Managing Expectations

I work in customer service in a company where people have very high expectations of the experience that they receive. I came there from the Royal Opera House where I worked as an usher and later an usher manager. Unsurprisingly, the House also had very high customer anticipations. I also happen to lecture bored looking students on ‘customer expectation’. It came as no surprise therefore to find the wedding game has as many (or more) problems with managing high expectation as any other business.

You know and I know that this blog is ridiculous for many reasons. The very fact that I am writing articles about one day in my life and whether I will cope with it without turning into some kind of insane killing machine is in itself pretty absurd and not a little insulting to our intelligence. But the more I go on, the more the whole thing fascinates me. I am genuinely enjoying this indulgent journey into the day of possibly the Highest Customer Expectation any person will ever experience, whether they are bride, groom or [insert position near to the bride or groom] other. And I think I may have got to the bottom of why this one day, one in the average human’s 25, 000 days on the planet is such a massively joyful, stressful, ball ache to arrange. It all comes from what we Expect.

Customer Expectation is what the customer thinks should happen and how they think they should be treated when receiving it. Let’s be clear, expect is different to want. Wanting is something you would like, but understand you can’t necessarily have. Expectation is something you form the intention of definitely owning.

‘I want you to have this on my desk by tomorrow’ vs. ‘I expect you to have this on my desk by tomorrow’’.

Which sentence would make you more likely to get that piece of work for your manager done?

Here is an example for you. If I walk into a 5*hotel that I have paid a lot for having made a room reservation a few days prior, I not only want the following things, but I also expect them from the overall experience that I have been sold. I expect that I should be greeted in a clean and calm reception by a professional and well trained person, I expect to be told where my room is, I expect that my room is what I have asked/paid for and I expect that this will be done at the speed I want. I expect a close to perfect experience.

If I walk into a £29 a night motel however, certain elements of my expectation will be very different.

Similarly, if I am getting married I expect the day that I want, or I expect the day I have in my head at least. Every person has a picture of what they want: 

It doesn’t matter what you or I think of any of these pictures. If these are what you expect from a wedding, I cannot change that. Your expectations are yours and yours alone. You might not even know them yet until someone shows you a wedding cake and you think, ‘I really can’t see the point of a wedding cake, do we actually need one?’

The difficulty with wedding expectation is, I think, simply down to the huge amount of factors external to an individual’s expectations.  I might not be able to afford what I ‘expect’ to have, it might not be what my partner expects to have, if I’m not paying it might not be what my or my partner’s parents expect us to have and it certainly won’t be what everyone else expects to have at their own wedding or the wedding which they believe is how things should be/look/be done. When we plan a wedding we are always compromising on our expectations or having them challenged, be they for financial, personal or practical reasons.  And we are constantly managing expectations, whether they are our own or those of other people.

How we deal with these expectations is another matter. If I am dealing with a customer whose expectations of my business are higher than the service I can offer (e.g. they are going to complain whatever I do) then I would tell my students to mind the following points:

•       Effective Listening

•       Diffuse negative emotions

•       Use assertiveness

•       Negotiate

I would advise my students to keep your voice low, make eye contact, and explain calmly but firmly why you haven’t been able to provide them with 400 thread count Egyptian cotton when they paid £29 for the room, then try to work out where that expectation has come from. I am not saying that this will solve the problem (the human mind is a complex organ), but you will at least have given yourself some insight into why this person has built up the expectations they are now expressing.

Everyone has an expectation of what they think a ‘good wedding’ entails. For me it is mainly about a free bar. Really; it’s a free bar which floats my boat. Don’t judge. For other people it’s the food. Or they might have a bug bear about strapless dresses in a church or the order of service being a bit shoddy or the fact that the organist can’t play three notes together (actually, I’ll own up to that one too). Some people expect to only have close family to the ceremony while others expect to be at the ceremony as that’s the bit they enjoy the most (still on the free bar here). And I can guarantee those expectations are raised when it comes to anyone you are speaking to when you tell them about your wedding:

“But you HAVE to have….”

