You may or may not recall this from your SATs:
Day-of Wedding Planner is to Wedding as _________ is to Wedding Planner.
- A. Good Skirt Suit
- B. Good Footwear
- C. Good Weather
- D. Good Sportsmanship
One of the most underrated parts of being an event planner is also one of the most important: the Day-of Management.
Time and time again I tell clients that if you do nothing else, hire a planner for the day-of. Unless of course your idea of a perfect wedding day entails things like an emergency run for 200 pounds of ice, or hauling 600′ of extension cords across a mosquito infested field, or shoveling buckets of wood chips into the mudslide running through the tent, or completely re-erecting and redecorating a wind blown arbor five minutes before the ceremony while 200 guests anxiously watch.
Yes, my job on the day-of is not an envious or glamorous one. By the day’s end I usually have some combination of sunburn, bug bites, blisters, skinned knuckles, pricked fingers, chapped lips, sinus pain, lower back ache, head ache, joint pain, soar throat, fatigue… Indeed, you could take any pharmaceutical drug on the market and experience these same side effects, or you could manage a wedding and get the added satisfaction of knowing that you were an integral part of the most important day that that couple has had yet. No pain, no gain, as the all-knowing ‘they’ say.
To that, I have discovered that one of the most underrated keys to doing my job well is also one of the most critical: Good Footwear.
The boots were made for wedding planning
Good Footwear. Really? That’s your secret?
Yup. The key to being able to withstand the random craziness of wedding management starts with being able simply to stand.
But this is not as easy as it sounds; the dilemma arises at the difficult intersection of function and fashion. It’s an obscure, out-of-the-way side street when it comes to finding comfortable, functional footwear that I can wear for 16 hours, but is also easy enough on the eyes to pass as “wedding attire.” This means no sneakers, no flip flops and at all costs, no Crocs. Clogs can work sometimes, but they are repeat offenders in the blister category and they tend to be awfully frumpy. Neither my strappy shoes, my three inch peep-toe pumps nor my cute red slides will get me far when I need to run across uneven terrain in the pitch black with a tray of champagne glasses. And my highly functional camo print neoprene $hi# kickers will have me smelled before seen. So what’s a girl do to?
A girl gets a good pair of leather boots. Cute, functional, affordable, comfortable, durable, versatile. Without them I am a car on blocks, but with them I can move through the room like an ambulance driver. Throw in a pair of semi-custom cushioned orthotics and I will hardly need a foot bath and foot massage at the end of the night! And while there are certainly a lot of other important tools and traits that I need in order to do my job successfully, a reliable pair of Fryes or Ariats are just as important to My Job as My Job is to a Wedding.
