Week 86: Expecting the Unexpected – #AlphaFemaleFriday
“ WEEK 86 / 133 – 133 WEEKS TO SUCCESS “
It was a few days before my wedding, and boy, did I learn the meaning of “expect the unexpected”. Barely a week before the wedding date, we received bad news as bad news always comes in three’s:
- One of my bridesmaids’ children was ill and in the ER, who also happened to be my cousin’s wife and my nephew, so they were no longer attending the wedding.
- Several of our friends and family, in addition to my cousin, his wife, and their child, had to cancel due to various last minute circumstances, ranging from family emergencies to simply being unable to take time off.
- My father and my husband, both taking the same flight down from NYC to our wedding in Miami, had to drive down for 24-hours straight due to their cancelled flight.
When we sat down with our wedding planner to go over the final details and advise her of the new and unexpected moving parts, she nodded and in that instant, we both knew that, especially when come it comes to event planning, to expect the unexpected. We cannot always control everything—in fact, as is turns out from this one event, we learned that we cannot control most things.
The unexpected will come, and all we can do is roll with the punches using the knowledge and experience that we have. In the hospitality industry, every day is a different day and we are always meeting with new guests or being pleasantly, sometimes unpleasantly, challenged by repeat clients as their needs change in size and scope. As long as we do our best to solve the problems in front of us with the tools that we have, we’re doing our jobs.
During our wedding, the photographer was quite overzealous with the photo-taking and at one point directed my husband and I to cut the cake. Our wedding planner stepped away for a brief moment, but the timing was completely off. In the ideal script, the wedding cake should have been rolled over to the middle of the dance floor as we cut a slice in front of our guests. Instead, we cut it off to the side where the photographer simply took photos of the two of us. In the end, most people were just happy that they got cake and we kept on dancing. Life won’t always go according to the script we write, but we can still have our happy endings.
Cheers,
Kelly
@AlphaFemSociety tweets by @KellyRGonzales
About:
Each week, I take a tip from Lois P. Frankel’s book, Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office, and explore how each of these tips affect myself and other women in similar positions on the road to becoming the women we want to be. There are far and few between who are a few steps behind me, and many more who are far advanced. I found that Lois P. Frankel’s advice applied to novice, intermediates, and experts alike. It helped me see that I was already doing right, served as a reminder to keep on doing what I was doing and how to keep that momentum going. The book also showed me areas where I could improve, and gave realistic tips to jump on board. There are a total of 133 tips, and explore one tip per week in a program I call: 133 Weeks to Success.
Join the movement using the hashtag #133WeeksToSuccess with posts which are posted every #AlphaFemaleFriday.