It’s the "little" things that make for a successful wedding celebration, or so I
was told. Of course, there seemed to be some disagreement as to what
constitutes "the little things."

My friend Carolyn, twice a successful mother of a married child, told me in
no uncertain terms, that "flowers make a wedding." But at the same time, my friend Jay advised that a successful wedding was one where the music carried
the evening.

So there it was. We had to have beautiful flowers and a wonderful band. The search was on to find both, but at an affordable fortune.

The country club shared with us a list of preferred providers and we thought
that was a good place to start. The first florist on the list had a convenient address, so I made an appointment. There were no flowers in the office into which the three of us were ushered, but there were a few well placed photos
on the walls.

Before I was even seated, the proprietor announced: "Well. of course, you
know that I am the most expensive florist in the county." I was not sure if she was joking or not, as I seated myself rather uncomfortably. She discussed my daughter’s long list of preferences and then announced, "I couldn’t possible do this wedding for under $30,000. I guess she wasn’t joking after all. We left.

It seemed as though we were interviewing florists every other day thereafter.
In hindsight, it helped us to formulate what we really wanted for our daughter’s big event. Throwing away the preferred providers list, we resorted next to the Yellow Pages.

We had almost selected an Ocean Beach Florist, with real flowers in her shop, whose ideas were similar to our own, but the fact that she had never worked
in a synagogue made me somewhat queasy. Each time, she slipped and said "church," my heart stopped. Still she was a lovely woman and her product seemed close to our imagined ideal.

A call from a friend came with another suggestion. My daughter and I met with Sandy Goldstein of Chantal Flowers at her home and, although language was a bit of a barrier, her ideas jelled. We had found a florist who not only excited us, but also promised to provide in February a Lilies of the Valley bridal bouquet
for a somewhat reasonable price. Those lilies were important to my daughter. After all, the same flowers had been carried by Jacqueline Bisset.

You have heard of the wedding crashers? Well, we became them.
Accompanied by my future son-in-law, and once even by his parents, we |
began sampling musical groups. We usually had the approval of the bands
to sort of stand at the back of the various ballrooms and once even the wedding party’s. I only sampled one cocktail at a no-host bar, which obviously wasn’t a Jewish wedding.

Perhaps it was generational, even with a drink in hand, the bands were either dead sounding, with long breaks in between numbers, or they were blaringly noisy with no music. Even our kids agreed. We hadn’t found the right group to make the evening flow. If their sample CD’s sounded good, their actual performances did not. It was a bit disconcerting as the days passed. How many times could we be voyeurs without getting bounced?

What I found most annoying was the groups with three or four leggy, no-talent females standing in front of the bands and swaying or waving or twitching or whatever it was they were doing.

We wanted danceable music, not a nightclub show.

In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about the Wayne Foster Band, but I knew I could not afford him. Many years earlier, when Foster and his wife
Marin were first getting started in town, I had hired them for my Father’s 70^th birthday party. They were terrific then and judging by their reputation, I knew they were fabulous now....still, the money thing bothered this
father-of-the-bride.

My daughter made an appointment at Wayne Foster Entertainment where we interviewed Jacqueline Foster who promised us a seamless evening of
non-stop, multi-generational music and an affair to remember. Surprisingly enough, she appealed to both my daughter and her dollar-conscious father
almost instantaneously. Can I tell you how rare an occurrence that was?