Weddings | An Aussie In Japan

Weddings really are a very large working example of incremental cost/value theory.

1959 Cadillac De Ville

The only problem is very few people realise that they are part of a life demonstration of the theory, or even what they theory is. A simple google search of the theory generally shows that there is very little understanding about the theory in the general sphere. Commercial yes, but not personal. However it’s a concept which people deal with on a daily basis in their thought processes for purchasing and utilising products and utilities. The fact that conscious attention isn’t drawn to this fact is alarming to me, and hence the need to postulate for a little on the point!

So what is the theory? When you look at it from a commercial perspective the definitions are usually pretty similar – “Incremental cost is the overall change that a company experiences by producing one additional unit of good”. most people may perhaps be more familiar – at least with its name – with the concept of cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analysis involves comparing the total expected costs of each option against the total expected benefits, to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and by how much; essentially for every $1 I spend on something I would like to get $1 back.

However I think it’s a little rough to try and do a cost benefit analysis of a wedding. You have lots of costs, and no monetary benefit. Weddings are truly the home of cost-effectiveness analysis – a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of two or more courses of action. It is distinct from cost-benefit analysis, which assigns a monetary value to the measure of effect.

So if cost-benefit analysis is for every $1 I spend on something I would like to get $1 back then cost-effectiveness analysis is for every $1 I spend on something I would like to get $1 of utility/value back. That is – did the extra dollar spend improve the event/thing to by more than $1/a unit of value.

We all do it every day. It’s why we don’t all eat out at Michelin star restraints ever night and its why we don’t all drive a Porsche GT2. How do we do it? Well we think pizza from Dominoes will set us back $20 for dinner and Aria will set us back $300. After a long day of work and couldn’t be stuffed cooking but you’re hungry and need, do you feel 15 times fuller off the Aria dinner? Or if you just drive to and from work and you live 5km from the city and commute in traffic and don’t know a rocker cover from a steering wheel, do you get to work 25 times faster in your GT2 versus a $20K Honda Jazz?

So we all do it every day we are buying things. Some people see the value in some things which others don’t. It’s one of the reasons we all like not being in a communist country. We might put some value in that asiago bread over the mouldy jobbie Pyongyang is serving up to all and sundry.

Though while we all use it all the time, it would seem this rule is somewhat forgotten by some people when they are planning their wedding. For me I would love to have a 4^th generation late 50’s (‘58 or ‘59) Cadillac Sedan de Ville replete in chrome and 500cc 8.2 L V8 pumping out when new an obscene 400bhp/298kw. Nothing signalled the post war industrial might and optimism of the US like a big block V8 and 6000lbs of sedan.

However the cost of getting one up to Vail for what is in essence about 5 minutes driving between the relevant locations is substantial, and when I consider the utility to be obtained from the extra expenditure, well it just doesn’t give the return that I can get from being in a nice E60 530i which comes at a sensationally good cost/utility rating. It’s not a Sedan de Ville but it does happen to get people from the church to the reception… and given the advancements in engineering probably with a higher probability of success.

This is just one example of considering the incremental value obtained from further expenditure which you can undertake to spend as part of planning a wedding. The opportunities are ENDLESS to spend more and more and more on adding this little bit and that little bit. But at the end of the day, can you actually demonstrate that you have obtained an appropriate return on that extra investment?

I would consider success in wedding planning to be a happy bride (parents I know would like to add their name to this as well, however they would – push come to shove – agree it is about the bride!). So then the question at the end of the day is, does that extra $2x item that you’ve obtained versus the $1x option deliver you twice as much happiness? If it doesn’t, then why in the hell are you getting it?! For some the 90ft stretch pink Hummer H2 might just deliver the requisite improvement in happiness. For others its driving around the corner and out of view will herald the delivery of an equal improvement in happiness.

The happiness of friends and family come into play here as well. The happier they are, the happier the bride is, and no one wants to be in a room full of indulgent friends getting belligerent over the lack of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam or 1787 Chateau Lafitte or Château Pétrus. However their issues and the utility of their happiness can stop increasing the happiness of the bride. I’m sure if they were stuck in a permanent state of euphoria due to the Pétrus they may not want to talk to the bride. This would be akin to a withdrawal from the bride’s emotional bank account – but way of a ram raid or small gas cylinder originated improved explosive chained to the ATM. One does not want to take to the bank with such callous disregard for the groom, who will be with the bride post event! No amount of driving in the 59 DeVille is going to resurrect I fear.

