When we meet with clients, we are asked a whole variety of questions. Some brides come in with a typewritten list of questions, provided by their friends, family, and popular wedding websites such as The Knot. We usually fire through the questions, providing accurate and honest answers to help the client make an educated decision on which vendor is most fitting for them and their big day.
Recently, however, I was asked a question I hadn’t been asked in a while: “When was the last time you missed a wedding?” Wow. That caught me off guard a bit. Normally, I can answer questions quickly, having been asked the question many times before, but this one I had to think about. “Hmmm, I don’t think we’ve ever missed a wedding.” Then, I thought about it a little more…. “As a matter of fact, yes, we missed three weddings, all in the same day!”
The date was Saturday, October 17, 1998. The city of San Antonio had flooded. At the time, it was the most rainfall ever recorded in the city in a five-day period, 15.66” (this was surpassed later by another flood in 2002). The flood killed at least 25 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages across the Hill Country and surrounding counties. At the time, there was only one road open to get to our warehouse, but most roads to the venues where we had scheduled weddings were closed. We had to break the news to our wedding clients that we just couldn’t get to their wedding. Those were some tough phone calls, as we had never experienced anything like that before.
It turns out that our missing those events wasn’t as devastating as you might think. Since we couldn’t get to those events, most of the guests couldn’t either. If I remember correctly, I believe one event went on as scheduled, with a small handful of guests showing up (they probably swam there) and they turned their reception into a “Flood Party.” The other two weddings were re-scheduled to other dates.
The point being is that is usually what it takes, a natural disaster, or an act-of-God, for us to miss an event. Whenever you book a vendor, either a San Antonio DJ or ANY vendor, ask them what their backup plan is. What do they do in the event of an illness or family emergency? Who do they turn to if something happens to them? Whether it’s once a year, or once every 20 years, that one day when they miss an event you don’t want that to fall on YOUR wedding day.
