Chapter Text
Blue Rose Events - Wedding Planning Consultation Form
Contact Information
Bride’s name: Valerie Wylde
Phone number: +44 7457126065
Email: [email protected]
Groom’s name: Jon Snow
Phone number: +44 7455095486
Email: [email protected]
Wedding Information & Details
Wedding date or expected month and year of the wedding: October 2026
Expected number of guests: 50-75 guests
Bridal party:
Number of bridesmaids: 4
Number of groomsmen: 4
Number of flower girls: 3
Number of ring bearers: 2
What is the most important element of the wedding? (Examples: food, venue, music, décor, atmosphere, guest enjoyment):
Val: Venue
Jon: Atmosphere
Sansa comes back from her lunch hour and goes over the profile of the couple she was meeting with in the next 30 minutes again. They had originally been scheduled to meet with Desmera, but her partner had left on maternity leave two weeks ago, and Alys was just getting started at the agency, so she was taking over.
She’d done dozens of weddings like the one they had in mind, so she felt comfortable taking charge.
Daisy, her assistant, rings her. “Your two o’clock are here.”
“Please send them over.”
The couple walks in, and she immediately starts visualizing. They’re a really good-looking couple. The woman had honey-blond hair and blue eyes, and a charismatic aura. She looked like a Bond girl. The man, with his dark hair and intense gray eyes, looked every inch a byronic hero. Sansa wonders what they would think of a photoshoot at the Karhold cliffs.
“It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Sansa,” she greets them as she extends her hand. They both introduce themselves and she asks, “Before we start here, would you like any refreshments?”
“Do you have hazelnut coffee pods?” Daisy nods, so Val asks for that. “Just water for me,” replies Jon.
Some minutes later, after they’re all settled in, she starts.
“My name is Sansa Stark and I have helped organize over 100 weddings for the past five years. I read your intake form, but I would like to know more about Jon and Val from yourselves,” she tells the couple, as she smiles at them.
Val begins. “We met in grad school, four years ago, through some mutual friends. We’ve been together for almost four years and engaged for three. I own a Pilates studio, and Jon is an engineer.”
“Environmental engineer. I work with solar energy.” Sansa nods and smiles, and encourages them to continue. “You probably already saw this on the form, but we want a simple northern wedding. It won’t be a huge event, like others you’ve done before.”
“If it were for me, we would’ve eloped to White Harbor, but Jon really wanted a whole production, so here we are.”
Sansa maintains a neutral face, but her curiosity is piqued. It wasn’t that unusual that the groom was the more enthusiastic party, but she’s not here to judge.
“I guess I’m the traditionalist here,” Jon says with a grimace. “But I know nothing about wedding or event planning, so my friend Sam recommended your agency to handle it. Sam Tarly?”
She’s delighted as soon as her memory provides the information. “Sam and Gilly?” Jon nods, with a small smile on his face as well. “How are they and little Sam?”
“They’re all great. Gilly’s expecting their second by the end of next month.”
“That’s wonderful to hear,” she says sincerely. “Those are always the best referrals.”
“Yeah, their wedding was amazing. And Sam kept saying how helpful you were, so they gave me your contact.”
Sansa doesn’t miss Val’s eyeroll whenever Jon mentions Sam, but she’ll dig into that another day. She’s not here to judge.
“I’m glad to have you both here today.” She smiles at the couple and continues, “I don’t know how much Sam and Gilly told you about my work process, but I thought we could begin there. Is that okay?”
Val and Jon exchange a quick look and nod.
“I divide my work into four phases: planning, design, production and management. This work will stretch over the next couple of months to ensure your wedding is exactly as you imagined. Beginning with our first stage, the planning is pretty self-explanatory. We’ll create a scheduling calendar to break down all the major milestones so you can keep track of them. This stage will lay the foundation for your entire wedding, as you will be booking the most important elements: your venue, food and drinks, photographer, videographer, and entertainment. Keep in mind that several venues offer their own catering services, so that’s something to consider when making a decision, especially since the food and beverages are usually the most expensive thing in the planning. We will work out on a spreadsheet with plenty of options to evaluate, and you decide on the best options to allocate your budget to, alright?”