And so I shall get to the point of this pontificating before the audience is nonexistent.

Part of delivering an exceptional wedding experience is delivering incremental value along through every decision made in its planning. Accordingly you must ask what is the incremental value each decision is offering you and is it worth/delivering what it costs?

Consider this: What if your wedding was empty?

What if you took everything out of the wedding except for the bare minimum – a priest and some chairs?

Would your guests still come along for the big day?

I think they are the fundamental questions since they define the true incremental value your wedding planning decisions deliver.

The Issue

Wedding reception venue’s are up there with some of the hardest choices that you ever have to make for a wedding I think. A lot ends up riding one that choice. It sets the scene, the mood, the whole shebang. Step wrong on this point and it can take a lot to get yourself out of the hole.

When you read all the wedding literature and paraphernalia they are all rather silent on the best way to go about this. For the most part they are concerned with location and cost. Location in a general sense – being at home, in a park, at a venue or a destination (though nothing more specific then just ‘destination’). Money purely based on what you can and can’t afford.

But comparing between each of these options really barely ever occurs. And by far-and-away the biggest assumption is made is that the reception is going to occur at the likes of a hotel or other traditional reception venue. But this just isn’t the case anymore.

Making this very choice, and looking at potential venue’s caused Megan and I a whole heap of heartburn and concern. We were limited in time because in the US most places seem to book around 18 months before the event. Indeed the place we ended up locking in for August 2012 only had one weekend left available! This is in Feb 2011! This shocked me! So we had to look at some places and lock something in more or less while we were there in February to make sure it was something we had seen, liked, and was available.

The Advice

Some advice from theknot.com suggests:

Locating the right spot to host your fun, formal affair is your greatest challenge. Having the wedding in a hotel ballroom will lend a very different tone than having it in an old weathered barn on your grandfather’s farm. Locate a distinctive venue — scout out old nightclubs, movie theatres, city roof gardens, hip restaurants, art galleries, or historic mansions. … You can even change the mood from one area to the next with the lighting: one room might feature white and ivory paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling while the next may be outfitted with deep red beaded lampshades on every table.

I’ve underlined a couple of items there that i think are important. For many, formal is a given. How formal is up to personal choice – its a sliding scale so it is fair to use that word. The other is the one I think gets glossed over – fun. Who doesn’t wasn’t a fun wedding?! I can’t think of anyone. The final item is distinctive. Who wants their wedding to be forgotten or remembered as just another wedding?

Our Hunt

We looked at a number of places, from Cheeseman park, to the Broadmoor in Colorado Spring, to the Arrabelle in Vail. We also did the desktop audit of potential places, utilising the internet and 3 magazines for Colorado weddings. We looked at a large number of hotels and other similar type venues around Denver and Aspen, Vail and the mountains. We reviewed countless photos and obtained estimates as to the cost of respective potential venues along the way.

How to Choose?

So here are my tips. The advice doesn’t ever tell you how to pick a place – just the options that are available. The knot has you looking at cinemas, old spaces, ballrooms etc – but how do you choose amongst them all?

Following from my last post about “expanding the pie” and looking at needs and objectives other then just dictating an arbitrary position and not looking at the underlying reasons and logic that were used to get there, here are my here are my tips which might help you get to the heart of your choice.

Feel

And you know what, the biggest thing that impacted on our choice ended up being the ‘feel’. Feel is that something ineffable which you can’t pin down, other than saying that a venue just ‘feels’ like you.

The difficulty with this is that while you walk out of a place loving it, other people just can’t see how it is that you can arrive at that conclusion – that “something ineffable” feeling was triggered was for them at some other venue – most likely a venue where you felt like you stood out like a Bruce Lee in a sea of Steven Segals. Trying to get your point across at this stage is not easy. Here you can quickly fall into the zero-sum “well it just does” attitude that can really push divisions and doesn’t help achieve multiple need resolution.