“ You can’t get married without a…”

“ You’ll regret it if you don’t have….”

When my colleague and close friend told me about her wedding and how she didn’t want a first dance I actually responded with, “But you HAVE to have a first dance!!”  We’re good enough friends that she gave me the eye and I retracted it quickly feeling pretty ashamed, especially when I found out she’d had the same response from about three other people. It’s not helpful, it isn’t constructive and actually, it’s a bit insulting. Why should she have a bloody first dance if she doesn’t want or expect one but everyone around her does?

And this is a minor expectation. What about the big ones? 

I know for a fact that M’s expectations were that I’d have a big wedding. Imagine how her expectations would have been challenged by my going to Vegas to be married by Elvis instead of the local vicar? I think she would have supported me if it was what I had always wanted, even if it didn’t match up to her expectations, but it would have definitely been a struggle and a disappointment.

It would not just have run contrary to M’s expectations. Friends who have known me for all of my life and who are highly traditional would have definitely made their opinions on this clear (as only these kinds of friends can) and I am sure that the expression, “But you have to’ or ‘You can’t do XYZ’ would have been forcibly drummed into me whenever I visited my parents. It wears you down and the temptation is to give in because it's easier. Don't start me on Shoes vs. Sandals....

Everyone has an opinion. Once you accept this is how it is and that people will always have different expectations to your own, it’s how you deal with these expectation conflicts that count. My advice is to make a game plan between you and your fiancé about what you both expect from your wedding day before you tell anyone and then make it clear what you’re having with no compromise from the start as my colleague has. But if you aren’t that organised like BF and I you have two choices:

1)

  

   2) Effective Listening, diffuse negative emotions, use assertiveness and if you feel you have to, NEGOTIATE!

I am going to leave you with my favourite expectation concerning weddings.

I asked my niece of five to draw me a wedding dress. I was expecting something big, something white and something magnificent (or  something  like a dress that Elsa from Frozen would wear). The results were surprising. 

Goes to show.

Bridezilla and how she exists in the first place

BF proposed mariage to me a few days ago. This is highly exciting. 

I could never envisage how he would have done it. BF down on one knee doesn’t seem right somehow. Then on a non descript Thursday, about to go to bed (and after some searching questions about whether he was planning to propose at our cancelled dinner that night) he turned around to me while I was reading and asked “Will you Marry Me’. And I said yes. He put the ring on my finger, we both had a cry and then spent the next fifteen minutes feeling a bit amazed, excited and….well, a bit funny.

This isn't even an unusual proposal. I helped my brother when he proposed to my sister-in-law by driving from Kent to Somerset with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of sunflowers, following them in a trench coat and trilby (I was a bit dramatic at the time) up a long, steep hill then hiding it all in a prominent spot. My sister-in-law saw my brother make a bee-line for the flowers and told him he shouldn't go over there as obviously someone had died on that spot. I was sitting down the hill meanwhile chatting to a couple who were having an affair and meeting secretly. I wonder what happened to them…

Unusual proposals include dressing your newborn in a onesie reading ‘Will You Marry my Daddy?’, carving ‘Will you Marry me’ in a Pumpkin (in BF’s handwriting this would not work), recording ‘Will you Marry me’ in a Build a Bear, shouting it out while sky diving, spelling it out in shells when on a helicopter ride….my god the list is endless. My recently friend actually asked her intended, ‘What are you doing down there you dick head’ before she realized he was proposing.

Women can ask men to marry them, traditionally however this was only meant to happen on a leap year as anyone who lost 90 minutes of their life watching the film ‘Leap Year’ will know.

Debretts (who have a whole website devoted to etiquette when it comes to exchanging vows) state that the “location should be memorable and the timing should be carefully thought through…remember there can be no truly offensive way to ask someone to marry you.”

Oh contraire.  

