Check your vendors on Better Business Bureau

Go. Right now.  And look up all of your vendors on the Better Business Bureau’s website.  I’ll wait.

Done?  Feel better?

A couple days ago I realized that things were getting close and I still had no schedule for the wedding day.  So I set about calling everyone to confirm when and where they’d show up.  My first frantic call was to the jewelry store that was engraving our rings—they were a week late because of the valentine’s day rush and I was afraid we wouldn’t have our rings to use at the ceremony.  But they’d rushed them through for us and were ready, so I ran over to pick them up on my lunch break.  Before I left I got the phone numbers for our minister and photographer.

The minister was fine—I left a message at the church to have him call me back and dialed the photographer’s number.  But it was disconnected.  I had a brief flash of fear when I thought about how his website hadn’t been working on my computer—I’d had to find the number in an email since the site wouldn’t open.  But I thought I’d just written it down wrong.  Nope.  Phone line, gone.  Website, gone. $500 deposit?  Oh, yeah.  Gone.

His personal number is in one of those online telephone directories, so I called and left a plaintive message hoping that this was a misunderstanding and asking for my money back, which of course was never returned.

And then I checked out the BBB.  He’s got an ‘F’ rating because he’s done this before to people.  One poor bride wrote that she had paid $2000, and had him shoot her wedding before he disappeared—with all of her wedding pictures.  She’s never seen them, and her attempts to sue him haven’t gone anywhere.

Thank God my friend’s uncle is a wedding photographer.  He had been asking about taking some pictures of us for his portfolio anyway (he wants to expand his business and has only shot a few gay weddings), so when I called in a desperate muddle he dropped everything he had planned this weekend and also dropped his fee down to help compensate us for the plane ticket and even the lost deposit with the other guy.  In some ways it’s really wonderful because as soon as I saw his website (after we’d already signed the other contract, way back in August) I was sad that he couldn’t be our photographer.  I’m looking forward to working with him, and I know that our pictures will be gorgeous (and, more importantly, extant).

So a word to the wise: check all of your vendors on the BBB before you hire them. All of our vendors on So You’re Engayged have been vetted through 3^rd party websites and personal interactions, but I would still say that the 5 minutes you spend checking up with the BBB is worth your peace of mind.

In unrelated, but still important things you should check way before we did, go and have a look at your passport.  When does it expire?  Because Lynn’s expires exactly 2 days into our honeymoon, which is a problem since most countries want to see 6 months on there.

I’m glad I made that particular bad joke late last night.  She’s got an appointment with the passport office (which thankfully is in Chicago—if we were farther away from all of these consulates we’d be in real trouble) to see if they can help her—luckily they had an appointment open before she leaves for Florida—about 6 hours before she leaves, that is.  Um, so we’re hoping that we’ll both be on honeymoon after the wedding.