All the work...

We got to talking to a friend of ours who is using us for her daughters wedding on their farm. Rita has owned a number of her own businesses and was telling us how she was tired of all the work involved and was going to retire. That got us to talking about what goes into what we do that the customer never sees.

To bring you our typical two hour carriage service a whole host of things have already happened. A trip to look over where we are doing the job in our car prior to the job is just one of many. Take for instance the three hours (one way) we spent on the road this Thursday to look at a job in Waldron we have coming up. Three there, three back, another hour for dinner on the road, scouting out the route, and stops for gas, etc. Lets put it this way. We left our house at 2pm and rolled back in the drive way ar 11pm. A long day and a lot of driving, not to mention we had spent the entire day before doing the same thing for a couple of other upcoming jobs. Thursday we luckily missed all the severe storms that were scatted around the state.

So now that we have that taken care of we will have horses to wash, and a stall or stalls to keep perfectly clean. Stalls must me mucked constantly after you give the horse a bath or you will end up having to do the bath all over again. The horses bath is an event in itself, with special shampoos and products used to bring you an immaculately clean horse, not to mention the pedicure touch up, and checking them closely all over from head to tail. Our typical draft horse washing uses about $30 worth of products each time, and takes about two hours.

Besides that before each job the harness must be cleaned, and the carriage must be cleaned, detailed, and decorated. The carriage has to be loaded and tied down inside the trailer for safe transport. Let me tell you, there is a fine art to getting that done with literally only inches of space to spare on each side. Our formal wear has to be washed, starched, ironed, and hung up each and every job. All this must be in order before we leave several hours longer than the actual driving time so that we can get to your event an hour early, factor in unexpected delays, and set up for your service.

Once we are finished with your service the already long day is by far not over for us. We have to untack the horse completely, re-load everything, drive home, unload everything, feed the horse and put him to bed, and drag our tired sore bodies to the house. One thing I can say about all the hard work it takes to bring you a Princess Carriage is that once its all over and done we are going to sleep like a rock! Of course until you start the process all over again for the next event in the book. That said, the enjoyment we get out of bringing smiles to faces, seeing new places, and making someone special feel really special makes it truly a labor of love. :)