TikTok HOT TAKES | Lying to Your Guests?! Wedding Planner REACTS

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 actually a audio recording of one of my most popular YouTube videos. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just need to sit down and. And be able to process through the audio without the distraction of a video. So we decided to take this sweet little nugget and turn it into a podcast for you. I hope you find this helpful. My friends. It has been four whole months since I've done a wedding TikTok hot takes. Okay, Four months. I looked it up. I looked it up because I was like, man, it feels like it's been forever. It has, it has. So today we've rounded up for you for your viewing pleasure, a plethora. Could you say I have a plethora of pinatas of TikTok hot takes for us to go through together. And I'm so excited. Cause something on the interwebs be unhinged. Hi. If you're new here, my name is Jaime Wolfer. I'm your online wedding planner. I help people plan their weddings on any budget as stress free as possible because you deserve to have a stress free wedding day. And occasionally we take a little jaunt, if you will, through the social medias for a little bit of comedic relief. Okay? And that's what today's video is. So buckle up folks. Jump on down there. Hit the subscribe button while you're here, cuz, you know, I have a feeling it's gonna be a good video and you won't regret it. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it.

Three wedding hot takes as a 2025 bride. Some of these might be controversial, but I'm gonna say them anyways.

You do know I love it when they use the word controversial.

For one, I think both partners should be heavily involved in the wedding planning process. Kudos to all the brides that take it on by themselves. But I think if you're both getting married, you both got to put the work in. Like, I don't want just his Credit card. I make my own money, so I wouldn't even need his credit card. But I'm not doing all those meetings, doing all those emails by myself. I said in the beginning, me and Steven were both equally gonna take on wedding planning together. Don't get me wrong though. I do have some control. Things like when it comes to aesthetics, that's like really the only thing that I want control over. But other than that, in the wedding planning process, we both have. Have equal parts say in everything.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. There are some grooms, there are some fiance's who do not give a flying fart in space about a majority of the wedding decisions that you're gonna make. They don't. And for some couples, it works out really effectively to just be like, don't jump in with me. Do the administrative work, like send out the emails. Go with me on the venue walkthroughs. Let's split this 50, 50. And that works out well for them. Other couples like myself and my husband, if I had been like, hey, handle half these emails. He would have been like, why? You're having so much fun. Which is true. I planned my wedding, and then afterwards I went, oh, I wanna do this for a living. And then I started my business. And here we are. The most unique wedding planner origin story you've ever heard in your entire life. So, yes, I do hear where she's coming from. And I do love hearing voices like this on the Internet that really do encourage fian to step up and help out where possible. But I also understand and recognize that that very often is not the case, whether that's from societal norms or external pressures or because some of us are control freaks. And we just get really excited about the whole planning process. And then we become passive aggressive about when we want our fiance to help out with things. And we don't know how to ask for them in an emotionally healthy manner until years into our marriage. Listen, all I'm saying is that wedding planning is like. It's like a test run of your marriage. It's so many ways, and there's a beauty to that, and it's great. And there's also some stressors that which are, you know, also great. Cause they're a learning opportunity. So I would figure out a rhythm that works really well for you guys. And I would also do your best to communicate in as healthy and mature way as possible. Hey, I feel like I'm drowning here. I feel like I could use some support. I feel like I would really appreciate if you jumped in with these tasks by implementing clear communication with kindness and providing boundaries when necessary, you will find this to be a much healthier experience than just saying everybody's got to do this. 50 50. This is it. Buckle up, buttercup. This is what you're marrying. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like we just have like a different, different spirit about these things.

If there is a dress code for the wedding, you better follow the dress code for the bride and groom's vision because they are paying so much for the wedding. The least you could do is fit in with the theme. Is that a hot take? I don't know.

Before we carry on, can we just talk about bone structure? Is this the what the beauty filter does on TikTok?

Because I like.

I don't. I don't TikTok. Cuz I got locked out of my account for no reason and I can't find anybody to contact to get me back in there. So if y' all know anything for like how to get me back in, please let me know. Cuz we're sitting at like a cool 34K over there and I can't do nothing at all. And I have tried multiple times. Okay, this is not important anyways, dress code, this one gets people. Okay? So like, I think that if you were having a black tie wedding or black tie optional wedding, that is when it is not optional to dress up. If it is that level of attire, it is not optional.

Okay.

