The Wedding Plan

by Lynn Reynolds

I'm baffled by the concept of the wedding planner. In my latest book, Love Capri Style, reporter Amanda Jackson gets the job of interviewing Artemisia Nash, "wedding planner to the stars." Amanda finds the whole notion a bit ostentatious too, although she does wind up working more closely with Ms. Nash than she expected.

It seems to me like if you are planning a wedding so darned complex you need to hire someone else to arrange it -- well, maybe you should scale things back just a bit. Unless of course you are the future King and Queen of England. Then ostentation is required, I think.

For ordinary folks, how the bride and groom feel about each other should matter more than whether the bridesmaids are wearing matching shoes and whether there's a life-size ice sculpture of a swan at the center of the reception.

I'm sure wedding planners make important contributions, though. They're probably a huge help organizing a wedding when many members of the party are traveling from far away. Or when the wedding party is going somewhere far away.

My wedding was a very dull affair by today's standards. We did not get married in a foreign country or on a beach or in a pasture. (Although I did ruin my favorite pair of black fabric kitten heels when some friends of ours DID get married in a pasture.) We were so unimaginative, we got married in a church! And then we held the reception in a catering hall where my mom worked because she got an employee discount. I don't even remember what we ate. As I say -- dull by today's standards. I really had more exotic visions for my wedding -- and I'm still hoping to talk my husband into renewing our wedding vows at the Renaissance Faire next year. So far he seems strangely unenthused.

Sometimes I get jealous when I see all these lavish weddings on TV today, what with their fabulous photogenic locations and carefully arranged "sets." Because that's what these locations look like -- movie sets. It's as though the bride and groom see themselves as characters in a movie and not as real people at all. Yes, sometimes I do envy todays's brides and  their wedding-planner arranged "perfect" weddings.

And then, sometimes, I don't feel jealous of them at all: