Before We Begin
This is the first chapter in a series of real-life event horror stories. Every story is true. Names and certain details may occasionally be changed to protect the privacy of those involved, but the events themselves are real.
One of the biggest misconceptions about events is that success comes from everything going according to plan. In reality, success often comes from what happens when things don’t. No amount of planning can eliminate every risk. Storms arrive. Suppliers disappear. Venues make mistakes. Bureaucracy intervenes. Occasionally, a bride and a funeral end up scheduled to arrive at the same place at the same time.
The job of an event planner is not to prevent every possible disaster. The job is to stop disaster from becoming catastrophe.
This series is a collection of stories from the field: the absurd, the stressful, and the occasionally surreal situations that unfolded behind the scenes of otherwise beautiful events.
Because in events, shit happens. The trick is making sure it doesn’t hit the fan.
THE BRIDE AND THE COFFIN
The day this unlikely wedding planner found herself coordinating a bride and a hearse.
🎵 Recommended soundtrack while you read: anything from Goran Bregovic. LINK TO MUSIC
Event planners are risk-adverse creatures. They know that playing safe is always the best viable option but that, despite all precaution, worst case scenario planning and preparation, shit can still hit the fan, and occasionally it’s completely beyond their control. It’s happened to me a number of times throughout my career and in one event in particular things got pretty surreal. This case involved a wedding, a funeral and ten of the most stressful minutes of my professional life.
I’ll give you a bit of context.
My clients had decided to have their civil ceremony in the old town of a beautiful village surrounded by an ancient covered walkway. Imagine a lovely Italian village, beautifully maintained, enclosed within old defensive walls. Inside stood the town hall, a church, a couple of restaurants and, of course, people’s homes.
Running along the walls was the said circular walkway from which you could admire both the surrounding countryside and the newer part of the town beyond the ancient walls. It was incredibly charming and one of the reasons the couple had fallen in love with this location.
We had visited several times and had always worked closely with the deputy mayor, Giulia, a polite, welcoming and highly professional person. She genuinely loved her town, located in the heart of a renowned wine region, and proudly showed us around, sharing its history and traditions.
Nothing had been left to chance.
All the paperwork had been submitted and approved. A specific section of the ancient walkway had been reserved and paid for. Every supplier had visited the site and knew exactly what they were doing.
Everything was in place.
The plan was simple. The bride would be driven into the old town and dropped off as close as possible to the ceremony location before making her entrance.
Like many historic walled villages, there was only one vehicle access point: a road leading directly into the main square, where both the town hall and church were located and where the guests would gather before the ceremony.
This detail would soon become very important.
This was the last wedding of the season and, to put it mildly, a few events that year had been “eventful” — excuse the pun. We had dealt with storms, collapsed bridges, difficult venue owners and various other forms of chaos. When enough things go wrong, you start expecting something to happen. Not hoping, of course, but expecting. Which is precisely why the complete absence of drama felt so strange on this occasion. The sun was shining, the vendors were on top of things and the bride and groom were an absolute dream to work with.
We met our fantastic couple the day before the wedding for the rehearsal and a final run-through at the venue, a wine estate just outside the village. Everything was perfect.
In fact, something almost unheard of happened: by 3pm we had finished all the preparations. No emergencies, no last-minute supplier calls, no unexpected problems. We went through our to-do list and every single item had been crossed off.
We had booked a lovely B&B nearby that also happened to have a swimming pool and, for the first time in a very long while, we allowed ourselves to relax. We even put our bikinis on and went for a swim.
We slowly started to accept that perhaps, on this occasion, there would be no drama.
Looking back, alarm bells should probably have started ringing.
I was lying on a sunbed when Chiara, resting her arms on the edge of the pool, looked at me and said: “Something isn’t right.” I knew exactly what she meant.
Everything felt suspiciously peaceful. After the season we had had, we were both waiting for the phone to ring and for someone to need rescuing from a crisis of some sort. But nobody called. My phone lay abandoned on the deckchair beside me, silent and uncared for.
We swam a little longer and then headed into town for dinner. The restaurant happened to sit directly beneath the famous walkway, which we could admire from below. We ate well, drank a glass of wine, chatted and laughed. Maybe, for once, no cortisol would be released. We headed back to the B&B and went to bed.
Early the following morning I woke up before dawn, as I usually do in general and even more so before an event as on event days I never sleep particularly well. I had been lying awake for a while before eventually giving up and getting in the shower.
Afterwards, I switched my phone on and there it was: a voicemail from an unknown number.
What now?
I listened to it.
“Elisa, this is Giulia. We have a MASSIVE problem. Call me back as soon as possible.”
F**K.
I called her back, attempting to sound calm and friendly despite the fact that it was six o’clock in the morning or something, and I was already stressing out.
“There is a problem, Elisa. Unfortunately, one of the town hall employees has made a very serious mistake.”
“What mistake, Giulia?” I asked, doing my best to keep my cool.
“He has booked a funeral at the same time as the wedding. In the church on the square”.
There it was. The drama we had been waiting for. I calmly lost my shit. Internally, of course.
