This edition is about the parts of a wedding nobody quotes you for. The alterations that are not in the price of the dress, the album that is not in the price of the photography, the hours the bar runs for that are shorter than the night, and the person taking the flowers down at midnight. Most of it is published. Almost none of it is on the first page you are shown.
Of the photographers here who publish a style, almost all land on one of the same four adjectives. Ask instead who gets told where to stand, and when.
You will ask what he charges and how long he stays. Almost nobody asks how many pictures come back.
Thirty-three shops here put a price on the appointment itself. Printing it, beside the hour and the guest limit, is the friendliest thing on the page.
Eight bridal shops here publish a figure for what it costs to make a gown fit. At the other 165 it is not on the page, so it is not in your budget either.
Your quote covers building the wedding. Ask who takes it apart, what time they finish, and whether anyone is paying them.
You compared three photographers on the price of a day. The book is priced further down the same page.
The food is priced per head. The drinks are priced per head and by the hour, and the second number is the one nobody reads out.
Sixty-one florists here put a dollar figure against wedding work, and a dozen write out the whole ladder: what each budget level actually buys. You have to ask a different question to find it.
Eight of the 176 florists here name no funerals, no everyday delivery and no corporate work. What everybody else publishes tells you what they sell. It does not tell you what week you have booked.
One photographer publishes both of her clocks on the same page: weddings six to eighteen months ahead, family, maternity and newborn sessions two to six weeks. Your Saturday went into the diary first. The fortnight around it could not have.
