At the beginning of this month my daughter was married to her long-time boyfriend. We were thrilled when they suggested holding the occasion at our villa in Portugal, because that made us feel good about buying the place in the first instance when Helen was just 14. Obviously the villa held happy memories for at least two family generations, and perhaps in time that can grow to three or even more. It was also striking how many of the 90 or so wedding guests had already holidayed before at the villa.
So about a year ago the gang of four of us – me, my wife, daughter and future son-in-law – set about planning a do-it-yourself wedding. We managed to pull it off rather well, and the four of us are closer now than we have ever been. But this was a tough major project to execute. We were completely exhausted upon returning to home. Over the last ten days I have slept very deeply as my body has tried to recover.
That, then, is the first lesson. Do-it-yourself weddings are very hard work. Make sure you plan to have a proper holiday after it is all completed, because you will need it. We had a few special complications to deal with, notably a venue a thousand miles away from where anybody lived permanently in a country where none of us are fluent in the local language. But actually we had many things on our side too, notably strong relationships, a realistic budget and a practical venue. I can only imagine the disaster that would have ensued without those three factors in place.
So that is the second lesson. Don’t contemplate a DIY wedding without those three solid ticks. Relationships are the most important of all. Weddings are pivotal moments in lives and we all have our stated goals, our unstated goals and our potential explosions. Only with strong initial relationships can these be navigated. We were able to talk through what was important to each of us and to work out how to work with each other as a strong team. We laid down goals and roles and more or less stuck to each. As part of this, we envisaged how we could use the space at the villa and what the maximum realistic capacity would be, and we came up with some sort of outline budget and how it could be divided between us.
Our main lesson on the budget was also a common one from other major projects. We were able to predict quite accurately most of the big items, especially after we had done some initial research and spoken to potential suppliers. What surprised us was the need for a large contingency budget. All projects have this feature. There are a myriad of items that are either individually small or wholly unpredictable, that tend to emerge during the few days of the execution phase, just when project management has to be most flexible and when the time is too short to find ways to save money. We anticipated this, but not to sufficient degree.
The next lesson is really project management 101, and we did a good job. We defined the critical and the long-lead items, and we made a visit to Portugal last October to get these in place. Apart from nailing down the goals, the budget, the maximum number of guests, key dates and so on, we also dealt with the mission critical items then. For us there were three important ones. We needed a caterer. We needed a supplier for a tent, tables, lights and so on. And we wanted to offer a couple of good hotel deals for our guests. The caterer would be a family friend and local restaurant owner. The hotels were easy, because the Algarve has many and we were asking for rooms outside peak season. The tent could have floored us, but luckily we found exactly one affordable quality supplier, Algarve Marquees. Thank goodness for Tom; the best alternative option would have been a complete disaster.
The next lesson is about how suppliers can fail. Here it helps to know a bit about the Algarve market. The area is a part of Portugal that used to be poor until tourism took a hold, and the local economy depends on the spending of wealthy second-home owners and retirees. The possible suppliers reflect this. Some Portuguese firms cater to the local market but lack depth. Many firms spy opportunities from ripping off rich absent foreigners. Some of these firms are run by foreigners themselves, a number of whom have landed in the Algarve having failed elsewhere. So caveat emptor! Of course this advice is magnified when planning a wedding, because all suppliers’ eyes light up with the potential for customers to lose financial discipline.
It is good to know the situation you face and what is likely to go wrong. We had to weed out the timewasters, the incompetent and the rip-off merchants. Luckily, in most categories that still left one or two qualified suppliers. We had to always key an eye on the budget and not let sentiment take over. Our florist tried to charge us 80 euros for confetti, so instead we just collected our own locally – luckily bougainvillea and lilac were moulting nicely. Lastly, one key supplier was clearly at the edge of his capacity to deliver, so he needed some nursing and some contingency work behind his back.
Then there are wedding planners. Weddings attract rip-offs, especially in the Algarve, and as it turned out we were lucky. We were sceptical but undecided about using a planner, until we met one, who turned out to be a comical advertisement against her own profession. I have never trusted businesses that greet me with a glass of champagne. This one started that way and went downhill fast, and as a result we made a clear decision (no planner for us) and became even more determined to do a better job than any planner could. Looking back, I think a planner would have only added to cost and also created extra interfaces to fail. But I do think there was scope for a more limited role. We could have taken on someone just for the two or three days culminating in the wedding, as a sort of co-ordinator. Their job would just be execution support, and the extra eyes and hands might have relieved us to enjoy the wedding a bit more.
That is one more lesson. Make sure you enjoy it. And that means taking the time at occasions during the day to soak up the pleasure and what it all means. I think the bride managed to succeed at this, but for the other three of us we have to rely on the warm afterglow. I know that for me my heart never slowed enough during the day itself, so much so that I managed to freeze during my song!
Which is one more lesson. Rehearse and make professional what is important to you, but accept spontaneity in everything else. Our ceremony was unrehearsed, and in my opinion all the better and more authentic for it. A reader could not work out whether to face the couple or the audience or how to use the microphone. The singer, that is I, forgot his lines and demonstrated in the same instant what the day meant for him. We had to retrieve the aforementioned DIY confetti from the living room when the time came. All of this only added to the fun and memories and also the sense of a family occasion.
One more common lesson from major projects is to close out well. Again, this is a particular risk for a wedding, when part of the point is to get thoroughly wasted. Some of us had to summon the energy to remember to gather up the unused bottles to get the sale-or-return money, and similar valuable but dull tasks.
Reading this, you might wonder if I am rather inhuman to have treated such an emotional affair as a major project. Well, I think I can assure you on that one with three answers. The first is that the major project angle is a deliberate choice for this blog. The second is that a project-type attitude, at least to a degree, is a critical success factor, because this really is a major project, full of risks. How many couples, and their parents, have I seen waste money they have not got on a lavish wedding, or, even worse, fallen out with each other as a result of something careless on a wedding day?
And my third answer is to relate that, major project attitude or not, delayed gratitude or not, this was as emotionally satisfying a moment as any I recall in my life. I am so proud of my little girl, of her wonderful new husband, of my wife and step-kids, and also of my girl’s mum. That has all involved a lot of tears. This whole event was such a blessing. And the last lesson is that, for all its stress, I believe that all the positive feelings are actually enhanced by our choice to do-it-ourselves and to make it ours.
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