Freaking Friday

After the civil ceremony the day once again got crazy.  I spent most of the day being pissed off at people, especially our wedding coordinator.  I know there are lots of last minute things to be taken care of (which is why one hires a wedding coordinator in the first place), but four days earlier he told us that the baker will drop of the cake at the ceremony site the morning of the wedding, but now he says we need to pick up the cake ourselves the day before.

He had lied.  I know that this is typical in Ecuador, but this time it really pissed me off.  When I confronted him regarding how he told me the baker was bringing the cake, he finally admitted that he had assumed that was the case, he hadn't actually asked.  He spends so much time on his mobile, it would have been so easy to ask.  I asked.  He assumed.  We did not pay him to assume.  And it turned out he couldn't pick it up because he had to finish the flowers.  He really dropped the ball on his job.  And that was just the beginning.

But after the civil ceremony we went to our final dance lesson (lesson #4).  We were actually looking pretty good by then, but the lesson definitely helped.  After that we had a quick lunch and went to meet the translator.  We hadn't been able to meet with her earlier and we almost fainted when she named her price - $50/hour!  No one here charges $50/hour.  No one here earns anything close (i.e., the salary for a professional with a bachelor's degree is more like $5/hour).  Apparently she had told the wedding coordinator it would be $150 for the whole day but when we met here the price had tripled!  Maybe our coordinator had misheard or mistyped the price?  We said thanks, but no, and then had another problem to deal with.  I think she jacked up her price because it was really last minute and she had other (social) plans, but still, we live in a last minute country and I found her pricing offensive.

Then to meet the wedding coordinator.  As I wrote earlier, he also did our flowers.  I think he took on too much.  I mean, the flowers were beautiful, but he really sucked as a wedding planner.  We had asked him for recommendations for catering, music, photographers, etc. and he would give us one choice, even though I specified I wanted more options.  And even though he said he didn't get any kickbacks for referrals, the options he gave us were all about 30% higher than what we eventually found on our own, through the help of friends and family.  Anyway, at this meeting we coordinated some last minute details, all of which could have been done on the phone thus I found the meeting pretty worthless.

Then we went to Carlos's parents house to coordinate getting the cake to the ceremony site and told Carlos that I thought he could handle all of this and I wanted to go to town to do some other last minute details.  He was a bit annoyed by this at the time, but I think once I left both of us were much less stressed.  If were were together we could only get one thing done.  I mean, if I were with him I would just be sitting in the car thinking about what else could be done (I should also mention that traffic was terrible the whole day, every car ride took about three times longer than it should have).  He went to get the cake with his brother-in-law and his parents brought it to Challuabamba along with all the sweets while he got a haircut and showered and got ready for our 7PM rehearsal dinner.

I returned to town and typed up documents that explained what the Jewish stuff was and where the bathroom was.  I was able to have a quick shower and dress, but suddenly it was quarter to seven and everyone was congregating to walk to dinner.