The leading lady has been fitted for her costume and stands ready to make her entrance. A small army has been working behind the scenes to build the set, and they will continue throughout the evening to make the performance run smoothly. The room is filled with people who have had the date on their calendars for quite some time. The lights dim, the music starts, and show begins.
Wait—is this an opera or a wedding? Having planned one, you are well primed to manage the other, and each event offers insight into how to plan and produce any occasion that brings together lots of people in front of an audience.
Stick to Your Budget
A wedding or an opera can easily cost more than you think, so begin working right away to negotiate wherever you can—and never pay the full price for something unless you absolutely have to. For example, venues—for weddings or performances, or both, since one space can have many uses—are always, always negotiable. It’s worth asking if a different date or time would lower the price, or if someone in your circle can arrange for a lower cost. I could not have produced an opera without free rehearsal space, made possible by a connection from one of my crew members. And be stingy with the details. An 80-dollar fountain pen to sign your marriage certificate? An extra hundred bucks for fancy programs? Skip ’em.
Delegate, Delegate, Delegate
If the night before the big day you find yourself painting the set or scooping custom M&Ms into crinoline bags, you’ve done something wrong. You will be a happier performer—whatever the occasion—if you give other people tasks and let them take ownership of their own work. At my wedding, I wanted a ratatouille-on-toast hors d’oeuvre. Instead, I got steak on a stick. I didn’t want pink, but the place looked like it was hosed down with Pepto-Bismol. But food and decorations were being done—and paid for—by others, so it was out of my hands.
As a bride or as a producer, you are hiring vendors to support your production. In either role it is easy to feel the need to control every detail of an event that was your idea to begin with. At the same time, those vendors —whether it’s a wedding director or a stage director—have an expertise that you don’t and that might make the event even better than you expected. (My pink bouquet was really quite lovely.) Conceiving of an idea and then trying to execute every minute detail is a lonely task. Give people a framework and then let them get the job done.
To assure the best outcome of any production, make sure you do your due diligence. If you are hiring someone—even if it’s a friend—you are completely within your rights to ask for references and work samples and to conduct an interview in which you discuss the task at hand. If all goes well, the vendor will use their professional skills to exceed your expectations. It can be difficult to let go of control of some aspects of the production, but allowing a creative person that freedom will help him do his best work, possibly bringing new things to the project that you didn’t know would work so well.
If your vendor proves incompetent or wants to pursue ideas that seem to damage the music you’re trying to serve, you have two choices: 1) fire him, if you have time to find a replacement, or 2) live with it, do the best you can in spite of him, and never work with him again. As a producer, you will have plenty of other shows to create. As a bride . . . well, you might not have too many other chances to plan a wedding, but remember that details that seem big to you are probably smaller in perspective.
Focus on the Big Picture, Let the Rest Go
A wedding and a performance share a similar goal: a festive event that brings diverse people together for a meaningful shared experience. At any event, whether it’s a wedding or a concert, the audience doesn’t know about the other options that were considered before the performance went up. No one walked away from my wedding saying, “How come they didn’t have ratatouille on toast?” If you have a vision of a traditional opera production, but your director runs with a well conceived avant-garde interpretation, run with it too. You might be surprised at the result—and if all your performers commit to it, the audience won’t be the wiser.
Seating
They tell you this will be the biggest pain in the neck for your wedding, and they aren’t kidding. Trying to keep everyone happy while adhering to the complicated geometry of catering seating charts requires a degree in astrophysics. But while wedding seating might just be a matter of Cousin Stanley can’t sit next to Aunt Bertha, event ticketing is even more complex. The simplest thing to do is just charge at the door, have a volunteer take tickets, and let people sit where they’d like.
But say you’re working with a presenter, you’ve got press coming who need good seats, you’ve promised comps to some and reserved paid seats for others, certain VIPs are asking for tickets to a sold-out show, and at the last minute your mother calls and says, “Why didn’t you save a seat for me?” In order to avoid double-booked seats and chaos in the aisles, make sure the presenter tells you exactly what your options are (e.g., how many comps they will offer you, where they can seat VIPs, and how many) and keep things as simple for yourself as possible. That is, maybe you won’t make any promises about seating to VIPs—and tell mom in advance that she needs to buy her own tickets.
Do Anything Ahead of Time That You Possibly Can
The larger the production, the more the variables, and the greater the chances that issues will come up at the last minute and things will go wrong. In the week before my last opera production, a dancer broke her foot, last-minute technical requirements meant that much of the staging needed to be reworked, I came down with a sinus infection, the venue asked if we’d like to perform the show a second time, and we sold out just after I had promised comps to a dozen people.
The week of my wedding, the dress didn’t fit, the cake lady disappeared, my officiant turned out to be not quite legal, and FedEx lost our calligraphed wedding certificate. Each of these issues required at least a half day’s worth of attention, phone calls, and emails. In both cases, I sort of wished that I wasn’t still trying to get my program printed on top of everything else. In any large production, much of the work happens up front with a lull until just before the big day. Make sure you use that lull to take care of things that don’t need to be done at the last minute. Believe me, you’ll have plenty of other things to do.
Thank You Notes
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I love writing thank you notes. When else in today’s world do you get to use your best pen and pretty paper to brighten someone’s day? Thank you notes are expected for your wedding gifts and are a very nice touch after a music production. If you aren’t paying performers top dollar, the least you can do is thank them sincerely for their time and efforts. It will make you feel good too.
Whether it’s an opera or a wedding, organizing a performance takes a lot of effort and energy. But with a little forethought—and remembering why you’re undertaking this project to begin with—you will plan a beautiful event and even enjoy it, too. Here’s wishing you years of musical bliss.