“How is that possible? This area was booked a year ago” I said “We cannot have a hearse entering the square at the same time as the bridal car. That’s completely out of the question”
“We cannot simply cancel it,” she replied. “It’s the funeral of someone from the village. The funeral has to happen.”
“In Italy there are more churches than people. Did the genius who made this booking not think of using another one?”
“Yes, he should have. But he didn’t. The booking was made and I only found out last night” she said.
I was angry, worried and just mentally exhausted.
“Giulia, how do we solve this? Let’s find a solution.”
In the meantime, Chiara had woken up. She quickly gathered that something was wrong and, after listening to a summary of the situation, offered what was simultaneously a very wise and a very hippy observation.
“The universe keeps sending you messages and they all point towards the same conclusion: stop doing weddings.”
To be honest, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Bloody hell, I never really liked weddings, anyway!
For some time I had been thinking about stepping away from weddings and focusing on other areas of the business. Since Covid, the industry had changed and, if I am honest, so had I. Budgets had shrunk, other planners from the region were working for pennies (which I would not do) and I was increasingly splitting my attention between weddings and the two hospitality businesses we had launched in 2020.
The truth is that I was exhausted. Yet, like many self-employed people, I kept saying yes to new projects because turning down work always felt more frightening than taking on too much. Besides, my clients were always wonderful and this particular couple had been a joy from the start.
Still, this was hardly the moment for an existential crisis. I had a wedding to save for goodness’ sakes.
A little while later Giulia called me back.
She had somehow managed to persuade the funeral home to postpone the service by fifteen minutes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It would give us just enough breathing room to get the bride into the square, out of the car and onto the walkway before the hearse arrived.
All of this, of course, depended on the bride being on time.
Under normal circumstances, coordinating the arrival of a bride already requires a fair amount of planning and precision. On this occasion, however, everything would have to run like clockwork so that the happy, joyful party would not bump into the goths.
This raised another question: how much of this should I tell the bride and groom?
I decided not to say anything other than for some reason we had to move the area of the welcome drink. I could not add to the pressure and potentially spoil a moment that was already delicate. In this particular case there were fragile family dynamics at play too. The bride’s father and his new wife for instance had decided not to come at the last minute and, more than anything I really liked her, and just wanted her to have the best possible day.
Now all we had to do was make sure everything happened exactly on time.
The guests arrived and we guided them to the new welcome drink location which was actually really charming. The groom and his friends arrived too and everyone was nice and relaxed.
At the appropriate moment I alerted the bride and her driver that they could make their way to the village. The car arrived quickly and waited just outside the town walls while Chiara got the guests to finish their drinks and slowly make their way to the ceremony area.
Then the real operation began.
I stationed myself at the entrance to the old town, the only possible access point to the square, standing above it like a pirate in a crow’s nest. From there I was totally in control, as I could see both roads leading towards the centre.
Imagine the scene.
Thirty metres down the road on my right, the bridal car sat hidden and waiting.
Straight ahead, in the distance, I could see the hearse approaching, about 300 metres away or so.
Giulia was my accomplice, lurking nearby and ready to potentially distract the funeral procession in any way necessary to allow my bride to make her entrance in peace.
It was completely surreal. Imagine Kusturica meets James Bond — me being an absurd version of James Bond, naturally.
I signalled to the driver. The bridal car started moving towards the square. At the same time, the funeral procession continued its approach, blissfully unaware of the covert operation unfolding around it.
The car entered the old town and parked at the far end of the square, beyond the church. The bride stepped out and I positioned her near the entrance to the walkway.
The groom was already in place. Chiara gave the signal to the musicians and the entrance music began.
Off she went.
As I turned around, I saw the hearse enter the square. It parked in front of the church, the coffin was taken out and the mourners slowly made their way inside for the funeral. I leaned back against the wall and let out a long sigh. We had made it, but what a ride.
The real question now was: would the bride and the coffin end up crossing paths when the two ceremonies finished? To prevent this from happening, Giulia arranged for bottles of local wine and glasses to be delivered to the walkway so that, shortly after the ceremony, the couple and their guests were surprised with an impromptu aperitivo which was greatly appreciated.
Under normal circumstances this would have disrupted our timeline, but on this occasion it was exactly the distraction we needed. While the wedding party enjoyed an unexpected glass of wine and admired the view, the funeral came to an end and the mourners dispersed.
I do love it when a plan comes together.
The rest of the wedding went remarkably smoothly. Everyone had a fantastic day and by 1am we were back at the b&b, finally able to laugh about the surreal situation we had experienced.
No amount of preparation can prevent a situation like this but, forgive me while I briefly channel a life coach, like anything in life it’s about how you react to it. And I am not suggesting that you cannot lose your nerves, swear profusely or feel utterly desperate for a moment — look up the word bestemmia if you need further clarification. All of that is perfectly acceptable.
What matters is that, eventually, you stop panicking and start solving the problem.
Will your nerves wear out, season after season? Absolutely. Will you occasionally curse the day you decided to work in events? Without question. Will the universe continue to send increasingly obvious signs that perhaps you should do something else with your life? Apparently so. Has it managed to stop me from working in events? Nope.
The thing is: this industry is addictive. Besides, if a bride and a hearse arriving in the same square couldn’t stop me, I am not entirely sure what will.
Written by Elisa Generali
