Communicate, Communicate, Communicate Version Two

AApparently I didn’t follow my own advice in my Communicate, Communicate, Communicate blog post.

I asked Justin to take care of researching ordaining since we want my Uncle Michael to lead the ceremony.  I have been getting a daily email now for the past two weeks reminding me that this task is overdue and it’s starting to get annoying. Anyway, he looked into it this past weekend while My Mom and I were working on my veil at her house. When I got home I asked him what he found out. I got a very simple one sentence answer, “friends and family can’t marry us without being ordained but we can marry ourselves.” Not exactly the scope of information I was looking for.

I could easily blame the lack of research on Justin but in the end it was my fault. I didn’t communicate to him that I already knew that friends and family can’t marry us without being ordained but we can marry ourselves.  What I wanted to know was if we would have to sign our marriage contract at the court house before the wedding or if we could sign it after the ceremony if Uncle Michael didn’t get ordained (it’s not important to us if the person who leads the ceremony is actually ordained or not). So what I really wanted Justin to research was how we officially get married without an ordained person being at our ceremony. Bad, bad communication on my part.

This caused a bit of frustration for both of us. I assumed that Justin knew what I wanted him to research and was upset that he didn’t do what I asked him to do. Justin was upset that I was upset at him for assuming he knew what I wanted him to research.

Part of project management process is creating a communication plan that includes what information you are going to communicate,  who will communicate the information and who will receive it, how often the information will be communicated, documentation procedures for the communication, and escalation procedures for issues that can’t be resolved. This type of communication plan seems very excessive for wedding planning purposes but it does turn on a light in my head.

The miscommunication Justin and I had over the past weekend is only a small example of how bad communication can waste time, create bad outcomes, and cause unneeded stress. It’s easy to correct my example above but if I had given a vendor such a badly worded request we could end up with a wedding disaster.

Point being, make sure you are careful with your words and say what you mean or you could end up with a  situation like this.