I do think that once you hit cocktail attire and a little bit below that, you're gonna get people who don't understand it, right? You're gonna get people who are like, well, they're my nice jeans, they're my church jeans and I'm gonna wear it with a button up and a big old buckle. I live in the south now. I understand things in ways I didn't understand them before. Okay, they're starched, which means they're fancier. They also can't bend. They're they're just. I think where this gets controversial is when it comes to the really uber hyper specific. Your guests must wear this wedding color, which I think I did a whole video on. I'll link it up here if I've got it. If not, then there'll be nothing there. Or forgot is, hey, everyone wear sand colored, you know, or lime green. Like black is safe black. I feel like most people could toss together an all black outfit, no problem. Why? That's getting a little bit more specific. A persimmon. Listen, persnickety pants, that's not gonna work out for most of us. One, half you guys probably don't even know what persimmon is. And two, those that do understand are probably gonna have a really hard time putting together an outfit of that color. So I do think that if a couple is saying like, hey, this is black tie optional or cocktail attire. Yes. Let's try to respect how fancy they want it to feel. If you are going for a color palette style wedding, if it's the right crowd, like, yeah, you could pull it off, sure. But if you were getting hyper specific with the colors for that crowd, then you're probably gonna run into a little bit more tension on the way of pulling off that vision. 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 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 wolferenco.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 and number three, the only time that I'm going to be mingling and talking to people is going to be during cocktail hour. And then me and my husband will be on the dance floor at the reception. No pulling us away from the dance floor. We will be partying the whole time. So if you want to see us, you better be on the dance floor with us. I don't think that the reception is the time to pull the bride and groom to start having conversations. No, no, no, no, no. That's time to get down and dirty and have fun. So don't even try to pull me or Stephen for a combo during reception. We will go around and say hi to everybody during our cocktail hour. Those are some of my wedding hot takes. What are some of yours?

K. Mad respect for a bride who knows exactly how they want their reception to go. Right. Okay. You know this part was coming though. You knew it.

You knew.

You knew what you signed up for. I think it is a lofty goal to try to see all of your guests during cocktail hour. If you have 50 guests and spend a single minute with every one of them, that's 50 minutes of hi, how are you? What's going on with in your life? 60 seconds just with that person. That's no sipping your drink. That's barely any walking around. That is person after person after person after person to have FaceTime with all of your guests, which it sounds like is what she's intending to do. That's basically your entire cocktail hour. Now, as a wedding planner, here's what I hear in this situation. You want to get down and dirty on the dance floor. Why? Because she said it with her mouth. That tells me that one. We will be doing a first look. We will be getting as many photos done before the wedding as possible because you really, really want to spend time on the dance floor. I have a mad ton of respect for any bride who knows how they want their reception to go, and she very clearly does. So we are going to make sure that we are dedicating as much time as early as possible into getting those photos taken care of. We still want to do them with intention. We want to give them time. We want to give your photographer time to practice their art. Like, yes, let's respect that time. Then you have your ceremony. Then you have your cocktail hour, which usually at the beginning you're going to do family photos or wedding party photos or those sorts of things which you could technically do beforehand, but that's a lot of shooting beforehand. And oftentimes you're missing wedding bands in your first photos, like your first look photos. And sometimes people don't care. Sometimes people do. I personally wanted to make sure I had pictures with my husband with his ring on his hand. First look was great. It was super cute. I'm really glad we did it. Zero regrets. But I still wanted photos with the ring on. So then you spend the rest of that cocktail hour, after the handful of photos that you will probably be taking, then talking to people really, really intently, just like, hi, hi, hi, hi. Until you've gone through 50 guests. If you have more than that, good luck. Pick your favorites. Okay, time for dinner. And then you're dancing the night away and no one else can talk to you. Perhaps might I suggest instead adding in table visits every single time. I have a couple that is adamant about getting down on the dance floor. I always recommend let's do a first look and then let's do table visits so that we can join cocktail hour if we have time for it and. Or you want to. And then we do table visits. After you eat, you sit down as quickly as we can at the reception we get food into as quickly as possible. People will probably come up and try to talk to you. Keep shoveling food. Okay? You paid a lot of money for it. This is the only time you're gonna get to eat. You're gonna need calories on the dance floor. Once you've consumed, you can then go table to table. My favorite is also have your photographer eat while you're eating, and then they can go with you to take table photos. So then you get literal facetime with every single person at your wedding. And then you have the social pressure of the photographer being like, I'm so sorry, we have to get to the next table. Right? So you will have the mingling time during cocktail hour and then the formal facetime with every single person that comes. So the same second that DJ drops a fat beat, you could stay out there the entire time. Now, listen, you're still going to have people that think it's perfectly acceptable to keep coming up and talking to you until cake cutting happens. Why? Because cake cutting is the bat signal for anyone over the age of 65 to leave your event. I don't make the rules, but usually post dessert service is when all the songs with the letter E start popping up. That's when things get all sorts of interesting on the dance floor, especially from a sober observer on the sidelines. That's when we know. That's when we know. We're like, okay, it's going off. Bye. Bye, Nana. So good to see you. So if you were really adamant about spending as much time on the dance floor as possible, first look, be intentional with cocktail hour time. Let's do table visits. And then, yeah, you can get down on the dance floor, but still expect that some people are going to keep coming up and talking to you until the night starts to get darker in more ways than one. But of course, that's not all we have. On to the next one.

