Planning an Entire Wedding in Seven Days: Michelle Khare's Compressed Experiment
Michelle Khare
Michelle Khare opens with a problem and a hypothesis. She says the average American can spend upwards of 500 hours planning a wedding, usually spread over 11 to 18 months, and that the long timeline often brings major stress, sometimes even breakups. Her question is whether all of that work can be crammed into a single week, trading 18 months of stress for seven days of it. To test this, she and her fiancé Garrett Kennell gave themselves seven days to plan their whole wedding.
The War Room and the Goal
The team gathered in what Michelle calls a "war room." It included their planner, Danielle from Orange Blossom Special Events, Garrett, and Michelle's parents. When asked whether she had ever done this with clients, Danielle said never in a week. The plan was to fast-track every vendor and every detail.
Michelle explains why the wedding matters to her beyond logistics. Her philosophy is that novel experiences make life feel richer and longer. She wants the wedding to be that kind of experience, something guests can look back on and use as a source of happiness.
Locking In the Venue First
Michelle's main worry was money. She notes that historically the venue takes the lion's share of a wedding budget, so they wanted to lock it in as early as possible to speed up everything else. Danielle pulled 30 venue options, and the team narrowed them down to one: Cielo Farms, a venue in the Malibu Canyons. Danielle thought it fit the couple's wish to bring California and the outdoors into the wedding.
Danielle said budget was the hardest part for her personally. She listed the costs that add up: venue, caterer, staffing, rentals, chairs, tables, glassware, flatware, plates, napkins, florals, photography, videography, transportation, valet, the dress, the tuxedo, hair and makeup, and stationery.
Concept: California Meets Indian Wedding
The couple described their concept as a blend of a California wedding and an Indian wedding. They wanted natural tones for chairs and table settings, with pops of bright Indian color. Michelle especially wanted a traditional Indian mandap, a four-legged altar. She explains that the legs represent the four parents who raised the couple. A structure already at Cielo Farms gave the group mandap vibes, and they agreed to use it.
A Scale Model Made of Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures
The team still had trouble picturing their ideas, so Michelle built a scale model of the venue using her Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. She then walked through a three-phase plan.
Phase one was a red carpet at the entrance. The idea was to make guests feel like movie stars on arrival. The best man would film video interviews with each guest on the carpet while paparazzi took photos.
Phase two was the ceremony, centered on the mandap at the end of the aisle. It would be covered in bright marigolds that would hang overhead during the vows, and a string quartet would play all the music live. In a running joke, Michelle's figure in the model was a goblin wearing a skull as a hat, because it was the only miniature of the right height.
Phase three would start when hedge-wall dividers were pulled away after the ceremony. That would reveal the dinner and reception area, with tables for 120, a dance floor, and a DJ. On the way out, there would be a traditional Pittsburgh cookie table to honor Garrett's side of the family.
Back-to-Back Vendors and the Great Chair Debate
To fit everything into a week, Danielle scheduled every vendor meeting back to back. The first was Premiere Party Rents, which would supply tables, linens, and smaller items like chairs. The rental contact showed three standard options. Wood folding chairs were the basic cost. Chiavari chairs were a step up. Vineyard crossback chairs were the upgraded option.
This turned into the week's longest-running argument. One participant admitted the crossback chairs kept showing up on their "secret Pinterest." Another offered a line of reasoning that stuck: you will never remember a good chair at a wedding, but you will never forget a bad one. The family split between folding chairs and crossbacks, so the planner had everyone sit in the top contenders.
The budget argument was stated firmly. One family member favored the folding chair because it was sensible and would free up money for a nicer table or other rentals. They summed up their case as "budget first." Garrett argued for the crossback simply as the better chair. In the sit test, the folding chair was judged "fine," though someone noted that a father could use more cushion. The crossback drew stronger reactions. One person compared it to a nice car. Others liked the extra height, the cushioning, and the rounded back that gave more room.
