STORYTIME: The One Where the Couple LIED
Wedding planner Jamie Wolfer shares a chaotic early-career wedding in a Central California park where a couple handed her a 20-30 page DIY checklist and she arrived to find almost nothing set up while pregnant. She scrambled with volunteers to finish everything, guests waited in the heat, and vendors missed their times. She learned to set boundaries, charge for extra help, and stop doing split-shifts.
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She's kicking things under the table. She's not even pouring it into bowls. She's like, I don't even know if we're gonna have time to get this done before the ceremony is over. This is the— I am in panic mode. Been a minute since we've done one of these bad boys. It's time for another wedding story time, a series where I tell you about the weddings I worked at the very, very beginning stages of my career, 7 to 10 years ago, about the mistakes I might have made and/or other people might have made along the way and the lessons that we've learned to get us here today. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Okay, so this couple contacts me and I immediately recognize last name of the bride and I'm like, wait a minute, I think I know who these people are. Go to my parents, I'm like, hey, is this who I think it is? They're like, yeah, that's so-and-so from the church we used to go to. And I thought, perfect, this is great. If you're new here, in the beginning of my career I got a lot of word of mouth, um, events through people in churches because we were pretty active in churches in Southern California. And so the word of mouth train for me was like, it, it was the motherlode. Okay. So I was like, great, if I get in contact with them, did they also go to a Christian university in Southern California that's nefarious for lots of people getting engaged? Perhaps. Perhaps. Okay? So I was like, cool, this will be good. And also there's like a little bit of pressure because this family went actually to my dad's church. He was a senior pastor at the time that we had met them. And so I just was like, I just really want to do a good job for them. Okay? Also, I'm just early on in my career, period. So I'm like, I just want everybody to like me. So I meet up with them and they are pretty type A. They have a really cool idea of what they want to do. Their vision is gorgeous. The groom is actually— I don't know if he was a digital, like, a graphic designer, but he did graphic design for his event. I just didn't know if it was his profession. Okay. And he had so many good ideas, and she had so many good ideas, but they were quite subdued about it. And in case you haven't noticed, I am not often subdued. Okay, so I'm— I, um, So we have our initial intake meeting. I'm loving the ideas that they're having. I think this is really creative. I do have a couple of moments where I'm like, this is kind of a lot, but it should be fine, right? Again, I know this family, super excited. Word of mouth train has already proven to be so powerful for us. Like, let's just, let's do what we can for this. And also at this time, I wasn't really good at communicating boundaries when it came to what I would do and what I wouldn't do as a planner. So I put together a proposal for them. Sent it over, and they have something that we in my family call the gift of ask, where people just ask things and you're like, wow, that, that was bold of you. Socially speaking, you probably shouldn't have asked that, but I admire your boldness, right? Or at least that's your response the first few times you get kind of questions along these lines. And so they ended up saying, hey, can we get an additional meeting or two? We're a little nervous. Also, the cost might be a little high. So I, I did— I know, I know, I know better now, okay? I know better now. Um, so I negotiated the rate down and gave them more meetings because I was like, again, This is important. I know you. We're not like besties, but like, I want to do— I want to do right by you. Okay, lots of ideas, lots of signage, uh, custom logo for the event, um, lots of creativity. And this is the kind of thing that when I got started with wedding planning, I craved the idea of getting really creative with the design of it. In fact, I still am obsessed with creative design when it comes to weddings. I just know a lot better about DIYs now. And when I say that this couple is Type A, I think it's both of them together because both of them are doing these documents. But also bear with me because it's been like 8, 9 years since this wedding actually even happened. There is a 20-page to-do list. 20, 20 pages. 