Service me with a smile now/You'll get a big tip

I recently found a document through my work-related research which suggested that if some one has a bad customer service experience they will relate the story to anyone who will listen for TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. Which means I only have another 19 years before I can stop telling the story of our wedding celebrant, about whom I struggle to say anything positive, despite my obvious enjoyment of our wedding.

Features of rotten Wedding Celebrants (and how my selection went awry)

1. “The best of a bad lot” is a head-smackingly stupid starting point. The celebrant (who shall be known as “Pepperpot”) who officiated at our wedding was “the least religious one”*. We had originally planned to be married by the Salvation Army, as we could give a (generous) donation to the Salvation Army instead of paying a civil celebrant. However, when we learned that the Salvos wouldn’t remove their references to God in the ceremony, they were struck off the list of potential marry-ers**. If you have to pay Elvis the yodelling celebrant to fly in from Auckland at great expense to the management, this is probably your better play.

2. They don’t like it when you make jokes about finding out that you might be brother and sister while you’re filling out the forms. Okay, so maybe they hear that one all the time. Or maybe, as evidenced by another anecdote***, Pepperpot was worried that IT MIGHT BE TRUE.

3. They’ve got a captive audience. You can have several hours of meetings with your celebrant. You can use the phrase “You know, Mr Fix and I aren’t really religious” SEVENTEEN THOUSAND TIMES and it may make no difference whatsoever to their predilection to the insertion of the words “god”, “heaven” and “holy” into your wedding ceremony. One of your options is breaking your hand-hold with aforementioned fiance and slapping them across the face. The other option is to grit your teeth and live with it. Neither of these things look good in photos.

4. They don’t really listen to what you want. They’ve got a system, girlie, and don’t you think about messing with it. If, for example, you are rude enough to suggest that your father won’t be “giving you away”, that’s your chance used up. Therefore, when you specifically outline to the celebrant that:

a. the groom’s mother is no longer with his father (and in fact that his father has passed away) and
b. that the groom and his mother’s new partner do not get along….

don’t expect that this is adequate reason for the celebrant to cut out of the ceremony the moment where the parents of both partners are asked to GIVE PERMISSION for the wedding to take place.

5. They don’t hold back if they see something they don’t like. I felt pretty good about our wedding. I was going to be surrounded by heaps of friends while expressing my love to my partner. The preparations on the day went well. I had the most elaborate hairstyle of my life. My dress was lovely. Of course, then I was made to sit in my parents’ bedroom for half-an-hour with tissues stuffed under my arms so I didn’t sweat all over my dress and no company****. Then, I flicked the hem of my dress up to pull down the petticoat underneath, SMEARING RED LIPSTICK ALL OVER MY DRESS IN THE PROCESS. The end result of this was my mother’s best friend drying the dress from the inside with a hair-dryer (a great look) and a major panic attack by me. My mother very sensibly decided at this point that I needed to hang out with my friends. She shuffled me outside and put a glass of champagne in my hand. The moment she did, there was a stridently pointing finger from across the back garden and a booming voice cried:

“WHAT IS SHE DOING OUT HERE? SHE CAN’T BE OUT HERE!”

No doubt my long-suffering mother at this point ushered her over to the corner for an unfeasibly large brandy while Pepperpot contemplated how shortened the partnership of myself and Mr Fix would be with all this bad luck and lack of tradition*****.

6. They expect dinner. Were we not surrounded by friends with a drink in one hand and a huge plate of fabulous finger-food in the other, I doubt very much if we could have controlled our irritation towards the celebrant at our wedding. However, we were lucky, as she had another wedding to rush off to*****. I didn’t send her away with a doggie bag.

I have recently found out through a new-ish friend aiming to be a celebrant himself that wedding celebrants are subject to all kinds of rules about “customer satisfaction” and it would have been possible to report her to the “appropriate authorities”. I'm sure there's also some kind of statute of limitations or the like. Whatevs. At least I got a blog post out of it.

Next installment: Preparation is everything - things to consider when arriving at your reception


* The other two can be described thus: Wedding Celebrant Contestant #1 – former vice principal of primary school, frightened children as was missing half-a-thumb through wood-working accident. Wedding Celebrant Contestant #2 – complete religious nutter who was too extreme for local Catholic Church and had taken his very own special brand of fanatacism to new levels. Or as my dad liked to call him, “I’m not having that f—kwit on my property”.

** It’s probably worth noting at this point that I don’t mind other people’s religious services. I just thought it was a bit hypocritical to go that way ourselves, when we are not the least bit religious.

*** I have the same first name as Mr Fix’s sister. At the height of its hilarity, this caused a friend of AV’s severe consternation because he thought that we were a brother and sister with a really close relationship.

**** Bridesmaids had abandoned me at this point to hang out with other friends outside. Typical/understandable.

***** In your FACE, loser….we’ve been married for nine years.

****** No doubt a “better” one than ours.