One parent acknowledged that the cost difference was apparently significant. They still said comfort had to win because the difference in comfort was so large. A safety worry came up: folding chairs fold, and the event would be on grass. The planner answered that the grounds were well maintained, more like turf, and she didn't expect anyone to fall. In the final vote down the line, the group chose the Vineyard crossback.
Compromises Elsewhere
With what Michelle calls the "Holy Grail of chairs" locked in, they made budget compromises elsewhere. They chose a plated meal option, which they were told was the most cost-efficient, and went with basic white and silver tableware. Danielle also pointed out that a cheap foldable table under a linen costs much less than an exposed wood table, which also needs more maintenance.
Michelle praises Danielle for her industry knowledge and for respecting the budget. She says Danielle never pressured them to spend more than they wanted or were willing to.
Cake Tasting
Asked which detail they were most excited about, the group said the cake. The baker served a rapid series of flavors:
- cookies and cream (marble cake with cookies and cream mousse)
- chocolate fudge surprise (chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, and crushed English toffee)
- Boston cream (golden vanilla cake, vanilla bean pastry cream, and chocolate buttercream)
- snickerdoodle (cinnamon sugar cake with cinnamon cream cheese and a candy crunch)
- coconut passion fruit
One taster said the cakes were surprisingly moist, since most wedding cakes they remembered were on the dry side. Garrett knew the cake mattered a lot to Michelle's dad, so during the tasting he kept checking that the dad was actually enjoying it. The dad said his personal favorite was the Boston cream. The bakery's minimum was two flavors. In between bites, someone joked that they were willing to give up the cake argument in exchange for the crossback chairs. The final picks were Boston cream and coconut passion fruit.
Michelle says everyone had told them wedding planning would be the most stressful experience. Even so, she was pleasantly surprised by how well things were going.
Catering and Honest Feedback from Family
At the catering tasting, the menu included:
- appetizers: mashed avocado on house-made grilled crostini with watermelon radish and Maldon salt, and a mini potato and pea samosa-style seared cake with tamarind drizzle
- salad: baby spinach with red wine–poached pears
- main course: pan-seared chicken with Thai coconut curry sauce
The couple reacted with enthusiasm. A vendor remarked that because they knew exactly what they wanted, everything went much more smoothly.
Michelle notes that her team often makes decisions under stress for their videos. This project added a new variable: family. When she asked her parents whether there were decisions they didn't like, one parent eventually admitted it was the food. That parent was comparing it to what they knew from Louisiana and from other weddings they had attended.
Michelle says the negative feedback was a little frustrating to hear. Still, she was glad her parents were honest. It reminded her that when you're paying what she calls really inflated rates for wedding services, it's okay to give feedback and suggestions. She says the team carried that lesson through the rest of the week.
Flowers
For florals, Michelle wanted a "color explosion": a groomed mix of classic Indian flowers and roses in reds, oranges, and pinks. The group decided against candles and liked the idea of marigolds in lanterns. They settled the remaining arrangement choices quickly with broad agreement.
The Avengers Theme Down the Aisle
Garrett had one very specific request: the song Michelle would walk down the aisle to. He worried his idea wouldn't be approved by everyone. In a meeting with the musicians from Strings by Reiko, he revealed his dream: Michelle walking down the aisle to the Avengers theme. The musicians said they could do it and played it on the spot.
One of the musicians said the piece makes you straighten your shoulders and feel ready to take on the world, and predicted the audience would feel that on the wedding day. Michelle says she gets very emotionally tied to music, and that this choice pulled the whole story together for her. She said Garrett had captured it perfectly. Another listener in the room called it extraordinarily touching and beautiful, and very representative.
Looking back, Michelle calls this the moment that brought the week together. It was the first time she felt everyone in the room shared the same vision.
Where Things Stood After Seven Days
By the end of the week, Michelle estimates they had completed about 90% of their list, more than she expected. Asked whether they made the right decisions, she says only that she hopes so. One major decision was still unmade: her dress, which the video leaves for the next installment.
