Logistics of a celebration

I recently got married, and as with most significant events, at least one big thing goes sideways. In our case, it was the date. The venue we booked sent us an email in November of last year saying they are so sorry, but they have a double booking for our date of February 26th. I thought this only happened in air travel.

With the wedding being three months out, you can imagine the shock. I was dumbstruck.

In the email, they gave us a few new date options. After emotions ran high, we got to work, chose February 12th, emailed all our service providers. It was one of those venues where you must bring in everything chairs, cutlery, lights, everything. By some miracle, everyone had the 12th open, which meant we wouldn't lose any of the deposits paid.

We got the news the Tuesday morning, and by Friday, we had a new date with most of the arrangements made, and I remember looking at the wedding countdown and seeing we've jumped from 96 to 78 days to the wedding in three days.

Strange how time bends when planning weddings.

All this and the search for a toast theme led me to time. When and where did it start, the keeping of time.

After the Google first page kind of stuff, music videos, etc., I went down quite the rabbit hole. Timekeeping started with the Egyptians 1500 B.C to Julius Caesar imposing the Julian calendar by adding January and February to the ten-month calendar that celebrated the new year on March 1st.

Then another shift in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII to the Gregorian calendar to the 24 time zones the world adopted after the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference, Washington, D.C. The conference resulted from the industrial revolution. Railways, steamships, and telephones required synergetic timekeeping.

Unrest and riots followed as labourers in countries like India had to adapt and commute to work before dawn for the first time.

The world has become a well-oiled machine by minimising times kept globally, and time plays a significant role in improving technology and data analytics.

Amid wedding planning and working on a start-up, I received some advice, probably the best I have received as an entrepreneur, cultivate your advice network as you grow. That led me to a personal question that was hard to answer. How much of what I do, my beliefs come from taking immediate advice and not taking the time to cultivate.

The evolution of time is the foundation of the modern "SaaS" world we live in today.

And a shared calendar will ensure the chairs and cutlery arrive just in time.

Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash