Manifest: 100,000 Weddings

Did you know there are 100,000 weddings in Ottawa, Canada each year? Neither did I!

About 11 years ago, we were meeting with a potential new video production partner to collaborate with on some upcoming projects. I was really impressed with their work and a big fan of one of the co-owners...this should have been a slam dunk meeting for them. A formality. A "nice to meet you officially, let's get to work" type of situation. One of the things I found interesting about these guys was that a good percentage of their portfolio was made up of wedding videos, not commercial work. That didn't bother me at all...quality is quality...but I did ask one question, "Why?".

The other co-owner chimed in, very proudly; because there are more than 100,000 weddings in Ottawa each year. It's a huge market.

Now, admittedly, I can be a bit of an asshole but in this situation I really wasn't trying to be (at first, anyway). I responded, "100,000 weddings? I don't think that's accurate." He pushed back, "It is." I responded, "100,000 weddings would mean there are 200,000 people getting married in a city with a population of less than 1 million people. That's 20% of the population getting married each year." "I don't know what to tell you, that's how many there are, man."

Time to be an asshole, I guess.

"If there are 100,000 weddings happening in this city each year, even if each wedding only has 20 people in attendance that would mean there are 2 million people attending weddings each year. If there are 100,000 weddings that would mean that there are nearly 2,000 weddings happening each week. That means 2,000 venues, catering companies, DJs,...probably like 200+ wedding dress shops. We would be able to look out the window right now and all we would see are florists running around mad with millions of flowers in tow, Algonquin College would create programs specific for wedding planning, the airport would look like it is Valentines Day 365 days a year, horse drawn carriages would replace public transit, and the sheer volume of shit in the streets would cause wide-spread disease!"

I then Googled, "how many weddings happen in Las Vegas each year?". The answer was something like "The STATE OF NEVADA (not just Las Vegas) is considered the wedding capital of the world with over 90,000 wedding ceremonies performed each year."

"So, what you're saying is that there are more weddings just in Ottawa than in the entire state of Nevada each year? A place KNOWN for having an insane number of weddings?"

"Yes, I am."

This utterly ridiculous interaction ultimately resulted in me never passing this company any business and I have probably shared this story dozens of times in the years since. When we invested in Simple Story, someone mentioned the possibility of outsourcing work to them (they are still in business, to their credit.) when we hit capacity and I just laughed and said "never in a million years."

Am I being petty? Probably, yeah. Should people be punished for their mistakes from more than a decade ago? Probably not. I know I need to get over this and genuinely unsure as to why I think about the story enough that I decided to journal about it today (and make public here on Manifest). I think it's because I am also someone who is pretty stubborn, believes that I know everything, and isn't always the most flexible in my thinking. Maybe the story resonates because, as much as I hate to admit it, it was kind of like staring in a mirror while this guy put his foot down on his position.

What are the points of view or positions that I hold where others would disagree? How many times have I cost us business or damaged relationships because I just couldn't admit I was wrong? I'm sure I've been guilty of this more times than I can count. Probably not 100,000 times, but maybe not too far off.