20 pages of to-dos. Oh no, I'm— I'm— we're still scrolling. Okay, there it is. Okay, they're on their A-game. And here I am thinking this is actually going to come in super handy, which it did, don't get me wrong. This— my intent of describing this is not to bash the couple. I love that they were on top of things. I didn't love that I was not good about my boundaries and the, and the gift of ask that they kept, um, so willingly bestowing upon me. Okay, so we get a little closer to their event. Turns out this is about 3 hours away, and I had already traveled up and back for a walkthrough with them, which I don't typically do anymore because that's 6 hours of travel at a discounted rate where I already gave them additional meetings. So you can see where, like, I made— probably made a little too many concessions. Okay, so we get closer to wedding day and I find out that I'm pregnant. Now, this is with— this is my second pregnancy, it's my third kid, um, and I already know at this point that I have really difficult pregnancies. So I'm probably only 3-ish months along by the time the wedding day comes around, so I'm not at the height of when it gets really bad, uh, but it's not great. I'm just not loving life. But I always get super excited about wedding days, so I was like, it'll be fine, I'm not worried about it. Now the location they were getting married was technically a public park. It's owned by the county. Um, this was in Central California, or more Central California, and it had pretty strict rules. You could be there from sunrise to sunset and nothing beyond that. Also at this location was an old Western town that they used to film so many TV shows and so many movies. I think Westworld had some things filmed there. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman had some things filmed there. Like I was geeking hardcore because I love Jane Seymour. I mean, honestly, the hair, the accent, she's iconic. That little like smile thing that she does, adorbs. So I felt almost famous by osmosis because they were having their event here. So I'd gone up, I toured location, came back. Um, then for the actual event, for the rehearsal, I ended up booking a hotel out of my own pocket to stay at. And for this event, we had good old Robin, we had my mom come assist with me, which of course they had already known her, the parents knew her because the whole church connection. Okay, okay. Um, so we had stayed at the hotel the night before and she's like, are you getting reimbursed for this? And I went, no, no, it's fine. I didn't even ask. I didn't even ask. So again, this is not a knock against the couple. This is, um, this is Jamie, Enneagram 3 recovering people pleaser, uh, back when she was before pre-recovery. Okay. So I'm already out tons of miles, lots of cash to like make this happen. Oh, forgot to mention, a couple days before the event they contact me and they're like, hey, can you be there at 8:00 AM for when the rental company arrives to drop off all the rentals? And I go, no, you have me for 8 hours. And they're like, well yeah, but we figured we could split the hours. Oh no, this was a 10-hour event. Oh, that's right. That's back when I used to do 10-hour events. I don't do those anymore. See what I mean? Boundaries are beautiful, people. So, uh, they're like, hey, so can we split it where you do 2 hours here and then like you just go to a coffee shop and then you come back later? Come again? You want me to just come here, show up to see where the rentals are going, leave, uh, and go sit at a coffee shop for 3 or 4 hours, pregnant and uncomfortable, mind you, um, and then come back to do the rest of the event? Uh, yeah, it's because this event that I added the word consecutive to all my proposals and contracts where we don't do split shifts. They didn't know what they were asking. It wasn't that big of a deal. Um, I just be able to be like, no, we can actually have family members or friends come there for you early in the morning. We can have everything set up as need be, but I will not be showing up early and then leaving and then coming back. Um, instead I will just show up at the designated time and confirm that they have all of the things done. So rehearsal goes well. Next day, getting ready for the event. I typically show up at weddings about 2 hours in advance, and there are plenty of planners who do completely different things. There are planners who are there for 14 hours plus if they want to be. They also charge for that.. So you're going to see a bigger increase in cost if you're gonna have a planner there for an extended period of time, or you'll have multiple shifts of planners come through. We're talking more like, um, mid-tier luxury events and less budget events. Like back at this time, I think this wedding was like $30K, maybe more like $25K. So obviously I'm not gonna be performing the services of a high-tier white glove wedding planner. So if you hear this and you go, wow, wedding planner's only there for 8 hours. