The Pen… er, Keyboard is Mightier than the Sword.

Now that the wedding is a little less than 8 months away, we’re back in the thick of planning. Around this point, according to some “countdowns,” we should be discussing the rehearsal dinner, doing menu tastings at the venue and planning the honeymoon. Because we have so many out of town guests attending, we’re also looking at invitations, to get them out ASAP so that everyone may make hotel plans, etc.

Everything’s going pretty well on the hunt for invitations, as we narrow it down to something that we all agree on. Some vendors just don’t quite cut it, while others are really wonderful both in service and selection. We’re still waiting for a couple of samples in the mail, which I find myself actually looking forward to. And questioning my sanity, because come ON. I’m excited for paper products?! Really?!

Things haven’t been quite as easy with the venue at this point… I started trying about two weeks ago to contact the banquet manager to schedule our tasting for the beginning of March. Each time I called, I was transferred to (seemingly to me) the wrong area, and got an answering machine. I also decided to send an email, thinking that might be a more concise way to contact this individual. Alas, no response whatsoever.

Momma Darcy was getting anxious at this point, and I asked if she’d mind lending her expertise to this particular situation. She made some phone calls, and the mystery was solved! The person who was banquet manager when we signed our contract had been… ahem… demoted….and his position filled by someone new. Out of courtesy, he could have responded to my email to direct me to the right person, but hey. His skills clearly weren’t high in the customer service area.

Momma Darcy also shared that she’d discussed the menu tasting with the new banquet manager, and was slightly less than thrilled with the result. We weren’t going to get the option to taste some of what we’d been promised, and since we’d already eaten at the venue’s phenomenal restaurant a few weeks earlier, we were going to skip a tasting altogether.

This, my friends, is the first time Bridezilla raised her ugly head. Because this? Was bull. What bride wants to go into her wedding day having blindly picked her menu choices because of retroactive changes to the way the venue is doing things? Not I! I let Momma Darcy know as much, and also shared that TO THIS POINT, I was less than pleased with the way things had been handled. I understood that there was now someone new and (hopefully) more competent dealing with events, but that we needed some ass-kissing flexibility and we needed it now.

Momma Darcy agreed, and decided to call back the new banquet manager.*

My office phone rang slightly thereafter, and Mom sounded triumphant.

“We will be having our tasting, with the agreed upon items, on such and such day.”

“Wow Mom, I’m impressed!” I responded, genuinely surprised.

“She’s very nice and understanding, and wanted to make sure that we weren’t regretting choosing the venue for your day. And…” she trailed off, suddenly sounding sheepish.

“What?”

“Um… I may have dropped that you’re a writer.”

“MOM.”

“WHAT?! You are!! And I just let her know that you are very active writing online and that a good review for the venue on certain websites would be very good for them at this point…”

“MOM. I’m not even a GOOD writer!! I get… well, not a lot of hits!”

Anyway, regardless of whether I AM a big name or not, the fact of the matter is this: do I think that the little tidbit about me being a blogger was a help in the situation? Are WE really that important??

Damn right we are.

*I have to add, for the sake of honesty, the new woman is LOVELY and spent a lot of time making sure that all three of us were on the same page as to what to expect now that she had taken over. And I am still VERY excited that we’re going to be having our wedding at this gorgeous place.