Jamie Wolfer answers wedding planning questions about staying calm in the final months. Use checklists and spreadsheets, delete Pinterest if it stresses you, and cross items off a printed list. For a 100-guest cocktail hour, set up 5-7 belly-bar tables.
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Well, hello lovely humans and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way. Because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the master plan course and answer your questions in Lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the master plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. I'm starting to feel deeply overwhelmed by the emotional labor and fear of forgetting things slash letting the wedding parties be unprepared for my lack of support of the wedding planning. I'm talking about. I'm talking about wedding nightmares and waking up with panic attacks. Is this common? Any advice for an anxious bride two months out from the big day? Can I hold you? I would love to hold you. So sorry. I. Well, that's why you're here. That's why we have checklists in place. That's why we have these. Like the entire workbook is here and is intended to walk you through everything in my power to. To make sure that you're not missing anything. So if you are being dedicated and you are going through the things that are in this course, you're probably not going to forget anything important at all. And that's why I set it up this way, is so that you don't need an actual wedding planner reminding you of all this stuff. Now, saying that is one thing. Feeling that is completely different. There is a lot of emotional labor when it comes to this. And so I think practicing, and this is going to be a cheesy catchphrase, but practicing self care is of the utmost importance. Self care does not always mean face masks and pedicures and long soaks in the tub. It can mean that, right? But it can also mean deleting Pinterest off of your phone. It can also mean going to talk to your therapist and just like leaning in and being like, hi, so I need to unload some of this, it could be ignoring wedding planning for a whole week. Do not think about anything. Or, you know, like don't sit down and do any wedding plan work. I was gonna say don't think about it. Yeah, right. We all know that's really difficult. Find the place, the space, the person, the thing that works for you to check out of this. The program is set up in such a way that my hope is that you should not have any gaps. And if you want to, I actually do offer one on one calls if you want to do that. We can book those through Rebecca and we can get those going. But yeah, letting parties be unprepared for my lack of support in wedding planning. I. I don't think you're going to be unprepared. I really don't. If there are specific things that you're worried about or specific. I'm a list maker. So oftentimes my advice is, well, have you written. Written a list about it and then checked off all the stuff that you've done? That's honestly, if you hear me talk about being a list maker, that's where the checklists come in. That's where these spreadsheets come in. If you want to physically print up the 12 month planning checklist and cross stuff off, the physical act of doing that calms my stress down. I'm not kidding. Where is it? Oh, that. This is an entire notepad. Just a checklist. I am, I am. I'm the crazy notepad girl. If that makes you feel better, if that is your form of self care and that kind of gets you through this, I highly recommend doing that. All right. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to and you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie? Actually, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the master plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out@wolferenco.com tmp that's wolferandco.com tmp Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual Worst and the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to Wedding priorities. Com. We are planning to do an alcohol free wedding and I wanted to do some mocktails and appetizers before the ceremony. How long should we serve them? 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And at what time? Our ceremony time is 5:30. I would serve them for 30 minutes starting at 5:00 clock because the first guest usually gets there about 30 minutes before the ceremony starts. How many belly bar tables you recommend for cocktail hour of hundred guests count? Well, Katrina, it depends on, I mean, depends on the size of the space. You could do fine with five. Seven would be great, Nine would be overkill. So yeah, five to seven I would think because not everyone's going to use them. Basically it's just enough for people like set their drinks down or have something to lean against or set their appetizer plate down. So if you have a big enough space, 10 could be great, 15 could be really cool. But for the most part, yeah, it's maybe seven to nine. I don't think nine would be too much now that I'm like verbal processing. We have 11 hours of the venue with the end at 11 and clean up by 12. How do we decide what time to start the ceremony? Most events are six hours from start to finish, barring any sort of cultural differences. So obviously if you're having a Greek Orthodox wedding or a Catholic wedding that has to be at a specific time in the church and cannot be outside of that. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about if you have the ceremony reception at the same space, start to finish, typically six hours. So we have about 30 minutes for your ceremony. Usually I do like an hour and 15, sometimes an hour and 30 for cocktail hour, which kind of gets us around that two hour mark for that first chunk. And then you have about a four hour reception. Anything beyond that, people kind of stop dancing as much and they get pretty tired. So. So I would recommend if the end is at 11, you just count back by six hours. If you are convinced that you want more dance time, then you could start at 4 instead of 5. But those would be the sweet spot for that also pay attention to when the sunset is happening whenever you're getting married. Are there any mountains around? Are there any really tall tree lines? Anything that could impact the lighting for whenever you are getting married? So a five o' clock start time, you know, right now, perfect for most of the northern hemisphere in a couple of months. Not a great start time because you're it's dark. Very, very dark. So my guess is it's not going to be in the off season when it is going to be dark super early. Because if it is, then you'll probably want to start at like 3 and then you'll end it like 9 or 10. So take those into account. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the Master Plan community over themasterplanwed. Com. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye guys.
