Photo by Hart & Sol Photo

Photo by Hart&Sol Photography

On the foot-tails of Jenny's post on why she hates the wedding industry yesterday, we had yet another adventure into the wedding world today. See, my lovely friend Melissa is getting married, and I am honored to be standing up as her bridesmaid at her wedding. Melissa chose Amsale dresses for the ladies, so today, Weston, Jenny and I took a ride to the Wedding Salon of Manhasset (almost an hour drive for me!) to try some dresses and see which one looked best on me. Let's back up here: last week, after checking the Amsale website, I called the bridesmaid division of the Wedding Salon of Manhasset and made an appointment to come try dresses. Bridesmaid department, as per the Amsale website, clearly is at 1468 Northern Boulevard, right? So, we show up there, take the baby out of the car, into the stroller, up in the elevator, and we end up in this gorgeous bridal salon.

Now, here is the funny part: they do not know why we are there. For all we know, we could be a bride coming to look for a wedding gown! Yes, I have a ring on it, but Ms. Jenny doesn't. Also, we were dressed nicely, we showed up on time. And yet, no one came to help us. Finally a woman came over, I told her why I was there and she's all: you're in the wrong spot. I explained, nicely, that their website said this was the location of the bridesmaid dresses, and she went into some fable about how they are moving stores, and eventually all of the dresses will be at once place...and I explained again how their website clearly was wrong. So, she wrote down on a piece of paper the new address: 1681 Northern Boulevard.



So, we do the whole routine in rewind, Weston is being a total trooper, and we end up at this shopping center. It says 1681, however, there's a Pure Barre store there, no sign of anything bridal...we loop around. I get out with the stroller and babe, Jenny parks, and she goes into Pure Barre to see what is up! The very nice girl in there says how they get that question of, "um, bridal salon?" all the time...because uh, the other bridal salon keeps telling people to go to 1681, when it is clearly, clearly not a bridal salon? Yeah, that's it. She tells us to go up the stairs to find the bridal salon. Mind you, the bridal salon, which ended up being upstairs, isn't even OVER 1681. Where they got that address from is totally beyond me.

We couldn't obviously go all the way up with the stroller, so we wheel all the way around, go up two big steps and into...what looked like someone's walk in closet. The woman at the desk looked so happy to see us extremely annoyed to be disturbed. I told her why I was there, nicely, and she barked at me, "What company?" "Amsale." "OVER THERE!" There was gesticulation and a head turn away. I knew what style I wanted to see, Jenny and I started through the dresses. She asked who my bride was and I said she wasn't getting her dress there. Then, she actually did offer to get the dresses for us, because you know, it is her job to know where they are...I went back into the dressing room, but was hesitant to take my shoes off due to the copious amount of staples and open safety pins on the floor. I tried the dresses on, and came out, Jenny asked her for clips to hold the dress up.

As the lady put the clips on me, she started barking angrily at everyone in the room, which mind you, included an extremely well behaved 7.5 month old (and us, that was all...). "Who sent you here!?" she angrily exclaimed. "Was it Bella Bridal?! They have been sending brides here all week!" I explained, calmly, that "my bride" wasn't from here, and I was just instructed to try on a dress. I had no clue (I really don't!) where she is getting her dress from. She kept going about wanting to know who "sent us," and finished with a very loud, "I will find out! I will! I will call Amsale myself!" Um, ok? I changed out of my dress and we got out of there as fast as possible.

So, why am I telling you all of this? For one thing, when I have a bad experience someplace, I want to warn people! I cannot for the life of me understand how in this day and age, when anyone can go Yelp, Blog, Tweet, etc. their experience why a customer service person, in the bridal industry, nonetheless, would be so rude. We were not rude once. Not once! We came in friendly, grateful, and ready to go. It isn't our fault that Bella Bridal was sending people there, so guess what, don't take it out on us! Because you know what? Jenny knows a lot of brides, as do I, and we sure as anything won't be sending our brides to the Wedding Salon of Manhasset. Their behavior was uncalled for, and left a really bad taste in our mouth. And lastly, don't you dare act any which way you please to me and my sister, and then try to be all friendly to the baby--it's not appreciated. Wedding Salon of Manhasset, get off your high horse: you are a wedding salon on Long Island. It's a big, big world. Readjust your attitude, because I can tell you: a smile goes a long, long way. I am sure that there are nice people who work there, but unfortunately we didn't encounter any of them today, and we didn't receive any apology or understanding that their addresses on the Amsale website are not correct. In an industry based on one special happy day, the wedding industry sure knows how to make every day leading up to it pretty miserable, eh?