Regardless of the difficulty, I think for anyone looking for a venue, the most important thing is, does it have that ‘ineffable’ feel. Can you picture your wedding there? The knot quote above has some good concepts in it – the tone is the part that I think really does develop your location choice a lot. For us tone was perhaps another difficult thing to quantify. We are all about class, but not about gratuitous class, or uncomfortable formality. For us it was something that raised the bar class and tone wise, whilst not becoming overdone, stuffy, arrogant, gratuitous etc. It still needed to be personal and comfortable and relaxed for our attendees. We wanted classy, but comfortable. So that no one feels out of place and that classiness is an organic thing which occurs not because of what the event is forced to be, but because that’s the type of people we know and how they fill a room. You can have the Ritz Carlton or Waldolf lined up, but if you and your guests aren’t comfortable in that environment then its not going to work.

Personality

So that was the first thing we were looking for. The other thing – which is also in tone – is personality. We wanted a place with some personality. Like a place that would feel about right in a Stephen King novel – a place that somehow was imbued with its own sense of self. That’s really hard to identify, and we found a few places with that, and a few places without. And you know what generally did that, was places with windows – which gave themselves a setting. There was a gorgeous room at the Broadmoor which we visited, and it looked out over the mountains and a golf course, and it really coloured the room as well, made it richer. We also saw some rooms which had no windows – hotel ballrooms – which really then struggled to gain their own personality. Perhaps its something to do with the finishes that hotel’s can purchase these days – anything for that kind of scale ends up being inoffensive – capable of being liked by many. The problem is that that also means that its often not loved by many… Those types of places that are more ‘indifferent’ in their execution feel like the Toyota of venues – well done, 7/10 in all boxes, but 12/10 in none.

Identity

So we have tone, we have personality. The next thing that was on our list was identity. This perhaps doesn’t come up for everyone, but for us we wanted something that was recognisable. Remember those weddings you go to and there is no way to really determine where you are? your in another one of those rooms (no matter how tasteful) that they are always in. its a function room, of that general design. There may be a theme to a room with its decor and decoration, but its not identifiable as being something or somewhere. This for us was all about Colorado. Megan is, and always will be a Coloradoan. But she hasn’t lived there is over 1/2 a decade now. more like 7-8 years. So for her, as much as guests travelling to Colorado there is an important element of being identifiably Colorado. That ‘home’ feel for Megan. You don’t travel half way across the world and subject yourself to planning a wedding half way around the world because you want it to be in Colorado, and then not actually have it such that the ‘Colorado’ of the event is a pervasive and intrinsic part of the wedding! So for us the place needed an identity – Colorado.

Personalisation

So we have tone, personality, identity. Last but not least we wanted to be able to make it personal. To give it out touch. Not an easy task for any venue. They all like to be able to control and regulate what you can and can’t do in their venue. Can’t touch the roof, walls, certain tables available etc…. If you want to make a place “feel” like you, have “personality” that you makes you think ‘fun’ and have an “identity” you want, then your going to need to be able to personalise it a little. Also, what bride doesn’t want to be able to make some changes here and there to give it her own touch.

So my tips: Feel; personality; identity and ability to personalise.

We think we found that in the place we have chosen. We wanted Colorado. And the thing that makes everything think Colorado is the mountains and the outdoors. So two things straight away were there for us to give that innate sense of identity – the mountains and the outdoors. Mountains was easy for us – we thought if the mountains are key we should be in or close to the mountains. Why have people travelling from Canada, other US states and Australia to be close to the mountains, but no either right in them, or right next to them?! We didn’t want to have the wedding outdoors (just not going to be formal enough for us) so we had to find somewhere that bought the indoors to us as much as possible – really dragged the outdoors into the venue.

Personality was found with what was really a venue that was in many ways a blank canvas internally for us to be able to develop ourselves, allowing us to personalise it at the same time. A couple of the photos below demonstrate that i think – a couple of different set-ups and each one has its own very unique feel. We were pretty comfortable with that knowledge, knowing that while it might look like a ‘blank canvas’ when empty, we would feel it with a personality that merges both ‘Colorado’ and “Megan and Luke” together in such a way that our guests would be sure to have a lovely, fun, formal, memorable evening.

Time will tell…

The Choice:

being part of the mountains, dragging the outdoors indoors…