The average American can spend upwards of 500 hours planning their wedding, and these hours are usually spread out to over 11 to 18 months, which often leads to major amounts of stress, including breakups. But what if you were to cram all those hours into just one week, so we could just have one week of stress instead of 18 months? So to test this hypothesis, my fiancé and I have seven days to plan our entire wedding, starting now. A portion of this video is sponsored by Google Domains.
Welcome to the war room. We have assembled an amazing team here: our amazing planner Danielle from Orange Blossom Special Events, Garrett, obviously, and my parents. Have you done this with clients before? Never in a week. Never in a week. There's a ton of vendors to hire, a ton of details to take care of. Our goal is to fast-track everything so that we can do it all this week.
My philosophy on life is that novel experiences make our lives feel richer and longer, and so I really want our wedding to be that. I want it to be this experience that people can think back on and remember and use it as a source of happiness for them. I'm worried about money.
If you haven't heard, weddings are expensive, and historically, the lion's share of the budget is often dedicated to the venue itself. So this was an important detail to lock in as early as possible. To speed up the process, Danielle pulled 30 different venue options, which we then narrowed down to one.
We're at Cielo Farms today. This is a venue in the Malibu canyons. It's an absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking venue. I think this would be a great fit for Michelle and Garrett. They said they would love to incorporate California and outdoors and have this type of feeling.
I would say the hardest part for me personally is budget. You have to think about everything from the venue, the caterer, the staffing, rentals, chairs, tables, tabletop, glassware, flatware, plates, napkins, florals, photography, videography, transportation, valet, the dress, the tuxedo, hair and makeup, day-of stationery. All of these little details add up.
What I'm thinking we're gonna do first is just talk about the concept. I've pulled a bunch of pictures from Cielo Farms. Let's talk about colors a little bit and what we envision. We sort of had this idea to do a blend of California wedding meets Indian wedding. We are looking for a lot of natural tones when it comes to the chairs, the table setting and whatever, with pops of that bright Indian color.
I really wanted to incorporate the traditional Indian mandap, which is a four-legged altar, with the legs representing the four parents who raised the couple. This already gives the mandap vibes. Yeah, this is really cool. We could just use that. What do you guys think? It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So let's do this. Amazing. Oh my God.
We made, but we were still having trouble visualizing some of our ideas, and so I built a scale model of our entire wedding venue using my Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. So let me give you a quick rundown on the game plan.
Phase one will be a red carpet placed at the entrance. It's all about first impressions, and we want our guests to feel like movie stars the moment they arrive. My best man will be conducting video interviews with each guest as they walk the carpet, along with paparazzi taking their photos.
Phase two will be the ceremony, the key feature here being the traditional Indian mandap that sits at the end of the aisle. It will be covered in bright, vibrant marigolds, which will then hang overhead during our vows. Why am I a goblin? It is a literal skull for a hat. It was the only miniature of that height.
We'll also have a string quartet playing all of the music live, and once the ceremony concludes, we will pull away the hedge wall dividers to reveal phase three, dinner and the reception, which will include enough tables to seat 120, a dance floor and a DJ. And on the way out, we'll position a traditional Pittsburgh cookie table to honor Garrett's side of the family.
Boy, there sure are a lot of details, and if you're planning a wedding, you need a clean, convenient place to display said details so Aunt Jean isn't texting you about venue parking 10 minutes before you walk down the aisle. And so thank you so much to Google Domains for sponsoring this portion of the video.
We used Google Domains to secure the custom URL michelleandgarrett.com, which we then connected to a Google Site to display each and every detail about our wedding. This gave us a super clean, memorable URL that we were able to print directly on our invites for guests to easily access. It's super easy to get started even if you don't have a website, and easy to transfer in if you do. It's secure and requires absolutely no coding. You can try Google Domains today for your own website, and you can even use my wedding template. Head on over to domains.google/michelle to get 20% off. And thank you again so much to Google Domains for sponsoring this portion of the video.