For a person that is not engaged I spend a lot of time at weddings, after all my job is to marry people. Most of the time I get to float around the fringes of the wedding industrial complex. I don't have to deal with rude venue concierges, florists, wedding planners- I get to meet a great couple at the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge and walk with them to the center where we promptly get them married. When I DO see and meet other wedding vendors it's usually at events like Toasted BK, where exactly ALL of the vendors were smiling, happy and friendlier than you can even imagine. So when I come up against the traditional wedding venue, older vendor set and they are unsmiling, grumpy and rude- I am shocked and appalled. For a number of reasons. Today I ventured to a number of venues to drop off business cards and make introductions. I then got a call from a man who runs wedding expos. And I capped it off with a trip to the Bridal Salon to try on dresses for Melanie's wedding. A lot of wedding related stuff for a non-engaged person.

• I am a future bride, as far as they know I am a current bride. So when I walk into a venue or a bridal salon LOOK UP. SAY HELLO. IN SOME WAY RECOGNIZE I AM A HUMAN. WITH A CREDIT CARD. I went into two places today where the women were on the phone when I walked in- that is beyond okay- what's NOT okay is not even smiling in my direction. Put up one finger to show me you see me there. Give me the "go shop" hand wave. Literally anything. Instead both women acted like they didn't see me. In a third place the man was with a customer and flat out ignored me. I thought I had entered the wrong way and was interrupting. Well done, you made a potential client feel foolish and embarrassed. Might I add all this happened before any of them knew that I am not a bride and was not about to drop anywhere between two and twenty thousand dollars at their business. I told the woman at Crest Hollow Country Club (so lovely, her and the space) that all the difficult people were making it really, really easy for me to edit out places for when I am compiling my own lists. Thanks, haters!
• Planning a wedding is really stressful. I know from every angle. Know what doesn't help stress? Dealing with miserable people. Will it alleviate all your agita to deal with happy, smiling vendors? No- but it will make the whole planning process a little nicer, a little brighter. Listen, I know we vendors do this all the time- bride's anxieties can seem silly and dull to us. I get it, I am one of you [vendors]. But hopefully this is the bride or grooms only wedding. So would it hurt you to smile and act like you're actually excited for them? Who cares if you don't know them or they don't hire you? They're excited, it doesn't cost you anything to share in that. 

• Crest Hollow looked so cozy and warm on this yucky rainy day!

So, I'm pretty sure that the reason sisters exist in the world is to brag about yourself when you don't. Jenny is the first person to tell people that my students love me, that I'm a great mom, or that I survived open heart surgery. So, now it's my time to brag a little about my extremely humble little sister.

Photo from Katie Jane Photography

When Eric and I got engaged a while ago, we had had a friend in mind to officiate the wedding, but it didn't work out...Eric suggested we have Jenny officiate the wedding, since she knew us both (obviously) very well. So, we sat down with her, and came up with a beautiful ceremony and wonderful vows. We still agree that the best part of wedding planning was working with Jenny on that, and our favorite part of the wedding was the ceremony. So, when Jenny decided that she really enjoyed working on the ceremony and marrying people, we were all for her turning her passion into a career! To be honest, I'm her number one fan: I can't think of a person who is more skilled with lovely writing, sensitive to people's emotions, understands crazy families, is extremely efficient (fun fact: when coming up with her company's name we toyed around with the "efficient officiant"!), and really understand the greatness of wedding ceremonies (note: that they are vastly different than weddings). When Cheerleader for Love was launched, and then she did YAY NY, and then she started performing weddings in Central Park, on the Highline, at the top of the Empire State Building at midnight...I could see how much she loved her job. How much she loved seeing the joy in people's eyes when she joined them for life. Not only does she enjoy working with her couples, but she takes great pride in the people she marries. The decision to get married is not an easy one, and she gets that...no matter the couple.

