I’m a wedding planner, and I often get a lot of high-end clients who are willing to drop small fortunes on their big day. I’m calling one bride-to-be about an adjustment to their venue.

Me: “Hi, [Client], I’m calling about the venue. Due to last night’s storm, a tree branch smashed a window at the back of the banquet hall. It shouldn’t affect the operations of your day, but since it’s going to be covered up by some temporary materials so it can be fixed, the venue is offering a 5% discount on the hire fee to make up for it.”

Client: “Oh, that’s nice of them!”

Me: “And this also means that your overall wedding is going to come in under budget! Isn’t that wonderful?”

At this point, I can hear the sound of another person joining the call, and I immediately recognise the shrill voice of the mother of the bride. To be fair, she and her husband are paying for the wedding, so they have a say in how their money is being spent, but they have certain ‘rich people’ eccentricities that are challenging to work with.

Client’s Mother: “Did I hear you say underbudget? No, no, no! My daughter will not have an underbudget wedding! It’s all the ladies will talk about!”

Me: “Well, madam, nothing about the wedding day itself has changed, so it will still be the elegant yet luxurious event we’ve been planning, it’s just coming in cheaper now.”

I said the cursed ‘c’ word.

Client’s Mother: “Cheap! No! My daughter’s wedding will not be cheap! What can we do about this?!”

Me: “What do you mean? There’s not much we can do. The venue is offering—”

Client’s Mother: “—a discount, yes, I heard! My daughter’s wedding will not be some discounted knock-off affair! There must be something we can do to push it back up to budget! Or overbudget even! I will not have the ladies from church implying we’re cheap!”

Me: *Eyes darting over the expenses spreadsheet.* “Well, uh, with the 5% saving from the venue, that does free up some budget for the harpist to join the string quartet, the one you said was extraneous to requirements?”

Client: “Oh yes, I did quite like the idea of a harpist—”

Client’s Mother: “—fine, but that’s not enough. What else can we add?”

Me: “The venue does have a peacock garden on the premises. They’re closed off on the day of the wedding, but for a fee, they can be reopened, and your guests could explore them and see the delightful peacocks.”

Client’s Mother: “—fine, let’s do that. Can we get in extra peacocks if there’s not enough?”

Me: “Uh… I think the supply is limited to just those already on site.”

Client’s Mother: *Sniffs.* “Fine, as long as it brings us back on budget! And make sure the bloody peacocks always have their feathers out!” *Click.*

The click at first makes me think the line is dead, but I realise it’s just the client’s mother hanging up, but the line to the actual client is still active.

Client: “Sorry about mother. She and the church ladies all went to another wedding a few weeks ago, and all they could say about it was ‘it looked like it came in under budget,’ and now she’s a bit paranoid.”

Me: “Your wedding involves the releasing of doves, butterflies, and you and your groom depart in a horse-drawn carriage. And now there are peacocks. I don’t think you’ll be at risk of such remarks.”

Client: “You haven’t met the ladies from church. I could fly in on a bloody Pegasus and they would still taunt that we couldn’t spring for a dragon.”

I work in customer service for a company that helps set up catering orders. Organizations pay us, we pay the vendors, and the vendors handle the food. Most of the time, everything runs smoothly. Most of the time.

Today wasn’t one of those days. A customer called, saying their catering order never arrived. I checked with the vendor. Sometimes the vendors have driver shortages, so they outsource; in this case, they told me the order had gone out through [Delivery App]. No problem, I figured I’d just get proof of delivery and sort it out.

I reached out to [Delivery App] with the caterer, and instead of a standard delivery confirmation, they sent me a picture of the driver eating the food. Just sitting there, enjoying what was supposed to be the customer’s meal like he had ordered it for himself.

The vendor was hysterical. Let’s just say they weren’t happy, to say the least. When I asked [Delivery App] what was going to happen, they said the driver would likely be deactivated. As for why he took the food? His golden response:

“I don’t get paid enough, and this looked mad delish. Consider this my resignation.”

This wasn’t some small order, either; it was worth several hundred dollars. There was no tip on it since the customer’s organization does not allow them (some kinda contract, yadda yadda), but even if there had been, I doubt it would have made a difference. [Delivery App] covered the cost. All I can say is I hope that guy enjoyed his meal for fifty and the vendors learned their lesson.

