Why Prolong Your Special Day? A Prompt Planning Process

In recent years, there has been a shift from what used to be longer engagements of one or multiple years leading up to the big day, to much quicker engagements of only a few short months! Myths of not having enough time to book all vendors, order dresses and suits, or even get invitations out to guests run heavily around the concept of a short engagement, but Rebecca Schmitt and Shashikanth Kaluvala would like to disagree!

Gather’s blog writer, Kira Doman, spoke with Rebecca Schmitt who recently married Shashikanth Kaluvala on a magical October evening within Gather’s brick walls. What makes their wedding one to highlight? They planned it all in three months.

“He proposed on Saturday, July 22, and we got married Friday, October 20,” Rebecca revealed with a sweet smile. “I never imagined going through the planning process so quickly, but we've been together for four years now, and I've always wanted a fall wedding. So, when he proposed in the summer, it just made sense to shoot for that same fall instead of waiting a whole other year.”

The love the two feel for each other could be read within the way she spoke about her new husband, and also within the atmosphere of the wedding that very evening of October 20th.

“Shashi thinks that I was born to be an event planner,” Rebecca said, “and a lot of people have said similar things because they were surprised and impressed with how quickly and how smoothly everything went. The day of the wedding there were hardly any major or minor hiccups at all, but I’ve always worked well under crunched timelines.”

Rebecca and Shashikanth work in the same medical company, Rebecca is a pediatrician and Shashikanth is a software developer, so working under a tight timeline isn’t a concept that was entirely difficult to grasp for the two.

After only a week of being engaged, Rebecca toured and booked with Gather.

“We found Gather over this past summer of 2023 through attending one of their evenings of live music during the Farmer’s Markets. I was incredibly intrigued in the venue from the first night we stepped inside,” Rebecca mentioned. “It just so happened to work out that they had a coinciding date available that paired perfectly with the florist we knew we wanted to do the floral arrangements and centerpieces, so on July 28th we officially booked our October 20th wedding with Gather!”

The Flower Gallery, based out of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, has been assisting Rebecca and Shashikanth in showing each other their love for one another since the start of the two’s relationship, so involving the business in their special day was a no-brainer.

“Flowers were really important to me; The Flower Gallery has a very cute little store in downtown Manitowoc, and Shashi has bought bouquets for me at The Flower Gallery since we started dating in 2018, so they know both of us very well,” Rebecca smiled. “I went in the week he proposed to share our announcement and asked them to do our flower arrangements.”

“They came up from Manitowoc and set everything up at Gather with no issues,” she said happily. “Both teams thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company and worked flawlessly together. The owner of The Flower Gallery even met us at the Green Bay Botanical Gardens before the wedding for photographs and helped us with our corsages, boutenniers, and bouquets. Everyone was just as excited as I was to be completing this special evening in such a short period!” 

Every couple needs an element or two for their special day that is crucial to the pair’s relationship, and The Flower Gallery helped to obtain one of those elements in such a beautiful fashion for Rebecca and Shashikanth, but the pair had one other request that Gather helped to fulfill.

“Gather was so accommodating to the personalizations we wanted to make to the menu,” Rebecca stated. “It was really important to my now husband, Shashi, to have a few Indian and vegetarian dishes, and Gather produced an Indian shrimp appetizer and a chickpea curry dish for dinner. It truly meant so much to us.”

Aside from knowing where their flowers would be coming from, and what they wanted on the menu, Rebecca also knew the color scheme and theme she was looking to make a reality.

“I knew my theme was going to be burgundy and gold before we got engaged,” Rebecca giggled. “I knew a lot of what I wanted from the get-go, and Gather provided a lot of what we needed in this short timeframe. We worked with Erin, Jyll, and Maddy and they were all incredibly accommodating and understanding of the crunched timeline, while also being so pleasant and fun to work with!”

Once on the roll of booking the first few vendors, Rebecca and Shashikanth made quick progress on their entire wedding check-off list.

“After we booked with Gather, we had the initial meeting in terms of brainstorming, and then the final meeting two weeks before the wedding,” Rebecca revealed. “The week after we got engaged I started to make steps in the planning process: I booked the location, the catering, and the bakery which were all through Gather. I thought I’d be going through an outside vendor for desserts until I tried Gather’s; I then booked the photographer, the flowers, the DJ… the wedding was pretty much all planned and ready to go within two weeks of being engaged!”

Because their planning timeframe was so short, the pair consulted Gather’s list of trusted and recommended vendors for the aspects and pieces of planning they weren’t entirely sure about yet, landing on Ruby Design LLC for the venue decor. Gather partners with Ruby Design for nearly every event hosted in the building such as Farmer’s Markets, wedding tastings, Drag shows, Taste events, and more! Work between the two companies always churns out stunning results.

“We booked with Ruby Design for our decor and they were excellent,” said Rebecca. “We went to their store within a couple of weeks of being engaged and quickly picked everything out. Zeb, our planner, was phenomenal at accommodating all of my inspirations and ideas, he helped us out quite a bit.”

With all of their vendors booked and the date picked, it was time to send out official wedding invitations.

“Because our wedding was so soon after our engagement, we didn’t necessarily have time to do a formal engagement announcement,” Rebecca laughed. “My engagement announcement was verbally telling every single person who was invited, luckily most of my family is primarily in Wisconsin. The actual paper invitations were ready to mail out within a month, about two months before the wedding.”

Of course, those who could attend said yes, and according to Rebecca, there were actually more guests that could make it than she and Shashikanth thought!

“Because of the time we scheduled the wedding for, everyone was already back from their summer vacations,” Rebecca explained. “It was that in-between stage of summer and winter vacations so we had a much better turnout of guests than if we were to book for the next summer or holiday season. Being able to celebrate such a monumental moment in our lives with all of our friends and families was beautiful.” 

With little to no obstacles in the way of their perfect wedding planning, Rebecca and Shashikanth didn’t have to wait any longer than 3 months before they were married, tying the knot with a few very special people in the crowd.

“I met his parents for the first time that day in the Green Bay Botanical Gardens and it was captured all on camera, which was so touching. His family is from India, and his parents still live there, so I had yet to meet them in person in the four years that we’d been dating. I've met his sisters several times because we travel down to Texas to see them, so I've gotten to know their families pretty well, but meeting his parents for the first time was so special.”

Plan your own perfectly punctual wedding at Gather today! Why wait another year?

“If it’s feasible, and you don’t want to prolong your engagement, go for the earlier date! Jyll Everman [business owner], Erin Jacobs [events manager], and Maddy Meyer [catering manager] were all so accommodating to all of Shashi’s and my needs and customizations to obtain our perfect wedding, we’d do it all over again if we could.”

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