We are two weeks away from the wedding of my oldest daughter and it feels as if life is ready to crush me from stress. The stress level is not from the upcoming wedding (I've left that to my wife and daughter) rather it comes from this week's international event. My team and I have the honor of hosting a two day meeting of twenty international CEOs from our company. By Friday, when it's all over, the wedding will look like a minor blip on the radar screen.
We have secured the wedding site (Oxnard, CA), selected the minister (
Erik Kirk), chose the band (The Others), mailed the ordered invitations, and prepared the guest list. So two major decisions facing mom, dad and the bride would be deciding on the baker for the wedding cake and the florist. The baker was an easy pick so let's talk about the story behind the florist.
Mom and the bride-to-be (BTB) made arrangements to head to Oxnard and visit two bakeries and two florists. The first florist was, well we'll call him Eduardo in Oxnard (not his real name). Mom and the BTB arrived on time at 10 a.m; Eduardo greeted them with a heavy accent, "You know flowers cause I can do dat?" They showed him examples using color photos of centerpieces and other flower arrangements. All he could say was "I can do dat." Mom and the BTB basically gave him all the ideas including flower names, which was not what they are good at. He didn't offer any suggestions but rather had them go through books and books of floral arrangements until they found something they liked, showed it to Eduardo, and then he said, "I can do dat". At this point the BTB was getting panicky and wondered if Eduardo could disappear (she had a vision of him saying, "I can do dat). Finally, their time with Eduardo had come to an end (and then some) so they headed out to their next appointment; of course by now they were running late for their second appointment in the lobby of the wedding hotel.
The Mandalay Beach Resort was the site for their appointments with one of bakers. At the first appointment the baker had cake samples in a "take out" Styrofoam container. As the mom and BTB sat at a table by the hotel restaurant, they tasted the cakes. Although the cake was good-the variety of cake flavors was limited and the lack of a professional setting for the cake tasting was a little scary. It was like driving through a fast food restaurant and saying, "Can I have a number three for two hundred guests?" Like the florist that was ultimately selected, the baker they felt comfortable with was professional, owned their own shop, and offered fresh made samples on individual plates. For mom and the BTB, it was about two vendors who had professional looking shops and came across like they could deliver.
Next up, dad's big visit with international CEOs is over and the clan starts arriving from the state of Washington, Maryland, and Florida, four days before the wedding. Looks like the Puerto Rican compound (our house) will have to hang out the NO VACANCY sign.