So a controversial thing that I'm doing for my wedding is if you no show my wedding. You. You are a cps, and then you don't show up and you don't send me a text to be like, hey, this, like, crazy thing happened, or, like, this is what's going on. There's no good justification for why you no showed my wedding. We are not friends anymore. You are not in my life anymore unless you pay me back for your plate, which will be about $250 ahead. Because here's what's not going to happen. You are not going to say that you're coming to my very intimate, small wedding where I was not able to invite a lot of, like, my friends that I wish could have come because of the size constraints. You're not going to say you are coming and then not come when that seat could have gone to somebody else, and I'm going to be paying for your plate so that you could not come and not show up. I think that is so incredibly rude and, like, disloyal. And I tell people this. I'm like, yeah, this is kind of my plan if anybody does this. And they're like, what?

That's crazy.

And I'm like, that's crazy.

It's crazy to ask for people to.

Pay you back for their seat at your wedding that you paid for when they said they were coming and then they didn't show up.

They. That's crazy.

That is the crazy behavior, not me asking for the Venmo request. Here's the thing. I think I'm going to be pretty reasonable about it if, like, something came up that made it so you couldn't come to my wedding. Okay?

Like, I get it.

Things happen. No need. But if you don't have a good excuse, guess what. You better block me on Venmo, because I'm going to be blowing you up.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

No, no, no. 250 ahead. Do I understand the sentiment? Absolutely. 250 bucks a head is insane. If y' all haven't puttered around this channel at all, you wouldn't know that. I'm a really big fan of budget weddings. I also love really, really lavish ones, like, really pretty ones. I just love weddings. I love love. Okay, but 258 is a lot. So, like, the sentiment behind this. If, like, one or two or three people. That's. That's. That's. We're. We're edging up on a grand here, folks. If a handful of people don't make it, and when you do have really, really small guest count constraints. I completely understand the sentiment. Would I ever send a Venmo request? Real talk? Probably not. I probably would not. I would not do that. But that's just me personally. I know there'd be some spicy, spicy ladies out there who go, you know what? I'm going to do it anyways. I don't even care if it's not even 250head. You said yes and you didn't show up. The good news is, in all of my years of doing this, I very rarely have seen large amounts of people or even, you know, more than five people, no show at a single wedding. I haven't seen that happen. That, that would be very surprising. Oh, wait, there was one. That one was really weird, though. The groom didn't even make it to the first look. Couple. Okay, okay, okay. The couple had been together for, like 15 years, maybe closer to 20. I think they already had one kid together, and they just finally decided to get married, and the groom, like, just didn't show up for the first look. And they hired a high schooler to be their wedding photographer, and their cake almost fell off the the pillar and slid into a window. We might need to story time that one, but I might have just given away all the best bits. I don't know. Okay, but other than that one, this is not that big of a frequent occurrence as so many people think it might be. So I get where she's coming from. I hate, hate, hate, hate when this happens. I hate when it happens. Especially if the person's really important. And then my couple's just heartbroken. Bride's heartbroken. Or it's just, it's just sad. And I don't want that for them at all. So I get the sentiment, and I get that 250 a lot. Honestly, I wouldn't do it. But, like, I, I, I get those. Who would want to? Okay, what would you do? Would you Venmo request a guest who didn't show for your wedding? 250 bucks. Like, would you actually do it? Not just in theory, conversationally. Like, oh, my gosh, that's so clever. Like, would you do it? Do it? You know what I mean? Would you put their money where your mouth is? And next, this one says five things that'll make or break your wedding day experience, starting with number one.

