Last week I gave you a sneak peak from Jen and Dan’s wedding with their gorgeous cakes, and then we provided you with a discount coupon for cake bee – very cool!

This week I’m going to share the rest of Jen and Dan’s wedding with you, as well as some things I learned along the way.  Jen had a lot of ideas for how she wanted her wedding, but with about four months left before her big day there were still a lot of things that weren’t fully organized.  Worried that it wouldn’t come together, I offered to give her a hand with her wedding prep.  This was the second wedding that I’d coordinated, and while there were a lot of pieces to organize and keep track of, the wedding day resulted with only a couple of small hiccups and I actually had some time to still enjoy myself!

Over the months leading up to the wedding, I spent time with Jen going through the Real Simple Wedding Planner checklist (also available in the RS Wedding magazine).  We worked out what still needed to be done, and then divided up the tasks between both Jen and Dan (and members of their wedding party).  Check out my previous post to see the programs that I designed for Jen.

I think the number one thing I learned is that whenever you work with any vendor, get *everything* in writing. And help your vendors out too: stick by their deadlines and avoid changing things at the last minute – this causes confusion and may result in things going the wrong way on the wedding day.  We had a number of issues with the caterer – while their food was great, a lot of things weren’t put in writing and so for some reason, the contract price got changed (to be higher), one of the tables wasn’t put out (suddenly 10 people approached me at the reception asking, “where is table 21?”), and poor Jen found herself getting more and more stressed the week of the wedding.

Jen chose to have an outdoor wedding at Oxon Hill Manor in Maryland, however rain ended up being forecast for the wedding day (Memorial Day), so at the last minute we scored a tent for a fabulous price.  As it happened, the previous day’s wedding was renting a tent.  For $500 Jen was able to keep the tent up, including a stage, dance floor, and decorations (these were usually $12,500!!!). The only complaint I heard, was that some people were getting hot because the heat and humidity was getting trapped inside.  I didn’t personally find this a problem, but if you are having a spring/summer wedding in an area prone to high humidity (like DC) and you want to use a tent, consider getting some industrial fans installed.

Anyway, to the pictures!

Jen cashed in on a stationery store that was closing down, and bought an assortment of different pink and off-white papers. I helped her out by designing about 5 different variants so she could use up all the paper. Here's one of them.

See that sky? It started to sprinkle part-way through the pastor's message (he actually cut out more than half of what he was going to say - including the "i do" part!! woops!). The aisle runner got stuck part way as it was being rolled out before Jen walked down the aisle. I didn't realize it got stuck, and sent Jen down while they were still rolling it out. My bad . It was probably a good thing though, because the rain was looming.

Here's the tent with the vinyl lanterns. There was an extra charge to change the colors from the previous wedding to Jen's wedding colors, so we decided to just leave them be.

I loved these centerpieces! The vases were from the Dollar Store and one of Jen's friends spray painted them white. Because she used regular spray paint rather than paint specially for glass, they had to carefully transport them so they didn't scratch. Also, to keep with the "games" theme, the favors were candy in little board game box packaging (you can see them just behind the vase).

And here we have table 21, seated! On their heads are the super cute escort cards that Jen printed (using a template she found online) with everyone's name as a Monopoly Title card. Each of the tables was a different color. (Photo by LauraKayPhoto.com)

And just for fun, here's my husband - as a groomsman he got to wear a pink vest. I like to remind him that "real men wear pink"

So there you have it – Jen and Dan’s wedding! I spent a good part of the night running around like a mad woman, but all in all, it was fun.  The other two near-dramas that occurred included: Dan forgetting to bring the marriage license (note to any one coordinating a wedding – remind the couple to bring their license to the rehearsal!); and the lighting company guy not bringing a ladder (thankfully I located one in a closet at the manor)!  I did get to work with some excellent vendors though – the DJ was great at working with me to get things back on schedule, the management at Oxon Hill were also really accommodating in helping us get extra time, and Laura from LauraKayPhoto.com was also a dream to work with (it was also fun to see her again as she did the photography at my wedding too!).  As for Jen, her favorite things were the cake, the tent, and a gorgeous wreath created by one of her friends (unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of it).

I definitely learned a lot of lessons about wedding coordinating at this wedding! Have you coordinated a wedding? What lessons have you learned?