And so to make our vision a reality under the time constraint, Danielle planned for us to meet every single vendor back to back to back, starting with Premiere Party Rents, which will be providing everything from the tables to the linens to even the minute details like the chairs.
So here's three really standard, great, different chair options. These, which are your wood folding chairs, this is going to be the basic cost. Slightly elevated from that are going to be the Chiavaris, and then you have your vineyard crossback chairs. So this is going to be your more upgraded option.
So online, chairs on my secret Pinterest that I do have— You have a secret? I do. These are the ones that ended up keep popping up. Just saying, I just want to throw that out there. I'm completely neutral on, like, chairs are important. Will you ever remember a good chair at a wedding? No. That's true. I agree. However, you will never forget a bad chair. Think about that.
We are torn as a family between the folding chairs and the vineyard crossback chairs. Until we settle the chair debate. So let's peek at all the chairs, and then I say we pull out your top three contenders and you guys try them out and take a seat, see what you think.
I'm in favor of the folding chair due to budget, but I think a folding chair is sensible, and why not use that extra budget to go elsewhere? A nicer table, a nicer anything else from Premiere Party Rents. That is my argument, and I'm sticking to it. Budget first. Garrett, you may proceed. Okay.
We've got the vineyard crossback. My argument: better chair. I rest my case.
Here we go. We're trying the folding chair, my personal choice without having to try it yet. I think it's just fine. Yeah, it's fine. Let's hear you guys.
Foreign.
I have a little heart for my father. He could use more cushion. Okay. All right, now it's time for the vineyard crossback. I'm so mad at you right now. This is a great day. See, now this is luxury. It's like a nice car.
[Music]
They're higher up. I kind of like that lift, that extra lift. And the cushion is a good cushion. And the rounded back, you have more room.
On the chair debate, I think comfort is important, and unfortunately, the cost is apparently significant. I don't know the details, but I think you have to go with comfort on that, and the comfort level was significantly different between the two.
I'm not against the folding chairs. They look nice. It's just that they fold. Yeah, and you could fall, and they could get— Absolutely. It's grass, right? It's so great. It is, but it's very well maintained. It's more like turf, so I don't envision anybody falling out of the chair.
We'll go down the line, and we will give our decision on folding chair or vineyard crossback. I'll go with the vineyard crossback. Vineyard cross.
Fit. But vineyard crossback, I think.
But with the holy grail of chairs locked in, we had to make some budgetary compromises on a few other things. Your plated option is going to be your most cost-efficient. Then I say we do that. I'm personally fine with the white. Basic. Basic silver. Silver.
Danielle is a freaking pro. She was just so knowledgeable about the industry and all of the potential options. Believe it or not, you can put a very cheap, foldable, cost-efficient table under a linen, slap a linen on it, and the cost will be significantly less than this wood exposed table, which you have to maintain more. She was really respectful of our budget and never made us feel pressured to spend more than we were interested in or willing to.
What details are you guys most excited to help choose with us? The cake. Good choice. Very good choice.
So I'm going to give you a copy of our full menu just so you can browse. It'll give you a great description of each flavor as you try it, in case you forget, because I'm going to throw a lot at you real fast. Cookies and cream cake: it's a marble cake with a cookies and cream mousse. Chocolate fudge surprise: chocolate mousse, chocolate cream ganache with crushed English toffee. Boston cream: traditional golden vanilla cake, a vanilla bean pastry cream and a chocolate buttercream. Snickerdoodle: cinnamon sugar cake with a cinnamon cream cheese and a candy crunch.
Try this out. Fit. Oh my God. Wow. So good, huh? So good. This passion fruit one is coconut? Coconut. Yeah, so that's my coconut passion fruit. That was amazing. What do you like, Dad? Did you try all of them? I've tried all of them.