One, lie about the start time. I know, I know this sounds crazy, but I think that it's actually very important. Things happen. There's traffic. Like sometimes life just starts life thing. And lying about the start time will.

Give you a buffer.

And I'm not talking about, like, an egregious lie. Keep it really, really cute. Like 15 to 30 minutes. For some people, that looks like saying doors open and then ceremony starts. Other people just flat out lying. Nobody knows your guests better than you and bae, so really take that into consideration if you are actually running late. The bride. No one is ever going to be upset at the bride, so they can just blame it on you. But definitely buffer in some time. And then if they're going to be seated outside and waiting. I know some people complain about it being, like, super hot. Nobody wants to be in the sun for an extra hour. Keep it really, really cute. No more than 30 minutes.

Okay? We can go as cute as many times as we want to. Okay. Also, don't come for. This is cultural. Okay. I only learned this after working on the Internet for a really long time. That sounded a little different than I intended. K. It's not what I meant. That there are some cultures and. Or some families who will just be late kind of regardless. And you're like, you don't understand. I will have to lie to them. Okay. I'm not just. I'm not talking about that specifically. Who I'm talking to is those that watch this video and go, you know what? I really don't want anybody to be late. I don't know anyone that has, like, a really big history or track record of doing so. But I'm gonna make sure that I put a cute, cutie little start time 30 minutes earlier than my actual start time. Because that's cute, because it's only 30 minutes. Right? And so that way I can really, really ensure I start on time. Here's the deal. You're only starting on time in your own brain because all of your guests. And this is my hot take, okay? If I had a soapbox, I would be upon it. Your first guest will typically show up 30 minutes before your start time. They will show up. They'll be mingling about. They'll be talking amongst themselves. But this is why we typically had the couple 30 minutes before the ceremony starts, because that's when people start showing up. So if you're cut, start time is then 30 minutes after your invitation. Start time. That first guest has been there for an hour. That first person has been there for an hour. And I personally fall into the camp of I would rather be honoring of those that are on time instead of making space for those that are extra late. Because starting 15 minutes late, if that happens, it Happens. It's never ideal. My. My preference is 7 minutes or less from your actual invitation start time. That's my personal preference. Again, if someone came up to me and said, jamie, you don't understand culturally, for us, this is what the invitation is gonna say. This is what we all do. It's understood. So if we start at our actual invitation start time, like, it's not. It's not gonna go the way that you think it's gonna go. I understand. I'm not unwilling to move in my opinion of this. But for all the other girlies out there that are thinking, you know what I'm gonna go ahead and do, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna put a ceremony start time on my invitations and then intentionally not start until 30 minutes later. That's personally where I take issue with it. And there's one wedding where it, like, I will never forget this. And oftentimes they talk about the weddings in the very beginning. That's because that's when I learned the most in the hardest ways possible. Like, just like, oh, oh, I have to. I have to ask these questions. Where the couple told me the start time, and I didn't see their invitation. Okay, I wasn't involved in it. That wasn't the part of the planning that I needed to be a part of. For some reason, it just eluded my mind to even ask to take a look at it. So I was told the start time was 3:30. So imagine my surprise when at 2:30, guests start arriving. And here I am thinking that I have a minimum of 30 minutes left of setup time. It's gone. I don't have that anymore. Guests are here, and not just one car with one family, but, like, three or four cars with three or four families. So we're looking at a crowd of 20 to 30 already an hour before I was told the wedding was supposed to even start. And what do I have to offer them? Here's a couple of trees and some fans. Good luck. We hadn't even finished setting up the lawn games yet, and those were in a separate part of the venue, so we couldn't even really direct them over that way. And as I'm watching more and more guests trickle in, it dawns on me that I must not have the correct start time. So I go check in with a couple, and I sure don't. I sure do not. And this is another wedding where I probably should do a story time on this, because y' all really like the last one. It was so stressful both for Me. And for the guests, we were slinging water as quickly as we could. It drastically cut into our setup time. And then I just had a bunch of frustrated, kind of miserable looking adults hanging around hoping to get this show on the road. Okay. I did something here that I don't normally do and actually just took a little peeky poo at some of the comments. So I figured let's just. Let's just. Let's just look together, shall we? Okay. Definitely did 30 minutes before. But having a bartender for the early people. This is what I'm talking about. All right, now, okay. We want the bartender to be aware, and we're not slinging as many drinks as possible. And it does sometimes cost you more to open your. But please