“And we can’t book any of these later?” asks Val.
“It’s better to be certain that everything will be available for your date. If we don’t coordinate early, we risk that any of these won’t be ready for your big day.”
Val doesn’t look too impressed, but she nods.
“Then we move on to the design stage. Again, this is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s when we work out the look of your wedding. If you have your own ideas, your own mood boards, anything, we’ll work with those to make sure that we’re bringing the best version to life. If not, that’s no problem; we will all sit down and work out together how you want your wedding to be. We’ll decide on the flowers, the linens, the menus, the seating charts, all these little things. And since you’ll have a venue booked, we’ll make all the necessary adjustments to ensure it’s just as you pictured. From there, we go into production mode; all the contracts will be signed, your vendors will start reserving inventory and designing anything that’s needed for your big day. It’s pretty difficult to go back on whatever you’ve decided once we’re in production mode.”
Jon nods seriously as he gulps down his water.
“And finally, we reach the management phase. This is what happens in those final weeks and days before your wedding. We manage the schedule of the trucks, confirm that everything is organized and set up, we go over the details, and finally, on the day of your wedding, we make sure that everything runs smoothly and you can focus on having the best day of your lives.”
They both nod, and she asks if there are any follow-up questions. They haven’t signed with her yet, but she likes to make sure her clients are fully informed before they agree to work with her.
“I did notice something in your intake form I wanted to talk to you about.” They look at her expectantly, and she continues. “I saw that in your preferences, you listed that you preferred to have an open space event.”
“Yes, that was my doing,” Val mentions. “We’re both fond of the outdoors and wouldn’t like to have the wedding at some stuffy, pretentious space.”
Sansa smiles in understanding. “I see. I bring this up so you have a clear picture of everything. A tented wedding, such as the one you’re suggesting, is much more expensive than people think, and your expenses will increase exponentially, given that the space would need to be built from the ground up.”
“So the budget is not enough?” Jon asks.
“We would need to be very smart with how we spend the rest of the budget,” she tells them, hoping she’s not being too stern. “I’ll give you one example. I mentioned that your food and beverages would be the biggest expense for this event, but with a tented event, the floor might cost as much as or more than that. You’ll have to consider that you’re not just simply raising a tent; we’ll have to build the floor surfaces, you’ll have to include additional tents for the catering staff and the vendors, a space for your band or your DJ, an electricity source, a water source, waste disposal, and a dozen other things.”
Noticing that the mood has dipped a little, she tells them, “I’ll break it all down on the budget sheet if you do decide to let us plan your wedding. I’ll give you a handful of other options you might love, and we can work from there, but I’d like for you to keep an open mind.”
They share a look and ask Sansa to keep going. She answers the rest of their questions, and after their initial consultation is over, they tell her they'll get back to her in a few days once they've properly discussed things.
Jon and Val. Val and Jon. She wondered how their wedding would go.
Jon laughs as he sits down at the dining table and watches little Sam grab his mac n’ cheese and throw it to the floor, where Lollypop, the Tarlys’ dog, is gleefully picking it up.
“Sammy!” Gilly says, exasperated, as the young boy finally gets a hold of his little spoon and starts eating his food.
“Sorry, Jon, you were saying?” she asks.
“Just that Val and I signed with the wedding planner yesterday.”
“With Sansa?” Jon nods. “Oh, that’s wonderful to hear!” Sam comments.
Jon smiles, but gives Sam an unimpressed look. “What? I’m being truthful, Jon! I’m truly happy for you.”
Sam was many things, but a skilled liar he was not.
After all, it had been Sam who had nursed his broken heart after Val had rejected his first marriage proposal. The two of them had been cordial at most ever since they met, the two too different to ever bond properly. Now, Sam had tried to push Jon into asking himself if he and Val wanted the same things in life, and this might be the best chance the two of them could get of a clean break.
Val hadn’t appreciated his input, and things between them had been frosty since then.