No-one can doubt that BF are a great couple – of course we have our bickering fits and sometimes I want to kill him. But then we also have moments when we get so overwhelmed with love, we have a little cry. So, it’s not like I am one of those women who expect the wedding without the groom. But it had hit us that we were ENGAGED. Actually, properly engaged. To be married. Going from talking about it to doing it was actually terrifying. We were going to actually plan a wedding.

I never thought I'd get married at all so planning a wedding came as something of a shock.

I was twenty nine when I met BF. It was at our mutual best friend’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid, he was an usher. I had brought another date and then caught the bouquet and wound up snogging both of them on the beach before going back to my room with the date. Luckily BF is very open-minded and didn’t think it horrendously forward when I Facebooked him a week later and the rest is history. I never had proper boyfriends before BF. Lots of ‘nearly boyfriends’ and dates, but nothing that lasted past five months.

I have been a bridesmaid seven times (this was Bridesmaid Wedding No seven). Seven different dresses worn, five hen do’s organised, two speeches given and more champagne than I know what to do with has passed through my urinary tract. So I know weddings. Oh yes. I have had the brides ring me up and screech (and screeched back, mainly truthfully) when they got engaged. I doted over the ring. I have even pretended on a few occasions that I liked the groom (mercifully on retrospect this has not happened when I have been a bridesmaid). I have been happy for a lot of people, which is not quite the same thing as being happy for yourself.

Actually there are a lot of pro’s about being single. Being single is fun. But weddings while single? Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘plus one’ thing (finding one or being told you can’t have one). And having to find the money to get to places, to stay in the hotels, afford a present, afford the HEN DO, let alone the wedding itself….. I used to dread the inevitable ‘four a year’ invites arriving (while being very happy for friends FYI in case I sound really ungrateful). It did not help that at the time I was an aspiring artist and couldn’t afford a new pair of jeans. Let alone two nights in a boutique B&B with sea views and shoes in a specific colour requested by a tired, overwrought bride who is trying to organize her big day while holding down a full time job AND keeping her mother –in-law happy.

You can see why I am feeling a bit funny. Suddenly I have gone from badgering him (and boy, did I badger BF. I am amazed the man has been as patient as he has - I have nicknamed it 'Miss Piggying' after the recent Muppets movie) to having a wonderful ring on my finger. I have fallen in love with diamonds – driving home I get lost in their clear, watery glimmer – never wise on the A34. I am also planning the most political, expensive and potentially offensive event of my life to plan. And now I know. It is as if the scales have fallen from my eyes.

This is why those women went mad! This is why they got that weird glint in their eyes when we went dress shopping! This was why they sounded stressed when I got pissy about the £300 hen do and having to buy a new pair of shoes, and when I was horrifically moody about what monstrous frock they were planning to stuff me in. Holy shoot, now I can see how Bridezilla is made!

She starts out feeling excited and full of good hope in the begin. But bit by bit, she is ground down. She has a full time job, potentially a man who cares too little/much/won’t support her ideas for a twenty foot ice sculpture of the two of them etc. and she starts to fold under the pressure. Bit by bit this sane, calm woman begin to fall away like the outside of a melted Easter Egg. And from the wreckage of her inner peace comes the ‘Zilla. Monstrous to all around her. Maybe even to herself. But driven to do one thing and one thing only. HAVE THE BEST AND MOST WONDERFUL DAY OF HER, I MEAN THEIR, LIFE!!!!!! (count the frenetic exclamation marks there – they are there on purpose my friend). And everything has to be perfect. Everything. Down to the last hair, the last favour, the last flower.

I am here to help myself and you through this tangled, woven path. I don't believe in the art of Zen wedding. I don't think it's a real thing. I think the arguments, the tantrums, the fights and the stress is all part of the wonderful human package you get when you through many different personalities, numerous bank balances, several opinions on what makes a 'good wedding' and the expectations of most of your friends and family.

So here I stand on the brink of planning my wedding. I am scared, I am nervous and I am excited! Most of all though, I am terrified.