make sure that there is enough refreshments for those who show up early. I don't want you all running out of water halfway through your event. I don't want your guests dying in the heat. We need to make sure that there is enough water to cover those people that are early, and we need to make sure your vendors are aware. Hey, I told my guests this time, but I don't want to start until this time. So you could be set up at the proper time and not start chucking things on tables. Just hoping for the best at the very last minute because you got surprised with guests 30 minutes early. I already told my fiance we were putting an hour before my family runs on cpt. Someone replied, no, for real. So does mine. Okay. If you know your family and to give credit where credit is due to the original creator, she's like, only you guys know your people best. Like, you just, you know, if they would or if they wouldn't. Okay, so again, if you're like, no, no, ignore everything I'm saying. All right? But if you're just doing it because you really, really, really, really, really want to make sure everybody's there and you really want to start on time, but family wise and culture wise, you're not given any indication that it's required. That's what. That's what I'm talking about. The next girl said my venue said not to do this, but the way our family set up, I had to. I'm telling everybody 3:30, but I don't plan on coming out till about 4:15. That means that the first guest is gonna get there at 3 and they're gonna be waiting an hour and 15. I'm just. I'm just saying. Also, her little note about no one carrying up the brides late, that that's Also, only if it's cute, okay? Only if it's like 15, 30 minutes cute. When you have 45 minutes to an hour, it's not cute. And people are wondering and they do care. I said what I said. I told everybody my wedding starts at 1pm when it's really at 2pm Makeup, hair, photographer, everybody. Don't, don't lie to your event. Don't lie. Don't lie to your vendors, okay? Don't lie to your vendors. We really, really, really do not lead to lie to your photographer who does this for a living, who does this professionally, okay? Don't to them. Don't lie to your makeup artist and tell them the start time is an hour earlier than it needs to be. This is why we designate a dress on time for the makeup artist. We need the bride to be in her dress at like 11:30, 11:45, so she could do first look at 12, and then any of the following photos afterwards. So we do give them a dress on time, but we don't need to lie to them about the start time of the actual serum. That one got me. And then, of course, you have those that kind of swing in the complete opposite direction. Luckily, I'm known as a time freak, so they all know my start time is prompt on the dot. Someone else said I'm lying about the start time because best believe when the ceremony starts, you're not getting in the door if you're late. You're done. You're done, dude. I literally a girlfriend's wedding forever ago. She told us she was starting 5 o' clock on the dot. We were there at 4:59, and they locked the door to the bottom part of the ceremony, and we had to go up to the rafters. And we were. We were there. We were. We were on time, but the coordinator literally locked her. This is before I started planning, and I was like, yikes. Where do you land on the scale I land on? Let's give people a little bit of grace. Okay? So if you say you're starting at 4, I want to start by 4. 10 at the very latest. All right, I will scan the crowd. We'll double check that grandma and mom and everyone is where they need to be. And if we're missing anybody, we will absolutely make allowances for it. But I also really value the guest that shows up first. The person that's like, you know what? This is a really important day for this person, and I love them so much, and I want to make sure I'm there and I'm Ready and I have time to find parking and time to find a seat. And I'm not the reason anything gets held up. I want to be kind and intentional to that person as well. So that's personally and professionally where I land on that is let's just keep it as honest as possible. Unless you're fully aware that there's an absolute need and you're like, no, there's no chance that if we put that on our invitation, people are not going to show up at that time, then I will obviously cede my expertise to you because you know your family better than I do. But generally speaking, for wedding planning as a whole, I hate it. Don't, don't, don't necessarily recommend. So that's we have for today's video. Guys, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. My blood pressure is certainly higher than it was 30 minutes ago, so I felt something and I hope you did too. If you haven't done so already, jump on down there. Like the video. If you like the video. And subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern day bride. If you need help planning your wedding, if you are watching this and you're like, laugh crying through some of these, just being like, and you're stressed out, please come join me in the master plan. We have done our best to make this as inexpensive as possible and still get you live access to me so I can walk you through this entire process and give you absolutely everything you need to know to plan your wedding. And a couple of easy modules as well as live monthly phone calls with me so I can like, I can walk you through all this. You don't have to do this alone. I'd be more than happy to help you. I'll leave all the details for the master plan in the description box down below. And until next week, bye guys. 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.