Ask Nancy: BYOS

Nancy, recently you wrote on your blog that one way to trim your budget is to provide your own candles, vases, props but you personally didn't endorse it. Is there a reason why?

Curious Elizabeth

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Dear Elizabeth

Thank you for your keen observation. I didn't mean to sound wishy washy. I advised in my previous article that some brides/grooms might want to provide their own vases, props, candles but for my own business, we do not encourage this practice and many business including several very reputable caterers that I've spoken with frown upon it. Every business practice has their own rules and reasons and consumers have to respect that.

When it comes to my various experience with weddings, I find that the few times I've allowed my client to provide their own candles, vases, and props that the weddings didn't always work out well thus we no longer encourage it.

I'll give you several examples why.

Smoke Gets in Your Eye

One of my first weddings manyyears ago, my client wanted to save on money. So she asked if she could purchase her own candles. Trying to be accommodating, I let my client provide candles after giving her the sizes and amount of candles needed. I set up the candles in glass hurricanes and let the candles. It was so beautiful with all the candles.

However, at the end of the evening when I came back to clean up the wedding, the minute I walked into the ballroom I knew something was very wrong. The entire ballroom(which held 200 guests) had a layer of smoke. It was distinctively cloudy and when I spoke with the wait staff, they told me that the pillar candles started to smoke during the dinner and as the evening progressed they had to be "blow" out all the candles because of the smoke the candles were creating.

To this day, I will never forget how black and smoky the room was and how all the glass had a layer of black film. The time it took to clean the glass didn't make it worthwhile for my bride in the end who saved just a few dollars but ended up having to pay for cleanup. Of course that was secondary to the healthy of guests. A few guests left the wedding because the smoke was irritating their eyes. Bad news and certainly not worthy the few dollars saved.

Get Shorty

A few years back I did this beautiful wedding at a grand luxurious venue near the San Francisco financial district. The bride worked for a wonderful retail store and decided to order her own linens and chargers from India. Because the bride was in charge of her own linens and chargers, the linens were sent to her so the caterer didn't have time to open the boxes. I had given her the measurements so that the linens would fit proper on the tables that we used. In addition, I told her that it was important to overorder so that there was some room for last minute changes and additions. For the chargers, I felt that it was important to order 10% more because you never know what happens during shipping.

Well, a few hours before the wedding as the caterer and I were setting up the ballroom, we opened all the boxes to discover that we were not just one linen short, we were several table linens short. In addition, for each box that contained a total of 10 charges, there was 1 to 2 plates that were broken. In short, we were almost one whole table short of chargers. The tables were long tables so that fit around 20 to 24 guests. At the last minute, one entire long table had to go without chargers.

As for the shortage of linens, in the end, we had to use round linens that were ordered for cocktail round tables to cover long tables. The caterer sent for black basic linens to cover the cocktail tables. The ceremony table was also suppose to have a custom linen but since we were so short, the ceremony linen was replaced with a basic poly cotton instead of the fancy ones.

Once again, if the linens were ordered properly from a local rental company, we could have avoided two costly mistakes. Though all things were done to avoid these mistakes, when you as a vendor allow your client to take the responsibility of ordering linens and chargers away from you, you can't control the situation.

Sure, the bride might have saved some money but in the end the caterer had to order additional linens and charge the bride for them.

As an event designer, I know that this isn't life or death but for someone who strives for quality work, it's hard for me to ignore the imperfection. Most importantly, I just didn't want a group of guests to feel that they were treated differently. Who wants to be short on an important day?

All about the Fit

Though I don't encourage my clients to provide their own vases, I have made allowances as recent as this year and I've always come to regret those decisions. This year one of my brides wanted to provide her own glass. Originally a friend was going to do the centerpiece flowers so the bride went ahead and bought her own vase. Her friend wanted to do a very simple design featuring a ball of flowers in a vintage glass. What a beautiful idea. A few months prior to the wedding, it turns out the friend wasn't sure she could attend the wedding because she lived quite far away so we ended up being asked to do the centerpiece.

When the bride bought the vase to me, I nearly cringed because the vase was so small. It was bare 3 inches across. Now, that might sound good to some of you but the bride was envisioning a ball of flowers that would be suitable for a table that would sit 10 people. When I did the sample, the ball of flowers was so large it completely covered this tiny little glass vase. I was so worried that the weight of the flowers would "crack" the glass. After that experience, I vowed that I would never let another bride provide a glass for an arrangement that we had to put together.

Of course, a few weeks later, like Britney, I did it again. I allowed another bride to provide some cut glass for her centerpieces. The design was very simple and called for multiple large headed flowers to fill an assortment of vintage etched glass. When I got on site to fill the glass, I noticed that the glass and bowls were each very unique and different. Usually I love that. But unfortunateloy half the glasses were too small to fill with large blooms while others were so deep and intricate that you couldn't see the floating flowers. Needless to say, I did figure out what to do but once again, to save a few bucks, we didn't get the right look and when I heard how much the bride had spent on locating what she felt was "inexpensive" glass, I wanted to say that I could have found something just as unique for less.

BYOS

I promise this is the last story. And it's about my own wedding. When I got married I wanted to cut corners. And one way was for me to purchase my own wine and bring my own soda. I'm a huge lover of sodas. I like the fancy and interesting kind and I wanted something unique for my bar. We had the basic wines, champagnes and beers and I put my good friend in charge of the sodas. I gave her a very small budget and trusted her to buy some cool sodas. I told her that I liked fruity flavors and wanted unique citrus ones to fit our Sunday dinner. Of course, I also said that we had 180 guests so we needed at least 200 sodas and told her that we had a pear theme so if she could find something pear like that would be awesome.

I was incredibly busy with details and so relieved to have a good friend help me with this one detail. And since I didn't want to be a pain I didn't want to give her the exact soda names. I told her to surprise me.

The day of the wedding came and during the cocktail hour, I noticed that the sodas were all cans. Of course that wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. It's normal to have cans of Coke, 7 Up, etc. Not exactly the vision I had since I was thinking more bottles like Jone's or Stewart's sodas. When I finally got to the bar to ask for a soda, I was mortified that the soda was not just cans of sodas but the cans were all generic brand sodas from a chain grocery store. Ok, so this is nothing to be upset over but I was so mortified that I served my guests generic sodas. So, in the end, I saved a few dollars but when I had 10 cases of soda left over, it was apparent that even my kind friends weren't into drinking generic sodas. In the end, I saved a couple dollars but if only 20 cans were opened, how was that a benefit?

Bottom line: These stories are here to warn people that sometimes short cuts aren't really short cuts. Of course, for every one of these horror stories there are also positive stories. If a vendor chooses to allow a client to provide their own vases, props, glass, candles, etc, it's fine but it's not a requirement for all businesses nor should it be the law.