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I was only charging them like $1,200 and like I had already done a ton of work with them, so my profit was next to nil at this point. So even though my gut is saying, don't go early, don't go early, don't go early, you, you're overextending yourself again, you don't have to do this. I went, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to, it's okay. I agreed. I added on time to our timeline previously. Now it's the wedding day. I'm getting ready. We're gonna show up at about 11:30, which by my count is about 3.5 hours before the guests arrive. In fact, we'll go ahead and throw up the timeline right here. Obviously things are gonna be redacted. No, this is not a government document, but obviously we wanna, we wanna protect some privacy here. So you can see we have rentals arrive at the venue at 8:00 AM, volunteers arrive at the venue cuz Your girl's not doing that. And then groom and groomsmen arriving at the venue all around the same time, because the groom knew the vision, there was lots of moving parts, and so he would be able to do some of that directing and then leave with his guys and go get ready to come back later. Photographer arrives at Airbnb at 11:00 a.m., and I arrive at the venue at about 11:30. Now, when I say that there is an extreme amount of DIY at this event, I mean that there is an extreme amount of DIY. Now, again, if the groom and volunteers and groomsmen are showing up at 8:00 a.m. For a ceremony that starts at 3:00, we have so much time to get a bunch of this stuff done. So I thought I was there as more of like an observational role, making sure all the setup was done according to like the aesthetic that they wanted and less full manual labor. You can tell by how I set up that phrasing that I was indeed not correct. Now to pull back for just a moment, the document we're about to scroll through rapidly, I was aware of beforehand and I was like, this looks great. It looks like all the roles are delegated well. Fantastic. And I say that now knowing so much more than I did in this moment. It's a 30-page setup list, 30 pages. To be fair, it is a list like each and every single location has its own page. Okay. And then the first page is a table of context. Context? It says table of context. It literally says table of context. Content? The second page is contacts. Um, the third page is more contacts. And then, um, we get into the meat and potatoes of this. The actual setup stuff itself doesn't start till page 5. So it's only 25 pages. It's only 25 areas that need set up. Does that make it sound better? Okay. So we've got, um, the general sign near the parking lot. We've got the gift table that has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11 items on it. Then we have the guest book/dare jar. I'm not going to count the items on this one. We've got the wheel game. We have all of the setup items that are supposed to be there for the ceremony. We've got lawn games, we've got cocktail food tables, we've got the plates, we've got flowers, we've got books, fake plant, flower sifter, grapes, strawberries, oversized, in U-Haul. Let me tell you, if a U-Haul is involved in the setup of your event, it's going to be crazy. Okay, we've got veggies, we've got dip, we've got tortilla chips, we've got hummus. There's so many things that are going onto these cocktail tables, which the venue had a fridge there. We knew the food was going to be stored in it, but again, we're just, we're just highlighting the level of detail that we're going through here. Okay, there's like a cocktail bar that we're gonna set up inside the saloon, but it's a little bit difficult to get to from the reception space, so we might have a secondary setup. There's just thing after thing after thing after thing. So all of that, bear in mind, me showing up at 11:30 to just kind of zhuzh things around was because I was concerned that things wouldn't look exactly the way the people had wanted to. And I think they asked me to show up early, which I was, I was okay with. I was like, hey, there's a lot of moving parts, I'll show up, okay? I'll show up. I get there and it's a lot less set up than we're talking about, okay? There was like a sunscreen station with bug spray, and bear in mind, every single spot had custom signage for it, okay? There was a big sign that needed to be hung from a second-story porch, so that needed to happen, and that took a lot more time than they thought. So basically what I think ended up happening is a lot of the volunteers just went, oh, the coordinator will figure this out later. I don't know if the groom had communicated did that to them or the family members that were there earlier for that setup. But somebody said, don't worry, the coordinator is coming. So what started off as a let's just check and judge and make sure everything looks okay turned into a full-blown we are now implementing probably 18 of these 25 setup pages. It was very labor intensive. And God bless my mom because