About 24 hours after the ring is on the finger, the stress of wedding planning begins.
It’s easy to pinpoint the moment it starts: When the delighted couple, still riding high, is asked by an aunt or a cousin or a nosy neighbor whether they have chosen a date. Or a venue. Or how many people they plan to invite. And then the floodgates open. For the foreseeable future, the betrothed have to contend with the agonizing ordeal of aligning venues, caterers, and Chiavari chairs on the exact calendar date of their choosing.
If you could put a price on avoiding all that angst, what would you pay? For David Bower and Nezha Mediouni, it was a cool $36,000. That’s how much the couple plunked down to purchase an all-inclusive wedding package on the luxury sale site Gilt.com last spring. They were married at the Boston Harbor Hotel on April 7.
Now, to be clear, Bower, a health care consultant, and Mediouni, the head of US finance and accounting for a consulting firm, don’t have a habit of making rash decisions. The duo met as co-workers at a Boston consulting firm five years ago, and as their friendship slowly evolved into courtship, Mediouni learned that being with Bower meant living with his “cautious” way of making choices. For Bower, merely picking out running shoes or luggage is a painstaking process. Before they got engaged, the couple made several three-hour trips to a jeweler in the Berkshires to decide on the perfect ring.
“He likes to know all of the options,” she said. “It takes forever.”
“Once I find the best thing, I keep it forever,” he said, matter-of-factly.
But when it came time to plan their wedding, Bower surprised her.
The couple had been struggling to find a venue since they got engaged in the spring of 2017; many Boston-area sites were already booked for 2018, and every time they thought they had landed on a site for a destination wedding, Mother Nature intervened.
Honduras, where Bower has a nonprofit organization, was hit by hurricanes.
“We were also considering going to Napa,” Mediouni said, “and then that caught fire.”
Mediouni was about ready to tie the knot at City Hall when she noticed a listing on Gilt.com: For $36,000, a couple could purchase an entire wedding at the Boston Harbor Hotel. The package included a five-hour reception for 100 guests, an open bar and sit-down dinner, and a wedding planner. Many of the vendors, including Winston Flowers and the live DJ, were also part of the deal, as were all the taxes and fees.
“Make planning your Big Day a breeze,” the listing promised.
Mediouni sent it to Bower as kind of a joke, but Bower jumped into action. He worked across the street from the Harbor Hotel, and unbeknownst to Mediouni, marched in and talked to the planner, Ted Daniels, about the package the same day it was posted online. He came away feeling like it was a good deal.
“There was so much value there,” he said, noting that the typical food and beverage minimum at the hotel for a wedding is almost double what the package cost.
Surprising even himself, he told Mediouni he was game. And after she took a tour, they decided to give it a go.
“I pushed the button on Gilt, and it charged the credit card and it was done,” Bower said. “What surprised me the most was that the credit card didn’t even send me an e-mail that said, ‘Is this fraud?’ I was waiting for it to get declined.”
Gilt has offered a handful of all-inclusive wedding packages on the site in the past five years, said a company spokesperson, and this was the second time one was offered at the Boston Harbor Hotel. Other wedding packages have been sold in New York, San Diego, Miami, and Atlanta.
Selling the Gilt deal made sense to help fill in empty dates on their events calendar, said Heather Greenbaum, the Boston Harbor Hotel’s public relations manager.
“As many weddings as you do, you can always do more,” she joked. “This takes a lot of the thinking out of it, as the vendors are already lined up. It’s less stressful for the bride and groom.”
Not that decisions didn’t still need to be made. Mediouni and Bower had to work with the vendors to pick out the menu, flowers, and other details offered in the package. And they had to factor in the planning and costs for all the outside expenses, such as tuxes and dresses, rings, the photographer, and a rehearsal dinner, which tallied up to nearly as much as the package itself.
Bower and Mediouni admit that even with fewer choices to make, they were still nervous. They worried that somehow they’d be treated like second-class citizens at the five-star hotel or treated as an afterthought by the vendors. And while there were a few hiccups as they got to know the various players involved — “it felt like being on a first date,” Bower said, only they were already committed — the couple said they were pleasantly surprised that they were still able to plan something unique.
As for the big day itself, the couple said things went off swimmingly. “[Daniels] just did a phenomenal job, they have an amazing facility and amazing planners,” Bower said.
“Everyone was raving about the food,” Mediouni said. “The cake was just so good, people were going back for seconds.”
The couple said one of the best things about booking their wedding on the Web was being able to walk away without any outstanding costs. They paid off the $36,000 credit card bill shortly after the booking and walked out of the venue without any invoices to worry about. “It was one of those things that you knew you were going to be more stressed out as you know the bills are coming in,” Bower said of booking a more traditional wedding.
“If I had to do it again, I’d do it again,” Mediouni said.
[“Source-bostonglobe”]