Katie Jane Photography

Katie Jane Photography

Which is why, when she told me the following story, I was quite disturbed.

See, Jenny's company is called Cheerleader for Love because she is a huge proponent of love: no matter who loves whom. Many, in fact, most, of Jenny's wedding ceremonies are between same sex couples. But, the beauty of Jenny is that she never once, not ever, has seen it that way. To her, they are just couples. Just people in love who want to get married. She's just a fan of love, and she wants people in love to be happy. That's her simple mission.

Flash forward to her marrying people for over two years. She was let go from her nursery school position and decided it was THE TIME to really launch her company into a full-time life career. She invested money and time into marketing (you can see her at A Practical Wedding and Offbeat Bride), and decided to take a stab at The Knot...they promised their big numbers, their high traffic, their vendor pages...woo hoo. Except it wasn't all woo hoo: their website is incredibly difficult to navigate (I couldn't find her when I went to look for her), and even with their high traffic...she got one inquiry for a wedding. ONE. Now, let's be clear, it isn't for lack of weddings (she's been doing a ton!), but it's a really poorly mapped out design on their site. Anyway, after you pay The Knot a ton of money for ad space which is hard to find, apparently they call you to check in after a few months. Jenny told them that she had only gotten one wedding inquiry from their site, so the woman at The Knot said she would take a look at Jenny's page to check her stats. Well, apparently, it's not only difficult for the common person to find vendors on their site, but their own people--twenty minutes later she pulls up Cheerleader for Love's ad-space page and says,

"Were you aware that the first picture on your page is of lesbians?"

Okay. Stop.

First of all, obviously she's aware--she set up her page.

Secondly: what's the problem with THAT?

Obviously, there's some issue here. Of course she's aware of the photos she chose to show, she did that for a reason--she's open to performing all weddings, regardless of the couple's sexual orientation. Why would having a lesbian couple, or a gay couple, or a straight couple, deter someone else from hiring her as an officiant? What does it matter what sexual orientation of the couple she has in her photos? A wedding ceremony is a ceremony is a ceremony. Just like love is love is love. This just got my blood boiling. Furthermore, she got an email after that conversation asking her to pay another $1000 to advertise with their special "equality" pages for gay/lesbian weddings. Uh, why can't "those weddings" have ad space on the regular, "normal," ad space? Something about this whole situation doesn't sit right with me. That comment shouldn't have been made. Period.

[EDIT: Apparently, the "paying more for the equality page" is the fact that they are promoting their new LGBT wedding magazine, and you can pay for ad space in THAT...I believe. It was sort of confusing. Just wanted to clear that up.]

Jenny is the Cheerleader for Love because she truly believes in love and the power of the wedding ceremony. She does not see the photos of her couples and thinks, "that's a lesbian couple," "that's a gay couple," "that's a straight couple." She sees her couples and thinks, "they are in love, and I am so lucky to be the one to make them married!"


But, it's a new year (almost), so I'm going to let bygones be bygones, and Jenny is not re-upping her ad space with The Knot. We don't back institutions who don't love love. Speaking of the new year, Jenny is now booking up for 2014. She already has a bunch of weddings for January (hello, she's doing one on NYE! Too cool!). In the spirit of love and holidays, take a look at her brand new website, and pass the word on to any fresh meat newly engaged couples you know. You won't find a more caring, sensitive, wise, and efficient officiant out there. In this new generation of celebrating Hanukkah & Christmas, Easter & Passover, not being able to decide on a religion, believing in your own god/goddess/the internet, and religions of SoulCycle and yoga, here's the perfect addition to your wedding: an officiant who has no agenda except to marry YOU. An officiant who has nothing to preach except your story, and an officiant who only believes in one thing: the power of love.

And, now the braggart sister steps off her soap box.