at this point she knew. She knew looking at the list, she knew looking at the items. We had gone over the list on the drive up. She just, she just knew. That this was going to be intense. And she's like, all right, let's divvy up. You do your stuff, you do the stuff here, I'll do the stuff here. Let's go. And I was like, okay, great, done. Had I known I was going to be doing this much DIY, I probably would have brought an additional assistant or two, which is something I would do now if I took on a wedding of this magnitude. I would bring more assistance with me, um, and charge accordingly. Of course, I would have made a lot of different decisions because of this specific event alone, but this is one of the early lessons where I figured out that if you have friends and family doing DIY for you, oftentimes they don't do it to the full extent. They just— they miss something, they forget to set something out, they don't know the full extent of what you're requesting of them. So there's a lot of like— anytime now I have family members or friends doing the setup or DIY, I'm like, can I talk to them ahead of time so we could just chat through this real quick? Because of events like this. So again, this is not a knock against the couple, okay? I want to make that extremely clear. This just means that your girl learned some pretty hefty lessons on this one. Okay, so we're sweating, we're running around, we're chucking things together, we're like making sure things are finished. Like I would pull up into the next page of the checklist and walk up to a section, be relieved when I found that it was like 50% of the way done. First look happens at about 1 o'clock. I go check in with them and for some reason I'm perceiving like a little bit of just like, eh, not meh, but just like a little meh. And for meh, for those who aren't understanding, it's a little bit of frustration, a little bit of Mm, you know, and perhaps it was me overanalyzing the situation because my people pleaser tendencies tend to like stick their antennas out when I sense someone's feeling a little bit off or a little bit poorly emotionally. So I'm not sure what it was, don't know, but I kind of sense this vibe and I'm like, oh no, okay, let's go into rescue mode to make sure they're good. So I kind of hover near First Look for a little bit, make sure everything's good. Turns out it's just fine. I just, you know, probably spent 20 minutes over there that I hadn't planned on doing, but I just want to make sure. Is this the photographer? I don't think so. I know he's a friend of theirs, and I adore this photographer. I've worked with him multiple times. Um, do they need something to eat? Like, I'm just trying to figure out the vibe, checking with the wedding party. Do they need something? Something happening? I'm not asking that, but that's what I'm trying to investigate. Okay, so at a certain point I go, got it, cool, let's go. And now it's like 1:30, 1:45. I'm back into the grind, I'm back into setup. I am barely looking up for air. Again, remember 25 pages of setup going on here. We're talking suitcases, um, and custom signage, a neon sign, cuz this is right when those were first coming out. We're talking candles all over. Their whole head table was decorated to the nines. There was so much stuff that needed to be set out. And so as a matter of checking things off this giant checklist and making sure it's all ready to go, a lot of custom stuff. Gorgeous, very well-intentioned, very exhausting. So if you'll see here on the list, it says 3 o'clock guest arrive, which typically means 30 minutes before the ceremony start time. That's when we know like, hey, we need to have the couple put away so people aren't chatting with them. We don't ruin the big reveal of the bride in her gown, etc. We just need to be prepared for people to start showing up 30 minutes early. That as a planner is kind of like my end time for the first public-facing spaces. That was really hard to say. So I wanted the welcome table to be done. I wanted the gift table to be done. I wanted the ceremony to be done. DJ making he's getting set up okay. So marking the guest arrival time at 3:00 is really helpful for us as professionals, so we all know, okay, game face is on, this is when the people are arriving. And at this point it's probably 2:15, 2:30, so it's been about an hour since I left the couple. I'm checking with the DJ, hey, here's power, do you need anything from me? What's the setlist look like? Do you have all of the list of songs, etc., for the different moving parts? Cool. And it's at this point that I look up up and I see guests. I check my watch and it's like 2:30. Like, hmm, that's weird. Because like, this is a public park, this is owned by the county, um, and the only time they ever really shut it down is if they're actually filming. And so they warned the couple, hey, if people are walking