A friend once sent an
invitation with ‘save the date’. The first time I learnt of wedding planners
was through the JLo movie. Put together, I was interested in knowing an event
planner’s job experience of fixing up things.
Jennifer Gilbert with
entrepreneurial ideas as a kid and ‘viral party’ throwing skills, was cut out
for a career that screams power in her dreams as well as reality. After a life
of wanderlust in Europe , a 22yr old, she was
ready to fall into a fabulous life until a tragic event put a ‘before and
after’ break in her life. The experience not only splintered her but sent her
into a cocoon when she is not pumping energy into event planning.
The author can take you to
the fanciest of places where its hard to get in – as an event planner. She can
take you to the lowest of lows where even in a situation of shock, you wont
panic but fight for life like her. After becoming a victim of a random
attempted murder, she shared how she felt nothing. The one thing that saw her
through was her passion for celebrating the memorable moments in others lives.
When her tragic experience was ‘at leasted’ away she learnt to listen to the
pains and fears of others, however small they may be, a trait that helped her
in her business.The way she ran her event
planning business, her experiences with hard to please clients, last moment
‘saving the day’ to make everything perfect even if it does not fall in the
bucket of her job duties, its no wonder that she got the recognition for it.
She is written well of her victim
guilt, strife being a broken person with no scars on the outside. Ironically
when she later writes of her son’s alopecia a condition where nothing’s wrong
inside. She has addressed issues like body image which took her a lot of time
to overcome through the journey of peeling of her defense layers.
In this book, the author
switches well between the personal tone when it comes to the pursuit of
happiness through relationships and a survivor tone when she recalls the event
and its effect three years later when she has to face all the bad memories
again. The book is always optimistic even if the author sometimes thinks that
she is the best enemy of her happiness. Control
personified, her life experiences have taught her that the she may not have
control over the events but she can control who she is after.
It got weary to read of the n
love interests. I do understand that given the life changing experience, she
had to take many chances at love and life.
I find it surprising that for
a type A++ planner, she wouldn’t read up on signs of labor.
by Jerry McGill