A client wanted me to design a Super Sixteen birthday party for her autistic, anime-loving son. I was excited to help such a great cause, so I submitted a full-on anime proposal with activities, decor, entertainment, and refreshments.

Client: “I want the kids to bring gifts to donate to a charity for abused and neglected children.”

Me: “Great, okay!”

Client: “And I think we should invite the abused and neglected kids to the party.”

Me: “Okay, but they’re going to range from toddlers to teens.”

Client: “The party invitations need to say that the dress code is black tie.”

Me: “The abused and neglected kids probably aren’t going to have access to that kind of clothing, and they might feel out of place if everyone else is dressed up.”

Client: “…”

Client: “Oh, and since the party is in December, I want the color scheme to be red and green. You didn’t have any holiday decor in your proposal, and I want Christmas decorations everywhere.”

Me: “Your deposit refund is in the mail.”

This story reminded me of a very similar incident in a company I worked for. A (pretty important) manager wanted to have the centerpiece of his big presentation event mounted quite literally in the middle of thin air.

Me: “How? I mean, where would we affix it?”

Manager: “I don’t care. It is supposed to be right there.”

Me: “We could mount it on the wall and…”

Manager: “No! It is the centerpiece. We can’t put it at the side. It has to be here!”

Me: “Okay… Suspend it from the ceiling.”

Manager: “No way. It’s heavy, and if you put it up with ropes, it looks ugly.”

Me: “We could put it on a stand?”

Manager: “No, it has to look like it’s floating. Don’t you get it?”

At that point, finally, my boss butted in.

Boss: “Look, what you want would require a Siemens Airhook and we’re fresh out of them, so no can do!”

A “Siemens Airhook” or “Siemens Lufthaken” in German is a well-known in-joke between engineers when you want to mount something in an impossible way or at an impossible location, also very commonly something you send the apprentice to fetch from storage so the clerks there can have some fun with him, too. You have no idea what junk they often had the poor guys haul over to us.

The manager left, and we assumed he had finally gotten the hint.

An hour later, my boss got a call and started head-desking repeatedly.

Me: “Boss? What’s wrong?”

Boss: *Holding up the phone* “It’s procurement. That genius told them to buy an airhook, and they didn’t have the guts to tell him that it’s a joke item, so they ordered one.”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how our company became the first and only one to ever have a genuine Siemens Airhook delivered, from a supplier who played along with the joke, so nobody had to tell a bigwig that he was too stupid to get an engineer joke. 

Sadly, it was defective (it didn’t hover properly in the middle of thin air), and a replacement could not be delivered before the big event. But at least we got the supplier to cancel the order.

For a small fee…

Related:
Do You Know What “Hypothetical” Means?

I worked as a wedding planner for a specific venue for a long time. I got to know a lot of the wedding vendors and more specialized planners who worked on weddings held there. One planner in particular reached out to me about doing some work for her company, and I thought it could be a great opportunity.

She had a scheduling conflict with a fully planned wedding that was coming up in a few weeks (red flag there) and needed my help to execute and oversee the day-of planning.

The timing was so tight I wasn’t able to do a walkthrough with the clients beforehand, but she assured me it was all planned and just needed hands on the day of.

When I dug into the timeline and order of events to prep myself, I discovered that she had contracted out to the lowest bidder for everything.

It was at a site not usually used for weddings, so there was no infrastructure or amenities for events; everything came from an outside source. She had ice delivered from one company, bartenders hired from another, drinks delivered by another, etc. This went down to things like serve-ware rentals from one equipment company and tables/chairs from a separate one.

This meant that there were a TON of moving parts to account for on the wedding day. The serving staff had arrived, but the caterer delivering the appetizer platters had not, so they had nothing to actually serve. The serve-ware rentals had been delivered to another part of the property, so they didn’t know where they were to set things up.

It was a logistical nightmare, and it took every ounce of my focus to get things more or less running so they could actually get married and have somewhere to sit and something to eat.

The worst part? She recommended they book vendors this way to save money on individual line items, but they probably paid three times more in delivery and service fees than they would have going with a full-service company that provided, delivered, set up, and serviced everything.