by or going on hikes in the area, like, you need to be prepared for that. And they— the couple actually made a sign that said, if you're crashing this wedding, you better be funny. Like, it was So funny. Um, and I think we had one group of like teenage boys come stand near it to just kind of figure out what was going on, but everyone felt like they were intruding and typically like just kind of stayed away from the whole thing because they could see it was a wedding and they weren't gonna do anything about it. So when these people walked up, um, because I had seen hikers throughout the day of course wearing hiking gear, these people were not that. Uh, you don't typically hike in a sundress or high heels. So I know they're wedding guests. I know, I'm very astute. It's 2:30. What are they doing here? So I'm looking at these fancy dress people going, okay, well maybe they're just really early. Some people do this. Some people are like obscenely early. And next to the, the sunscreen and bug spray area, there was little mini water bottles. I think they had custom labels on it. When I say this couple did the most, they did the most. So I was like, here, do you want some water? "this is great. So good to see you. We won't be starting the ceremony for a little bit, so carry on as you will." Okay? Me by myself, Robin off doing other things because there's so many tasks that we need to do. Oh, I even forgot before we get to this point, I checked in with the couple who was hiding in the reception space and they had bunches of eucalyptus leftover from the florist. And she's like, "Hey, could you just place these on the tables?" Now this is where my dislike of the term, "can you just," really was solidified because it was such a, could you take this task that sounds simple to me and execute it quickly on top of your other duties because it seems simple to me where it's not the worst task in the world. It's not overly complicated to lay eucalyptus down these tables, but they had already put out the candles. They'd already put out centerpieces. They'd already put some things out and it was bundles upon bundles of eucalyptus, like bunches of them. And so I looked at my mom and I was like, I'm like, okay, yeah, it was probably a 30 to 40 minute task. So she's probably still off doing that. Guests are now arriving. Praise God I have a walkie-talkie. I radioed her and I was like, hey, we have people here already. Maybe they're just here super early, but we have people here already. Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. The people keep coming, they keep coming. And by my count, ceremony doesn't start till 3:30. What are they doing here? I don't understand. There is a large amount of people here. It's now 2:45 and I would say at least 50 to 60% of the guests have showed up. It's now 2:55. And bear in mind, there's other things that we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be hiding the couple. What else do we have on here? The popsicle vendor is arriving. We're supposed to assemble the bridal party for the entrance. The caterer is arriving. Lots of things are happening during this moment in time. Robin, eucalyptus. Just setting them out. Me greeting guests going, what are you doing here? Hi, thank you so much. Yeah, so we'll start ceremony in a little bit, but if you want to find some, some shade over here because it's September in Central California, which basically means your face is melting. Your face is melting. Okay. Okay, great. Come to find out they put on their invitation. I had not seen the invitation. 3:00 ceremony start time. Let's refer to my timeline once more. I have 3 o'clock guests arrive, 3:30 ceremony start time. This is why any time that someone talks about putting an earlier start time on their invitation to trick people to getting there early and/or on time, I will think about the 60 to 75% of guests that were sitting in the blazing hot sun in Central California for 30 to 45 minutes waiting for this ceremony to start. And I would think of the looks on their faces and the frustration. That they were expressing, hey, do we know when this is starting? We thought it started at 3. Do we know what's going on? And asking me, and here I am in the midst of all of this insane setup that we are not equipped for, that we thought would be done. And I'm having to appease these guests by saying, we'll be starting the ceremony in just a little bit. The couple told me their preferred ceremony start time of 3:30. They did not tell me their invitation start time. So from here on out, I was even in a live call last night with couples in the Master Plan, which you should totally join, by the way. This is where I actually help people plan their weddings. I do live calls, um, as a part of this program. I'll link it right here. But one of 'em was like, hey, our venue requires that we tell guests to show up 30 minutes