.

All those perfect details turned out to be expensive. Like the letter-press coasters I just had to have that set us back $240. And yet I was nitpicking Natalie about the cost of her choices. The latest battlefield was her suggestion of table displays, a set of glass containers to cover each table's stand-up menus. She'd been working on this idea from our first meeting -- when I'd voiced enthusiasm -- but as I became more enamored of my own creative whims, the containers started looking unnecessary and too expensive. Did I simply, straightforwardly, tell her that? Of course not. Instead I let her spend her weekends searching for just the right glass coverings.

"Florists normally rent these out at $15 to $20 apiece," she wrote. "I'm trying to see if I can obtain them in time for your wedding so I can rent them to you at a chunky discount."

I quickly did the math -- at about five containers per table, we'd be spending close to $1,000 renting glass vases. That was too much for an idea I wasn't sold on. Still, I was reluctant to totally pull the rug from under Natalie. We'd been doing it so much already. I suggested we go to Michaels crafts store.

"I've seen those vases," Natalie said in her next e-mail. "The quality and look is comparable to the price, so I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're okay with that, then the decision is totally up to you." Here's how I interpreted that message: "Go ahead, get the sheet cake, if that's who you are."

Increasingly, Natalie proposed, and we balked. She started sending us weary-sounding e-mails -- "Whatever you want to do, just let me know."

Okay, fine, whatever, we thought, we'll just do it ourselves. But the fact is, we were so busy, we often forgot.

ON THE DAY OF THE WEDDING, on the way to the church, Rob and I realized we'd left behind a few little items: the programs, the copies of our vows and my ring. Our program, which Natalie never got to proofread, mistakenly named two of Rob's cousins as cousins of mine. Once we reached the reception hall, the first words Natalie said to me -- clutching a clipboard and as flustered as I'd ever seen her -- were, "Sandy, where are the table numbers ?!"

In my big white gown, I blanched. She'd asked, repeatedly, for a checklist so she could be sure everything we needed would be delivered to the church and the reception hall. But we'd never given it to her. The boxes of white wine we'd bought turned out to be red. And the table numbers we'd promised to deliver? We didn't have them. In fact, we'd never made them.

We, not Natalie, had messed up. But my guilt was leavened by the understanding that there was nothing to be done about it anymore. It was time to let go. And with that, I let myself, for the first time, really, truly sink into the pleasure of the day. In the end it was, as these things always are, one of the most amazing, joyous, happy days of my life: a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of the people I love best in the world. Next to that, none of those things that went wrong really mattered.

Natalie stayed in the periphery most of the day; I saw only glimpses of her here and there, as she walked around in her slacks and cardigan conferring with the caterers or the band. When things needed tweaking, she talked to Rob. He was also the one who tipped her and said goodbye at the end of the night, as I was trying to find a ride back. I hardly spoke to her at all.

The only clear memory of Natalie I have from that day is not something she said or did but something she had made: the charming, bright-colored photo boards that displayed portraits of our guests. Their design -- which we had had zero input on -- was delightful and whimsical. But, here and there, the boards were studded with gray rectangles of paper where a photo should have been. This was not Natalie's fault. Rob and I were supposed to have marshaled the photo-taking process.

"I should have let Natalie handle that," I thought to myself. "She would have done a better job."

But I couldn't bring myself to tell her.

Sandy M. Fernández is a Magazine editor. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Tuesday at noon at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

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