Cakes were surprisingly very moist. Most wedding cakes, as I remember, tend to be a little on the dry side. I knew the cake was going to be pretty important to Michelle's dad, so while we were tasting the cake, I kept looking over to him and making sure that he was actually enjoying it.
My favorite, sort of a personal bias, is the Boston cream. How many flavors should we be choosing? At the minimum, two flavors. What about this one? Okay, I'm willing to let it go for the vineyard crossback chairs. Shut up about these vineyard crossback chairs. Really into the vineyard crossback chairs. Yeah, but they're good chairs. If you're gonna fight over something, fight over a good chair.
[Laughter]
We have made our decision. We're going to do two flavors. Okay. One flavor will be Boston cream. Excellent. The other will be the coconut passion fruit. Okay. There it is.
Everyone told us that planning a wedding was going to be the most stressful experience, but at the same time, I was pleasantly surprised with how well it was going.
You guys have a fantastic menu. First, we have our fresh mashed avocado on our house-made grilled crostini. This is served with watermelon radish and Maldon salt on top. Oh my God, yes. Next up, we have the mini potato and pea samosa-style seared cake with a tamarind drizzle on top. Very good. Wow.
So moving into dinner, first we have the salad. So we have our baby spinach salad with red wine-poached pears. I'm being sent to outer space. I love that. Last but not least today, we have the pan-seared chicken with Thai coconut curry sauce. Literally everything's amazing. You knew exactly what you wanted, and that made everything go so much smoother too.
So we are often forced to make a lot of decisions under stress for every video that we make. I will say there is one new variable that we don't normally deal with when we're making YouTube videos, and that is family.
Are there decisions we made you don't like? No, but there were decisions that were very hard for me. Yeah, okay, but what decisions did you not like? I have to freaking know. It's the food. Coming— You didn't like the food? Just coming from Louisiana, coming from other weddings that we had. Oh, I shouldn't say this.
While it was a little frustrating to hear some negative feedback from my parents, I'm actually really glad that they were honest with me, because it reminded me that when you are planning a wedding, honestly paying really inflated rates for stuff, that it's okay to give feedback and suggestions. And this is something that we were actually able to carry with us for the rest of the week throughout our planning.
Flowers, yay. I just want it to feel like a color explosion, kind of like a groomed mix of classic Indian flowers. Roses, reds, orange, pinks. No candles. Okay. Marigolds in the lantern. I like that. Do we like that? Do you like— I'm filling out a little bit. I'm pretty positive on this road. Are we all? Yeah. Classic white Chinese. I think it looks good. Would you agree? Yeah. Okay. Perfectly fine. Yeah. I'll brush.
There's one very specific detail that I had, which was the song Michelle was going to walk down the aisle to, and my one worry was that the choice or the idea that I had in my head wasn't going to be necessarily approved by everyone.
All right, we have an amazing opportunity today. We're going to get to hear and speak with the ladies of Strings by Reiko. It is my dream to see Michelle walk down the aisle to the Avengers theme song. Is that something that you guys can do? Okay, great. Look, we can hear it right now. Sure, let's do that. Oh my God. Okay, let's do that.
[Music] [Applause]
That song does have an emotional impact where, as you straighten your shoulders and you feel like you're ready to take on the world, I think the audience will feel that on the wedding day.
I tend to get very emotionally tied to music, and to me it kind of pulled the story together. I have to say that Garrett captured it so perfect.
Oh my God. Oh my God. It was extraordinarily touching and beautiful. Very perfect, very representative of everything. Could I put chalk up to this? Is— Thank you for approving of this.
Of all of the things that we accomplished in our week of wedding planning, this moment to me was the moment that brought it all together. And it was the first time that I felt everyone in the room was experiencing a shared vision.
So by the end of the week, I think we accomplished about 90% of the items on our list, which was actually a lot more than I thought we were going to. Do you think we actually made the right decision? I hope so. But there is one thing I still need to make a decision on: my dress.
[Music]
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