early. And I was like, ugh. I had a visceral immediate reaction remembering the look on people's faces at this event and just feeling like this is just, This is such a bummer. I'm so sad for the people that showed up early and on time because they're being penalized and now they're just standing around waiting because there's a handful of people that were late and now there weren't any traffic concerns, there weren't any parking concerns, there weren't any circumstances that would merit a forced 30-minute late start time. So it's because this event that I now say like, tell me your invitation start time, okay? We're going to try to be as honoring of that as possible. I also know that this could be a cultural thing. It was not in this scenario. It was just the couple wanting to make sure everyone was there before their ceremony started. Okay? That's why I have a bone to pick with an invitation start time that's different from your actual start time. So pissed people, super hot, clustering in shadows as much as they possibly can. I go back to check in with Robin. I'm like, how you doing? She goes, nah. I was like, heard, understood, same. We get the ceremony kicked off. Finally, finally everyone's lined up. We get it kicked off. And I was like, hey, have you finished the cocktail hour food yet? Because bear in mind we only have like 20-30 minutes for the ceremony. And so she goes, oh yeah, they point out where it is in the fridge, I'll just go set it out right now. Cool. I go back, I'm watching the ceremony. I try not to stray too far, but I honestly, for the most part, especially on an event like this, I have too much stuff to just like stay and watch the whole thing. So I'm observing, making sure everything's good, trying to see if anyone needs to make eye contact, like a vendor needs to make eye contact with me or something. Nope, everyone's Gucci. I walk around the back of this building where the cocktail hour tables are set up to see my mom. I'm not going to say dripping sweat, but like a nice little glimmer sheen. Okay. And she is— Kate, if you don't know, my mom is an incredible hostess. She's the reason I wanted to get into wedding planning, because the way she makes people feel when they enter her home is something I wanted to encapsulate and create at people's most intimate and most wonderful day. So she's the type that would like preset out the bowls and put a little piece of paper for like what kind of chips was going in that bowl and she would have it, oh, the house would be clean. She would take a Q-tip with like vanilla essential oil on it and dab it, or fragrance oil, and dab it on the light bulbs of the home. So it just have a soft, gentle vanilla smell. This woman is so good at hosting and so intentional and loves a well-curated layout of foods. So when I walk around the corner, imagine my surprise when, remember that list of things we were talking about earlier, like all the things that go on the cocktail hour tables? There's bowls for dips. There's like multi-tiered things for grapes and fruit to drip down, et cetera. My mom, instead of pouring salsa into the bowl, which admittedly is a very fast and easy thing to do, took the deli container of salsa and plunked it inside the bowl, like still in the plastic. You could see it, you could see the plastic from the seal still on top of the disposable bowl, which is not the aesthetic that the couple wanted. And I was like, "Mom, what are you doing?" She's like, "You have no idea how much food they have." And I was like, "What?" And at that moment, a strawberry rolls off the multi-tiered little fruit situation, bounces on the table and bounces on the floor. And Robyn, without skipping a beat, yeets that sucker underneath the tablecloth faster than you can say Bob's your uncle. Okay? She is in full panic mode. She's kicking things under the table. She's not even pouring it into bowls. She's like, I don't even know if we're going to have time to get this done before the ceremony is over. This is— I am in panic mode. And so of course I jump in, I start helping her. We're making this go as fast as we possibly can. No, I didn't help her. Something else was happening. What was happening? I don't recall, but there was another setup thing that needed to happen before, before we could move guests. Just so many details that I've blacked out. I don't, I don't, I don't remember them. So ceremony ends, cocktail hour begins, photos are happening, and it's great. And the guests are loving this experience. No one said anything about the cocktail hour tables, so It just was probably the most unhinged I've ever seen my mom for hosting an event. And she just— that's just not Robin. That's just not what she does. When I saw her kick that strawberry, I was like, "Oh no, Mom, are you okay?" Not that she would have washed it and put it back on the table, but she would have picked it up and thrown