“She really knows her stuff, doesn’t she?” Gilly says.
Jon nods in agreement. “I had no idea that floors could be so expensive.”
Gilly grimaces, remembering their own wedding preparation. “Ah, yes, we had that same realization. And I’m glad we didn’t go for a tented wedding in the end; remember how much it rained that day?”
Sam and Gilly continue talking about their own wedding preparations, and Jon is thrilled he can finally intervene with excitement, rather than with envy. His and Val’s engagement had been a long one, in his opinion, and it had taken some prodding from Jon to get things started finally, but here they are.
He lies in bed with Val later that night, recounting the conversations he’d had with his friends. Val is a practical woman, willing to listen to advice most of the time, so she takes some of Gilly’s recommendations into account.
She’d been less than pleased about their original wedding plans changing, though, and would still hang onto them until Sansa Stark confirmed that their outdoor wedding was above their agreed budget. She’d wanted to go to the courthouse and be done with it after all; she wasn’t keen on spending more than 25,000 dragons on this.
But Jon seemed happy, and she figured she’d catch the ‘happy-bride’ bug in the meantime. They had 10 months to go.
Sansa was truly diligent, and had sent them a detailed spreadsheet with the information they’d discussed. It wasn’t exciting work to sit down and look at an Excel sheet, as they googled information and added a list of potential venues and vendors to another file.
They narrowed things down to five potential venues.
The first one, at Torrhen’s Square, is easily discarded since they would need to pay for transportation for a good chunk of their guests. They both like the second one, at the Wolfswood. There’s a small manor near the space where they would set things up that can be used by the catering and other staff. Since the space is often used for events, the manager recommends a floor vendor who works with them often and knows the terrain. The third and fourth spaces are discarded as well, since the prices are quite high when adding what Sansa had said was needed.
The fifth one, Winterfell’s Glass Gardens, is Sansa’s recommendation. Val had scoffed at first, since they’d told the planner that they didn’t want to marry at a stuffy location, and that’s exactly what Winterfell is, but Sansa insists they check the gardens. Jon had visited Winterfell before, in 5th or 6th grade, with the rest of his class. In truth, he didn’t remember much from the gardens apart from the big weirdwood tree, since he and the rest of the boys were more excited about the weaponry on display and the tales of the Long Night, but he liked the space.
“These were greenhouses in the past, and they’ve been repurposed for events and such. As you can see, they’re pretty apart from the castle, and they function independently. You could set up just the tents for the catering and the talent, but wouldn’t need to pay for a big tent and all that, and it gives you that openness feeling you want, while operating in an already functional space,” she explains to them as they walk inside the big greenhouse. “I’ve done a couple of weddings here, and all the couples have been so pleased with the results. And the pictures are always so beautiful, since you can use the castle and the woods as backgrounds.”
“And people won’t have to use the castle?” Val asks.
“No. Your guests can enter and leave through the road we took to get here, and there are external bathrooms nearby. But people can use the castle’s parking, and it wouldn’t be an additional expense for you. Oh, and there are tables and chairs they offer to customers, but between the three of us, those chairs are pretty uncomfortable and ugly, so I’d still recommend contracting your own,” she finishes saying as they step out, and they circle the space.
She walks them through the other areas she’d mentioned, and with the manager, they explain where trash would be disposed of and where trucks would unload before the event.
Another reason she’d suggested this venue was that they could also perform the ceremony there. The practicality could not be denied, and Jon was more than convinced by the time they left. He had a good feeling about it.
“You liked Winterfell, didn’t you?” Val asks as they drive away.
“Didn’t you?”
“It was alright. I’m too much like my ancestors to be impressed by you kneelers’ castles.” He laughs at her joke, and she grins, satisfied. “But even I can’t deny this is the best option, even without checking your little spreadsheet,” she teases. “You can have the honor of telling Sansa we’re going for this venue, before someone else snatches it.” He holds the steering wheel with one hand, and with his left hand, he brings it up to his lips and presses an affectionate kiss and looks at Val fondly.
He was getting married at Winterfell to the woman he loved. It just felt right.