it away previously, right? And she would have poured the salsa and put the hummus in the container. Like, it was so— oh, I just knew, okay, this is not great. It's not great, my man. Which, if we scroll down onto the timeline, it has 3:40, coordinator assistant sets up cocktail food. So that's 10 minutes after the ceremony begins. It was like the Costco trays of vegetables where it comes in the plastic, but they wanted us to use more beautiful displays, right? So it didn't look like Costco stuff, which I get. I totally understand. It was the sheer amount of food they had and they said they'd prepped some of it and it, they basically had taken meat out of a package and put it onto a singular tray and maybe cheese as well. So there was like a lot. That we were not prepared to do. And so knowing that she had 10-15 minutes to set all of this out, we're gonna eat some strawberries, man. So let's scroll down the timeline a little bit more. The bartender arrives about 4 o'clock. About 4:10, we have pronouncement and recessional. Do I recommend having a bartender arrive 10 minutes before service begins? No, I do not. Thank you so much for asking. Uh, usually I like them there just a little bit earlier, but it's okay, it's okay. Nothing bad happened with this. Couple goes and takes their photos in the ceremony space with the family. Um, cocktail hour begins. Uh, my assistant Robin's mother, uh, starts to move the gifts and cards and shuffle the ceremony decor because there were some pieces in the ceremony that they then wanted to reuse at the reception. Because of course, why not? Why would we not? Why would we not do that? Why would we not do that? And then coordinator/assistant lights candles, and there was a lot of candles in the ceremony space, especially in front of the head table. Like I said, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy setup. But you know what? Made it happen. We made it happen. We got through cocktail hour, photos were taken, they start lining up for their grand entrance and that's right next to the photo booth, which again was of course well-curated, very DIY'd, lots of hysterical props. And the wedding party decided that they were going to put on these props as a part of their grand entrance, which was totally unplanned. The couple was with them, so they were given complete blessing. They're like, yes, do it, go, this is amazing. And one thing about this couple is they had curated a wonderful group of people around them. So even though they didn't do the DIYs like set up the way that I had hoped they would or to the fullest extent that they probably should have. I chalk that up to a miscommunication, not to them being bad friends or bad family members. This crew was such a hype crew. So they're getting ready and their vibes are so high that I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm joining you in this." I basically forgot the last 4 hours, 6 and a half hours, however long. I forgot it. It's great. I'm so happy to be here now. It's fantastic. Boom. Grand entrance. They're hysterical. Everyone's cheering. Everyone's clapping. Dinner kicks off without a hitch. The tables look great. The candles are all lit. I also forgot about all the candles that were down the tabletops. I know I mentioned them earlier, but we had to light all those. It was like hundreds of candles. It takes so much longer than you think it does, guys. So I highly recommend getting candles that burn for a longer period of time than you think you need. So if you have like a 4-hour reception, get 6 to 8 hour candles. I'm talking about the little votive ones, so someone can light them earlier and then they don't burn out before the evening is over. This is not an area that I want you to skimp on, okay? We need those to be burning throughout the entire event. But if you give yourself only 5 minutes to light 200 candles, it's not going to go— it's not going to go well, especially if they haven't been pre-lit, cuz there's the wax on the outside of the wick that takes longer to melt off to then ignite for the first time. Anyways, that was a fun rabbit hole. Anyways, we then go to toasts, which were fantastic. We wrap up toasts with the couple giving a toast of their own, and I knew this was coming, and this was honestly probably one of my favorite things I've ever seen at a wedding, and it'll probably honestly always live on my top 10, um, of things that have happened at a wedding. It's, it's just that The couple gets the microphone and they say thank you, and then they say, so what we would like to do is we would like to give out awards to some of you, okay? And here are some of the awards. Uh, best dressed, which was hysterical because the person who was considered best dressed in their life actually was wearing a pair of Birkenstocks and shorts and a button-up shirt, which— so he's like, that's not my best look, not my best look. I don't know why he was wearing that to this event, but to be fair, it was at a public park where lots of people were hiking, so maybe he was going to hike after afterwards? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. There was most improved. There was, oh gosh, what were the other ones? Anyways, the most improved one killed me. I was like, oh my gosh, this person has better have a good sense of humor, which they did. 10 out of 10 recommend doing that. When it came to later on in the evening, they still added more personal touches. Like instead of a garter toss, he put on a football and chucked it into the crowd. Lots of ways to just really infuse a ton of personality into their event overall. We get to the end of the event, things are wrapping up, and this is probably the only teardown with volunteers that went the way I hoped it would. Everyone stayed. Everyone stayed. Every volunteer that said they were going to be there stayed and tore everything down without me directing them. And I was like, haha, I must have done something good. Like, it just was like, what happened? I was expecting us to be there for for hours and we were not. And they absolutely killed it. We're talking taking string lights down from the top of the, the, mm-hmm, whatever it's called. Okay. The signage, the DIYs, the candles, the suitcases, everything was put away in record time. And we left that event and drove all the way back down to my, I think my parents were living in Laguna Beach at the time, drove all the way back down that night. And we were so slap happy that I'm pretty sure we spent my mom and I spent the entire drive home just giggling over all the things that went wrong. So this will be a core memory for me. This wedding will be a core memory, a core event, because one, I learned so many things from it, okay? I learned so many things. Uh, if a couple has a 20 to 30 page checklist for you for setup, you're going to need at least 2 additional assistants, okay? Or say no. Just, it's too much. We're doing too much. Um, consecutive hours. I will, I will not be splitting a shift, especially at this pay rate. Great. Okay. And most importantly, me learning to set boundaries has been nothing but a benefit for myself and for my clients, because when they know what my boundaries are, it's a lot easier. And then whenever I have a couple that has the gift of ask, I can simply say, that's outside of our current scope. We can add that on if you would like to. So I've definitely— I'd like to think I've matured a little bit. I'd like to think that I have let go of some of that people-pleasing tendency, which honestly, running a wedding planning business, that'll, that'll get you. That'll get you. Running your own business, period, I'm pretty sure it's just one of those things where you're like, oh, okay, I gotta develop some boundaries around the situation that I didn't, I didn't know I needed. Otherwise you'll face burnout. And it's because of couples like that who allowed me into their space and allowed me into their event that I was able to learn so many things about myself, so many things about events. And I am honored that this is still my career. And I am, I just think it's hysterical that we, oh, oh, and we learned that, um, you ask the couple for the invitation start time. Okay. That's personally my hot take. What are your thoughts on invitation start time versus ceremony start time? Let me know in the comments below because I get very soapboxy about this. It bugs me so bad. If you could have seen the looks on these people's faces, just like slowly dying of heat exhaustion. They weren't dying. They weren't dying. Okay. But they were not happy. They were miserable. And I don't love that for them. Oh, I also forgot that there wasn't a secondary bar area in the reception space and they had like a vintage water trough that was very cool, but it was super, super heavy. And the plan was to move it from one spot to the next and that my mom and I were supposed to do that. My mom and I were supposed to do that. And it was so heavy that we could not pick it up or move it at all. So we had to go get the groomsmen, um, from the head table during dinner to grab it and then move it in into the other space. And it took, it took 4 of them. So I don't know what we were thinking that, that, or what the couple was thinking when they thought that. But, um, that was on our list of to-dos, was to move that. And I was like, that's not happening. So that's all for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you like the storytime videos, jump on down there, hit the like button. I've already thought of a few more. I am excited to tell you— is that the word? I don't know if that's the right word for what I'm feeling, okay? But you're gonna love them. And subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern-day bride. And until next week, bye guys!
