Vendor HORROR Stories | Wedding Planner REACTS

Hi and welcome to Union Podcast. My name is Jamie Wolfer and I'm a wedding planner who absolutely loves to share how I got started and scaled my business to above 6 figures in this amazing and occasionally extremely competitive industry. In this podcast, I share the tech, tactics, mindset, and mistakes that got me to where I am today. No gatekeeping, no cloak and dagger, just full disclosure and a little humor along the way. So whether you're a planner or a solopreneur, my goal is for you to be a better business person than I ever could have been and support you on this journey. Let's dive into this week's episode. In order to be effective in the wedding industry, sometimes it's extremely important to know what are the pain points of your audience. Today we're going to take a listen to one of my most popular YouTube videos in the audio form, because every once in a while it's a good idea to step away from the video and let it hit that brain center a little different with just the audio. Know what I'm saying? So let's take a listen.

When we got to the altar, she said, wow, I've never seen so many people show up for a rehearsal. I really hope you all come back tomorrow. We thought she was just being funny until she continued by saying, okay, now this speaker would come up, etc., to like do their readings.

No.

Finally, my husband had to lean over and tell her, this is the actual wedding. She was like, are you serious? And I pretty much blacked out for a bit.

No, no, that's not real. That's not real. I refuse to believe it. Hi, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Jamie Wolfer and this is a rousing round of vendor horror stories. Also, big shout out to our friends over at Brightcove for sponsoring this week's video because, you know, they come in handy with some of those vendor horror stories. Maybe not this one. This one, I don't know. This doesn't make sense to me. The couple is fancy dressed. Okay. Most people don't wear a suit to their rehearsal or a bride. Bridal gown or walk in with music and a photographer and a DJ. There's so many elements of this story that I'm like, this can't be real. How is this real? And I looked at some of the comments in the video and they're like, well, how did she not show up the night before? No, honestly, most officiants, if they are professional officiants, don't show up for the rehearsal. Like, it's an added fee or whatever, especially if they're traveling in from out of town. If they do this all the time, the rehearsal is not for them, it's for you. So that's why I'm like, is this— is this lady a professional? Is this what she does? Because if so, she might need to find a new category of just income earning, you know, because this doesn't seem like it's gonna pan out in the long run. That doesn't— none of this tracks. And if this is the officiant's like true honest response and this is a real, a real life scenario, then I, I, I'm concerned. Okay. Oh wait, there's more. There's a part 3. Wait, this is the part 2. Okay, well now we need to— okay, we're going off script because I didn't even know there's another part.

Yeah, it's in a wedding dress. That's what I'm saying. This person must be 117 years old. Yeah, like, I have a grandpa who has early onset dementia. I'm not going to make any assumptions, but there is absolutely no chance. I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and say maybe she was given the wrong date. No, no, say that maybe this is the first wedding she's ever officiated. Yeah, but she herself in Her little spiel said, I've never seen this many people show up for a rehearsal before. You know better.

Ay! There's no excuse. There's no excuse for this one. I don't know what to tell you. Okay. Auditions are so— I love them so much, whether they're professional or family member or friend. Like, I do. I love them. I love that they're up there and they're like, making your wedding thing happen and it's great. And you know, plenty of officiants make plenty of mistakes. Usually not the professionals as much. If it's like the friends or family members that are doing it and they're a little bit stressed out, they go so fast, so fast, it's astronomical. Like I, who's seen the behind the scenes wedding video from that I did in Hawaii where I think I was talking to my mom on camera, Robin, shout out to Robin, love her, where I said, okay, we need to be prepared for this to end early because it's a friend officiating and then all of a sudden people start clapping and I start booking it. I remember dropping the camera and I'm just filming my feet. We're like, oh, I just called this. I just said this was gonna happen. So usually you don't run into this. Oh yeah, 'cause by the way, I'm gonna try to point out whether this is something you actually have to be worried about or not. This is like a common occurrence. No, usually if you hire a professional officiant who's like, I've done this before and this is weird, something's wrong. That's not normal. It's not normal. That doesn't typically happen. Family member or friend, if they haven't done this before, yeah, you know, like they're bound to make a little faux pas here and there or speak at 3x speed. Um, I know because that's my natural resting pace, which people love to remind me in the comments. I know I talk fast, okay? This is not normal. This is not a horror story that should keep you up at night. Let's be honest, wedding planning is a lot. Whether you are getting started or you're investigating getting started or you're actually now planning weddings, You know as well as I do that it can be a very intense job with a lot of plates spinning and a lot of things to keep track of. And that's why I love partnering with any sort of technology that makes me a better wedding planner. I know, I know. I'm admitting out loud to the interwebs that I may not be the best wedding planner on the planet, but you know what makes me look really good? You know what really and truly helps me knock people's socks off? Timelinegenius.com. You guys, when I tell you that this simple tech will take all of your answers and you, you just type them in there and generate out the most gorgeous, most detailed, most professional looking timelines, this is gonna knock your socks off. Uh, but you don't have to take my word for it. We actually have an offer for you through Timeline Genius where you get 2 weeks for free if you go to theunionpodcast.com/timeline. Check it out today. Not only do you get these professional looking timelines, by the way, but you can individualize the one that you send the photographer, to the caterer, to the wedding party, and send out text reminders for when all those groomsmen are late so they don't have an excuse anymore. You can literally send them a text and have it set up beforehand. Go ahead, go to unionpodcast.com/timeline and thank me later. I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that in the beginning I printed out every single piece of paper, every single contract. I took handwritten notes and created a binder for every single one of my wedding planning clients. Now, in theory, that sounds really cool, and I thought I would look really cool showing up to these meetings with these binders that are full of all of these contracts with handwritten notes. But let me tell you, the chaos that ensued when I tried to stay organized on my own and got over 5 events at a time, it was a nightmare. Enter HoneyBook. I am telling you guys, HoneyBook was literally exactly how my brain was processing wedding planning, but just in digital form. It's so easy to go in there and make any sort of customizations that you want, from adjusting your contracts to adjusting your packages, maintaining conversations back and forth that not only pop up in the app on the website, but also in your inbox as well. It's a great way to stay organized. So get out of the paper and get onto the digital. Head to wolferandco.com/hb and use code UNION at checkout to get the best deal. Next.

The florist didn't show up to my couple's wedding this weekend. As a wedding photographer, one of the main questions that people always ask me is, have any nightmarish things happened on the weddings that you've photographed? And this weekend it finally happened.

Just want to note really quick, he didn't have a story until this happened. Okay, so like, this is not— no.

And before we get started, I am not divulging any specifics like names or venue or anything like that. So I arrived at the venue at the time that I was supposed to arrive. I was doing my walk around, I was looking for spots for portraits, family photos, things like that. And I decided to go upstairs to say hello to the bride and check in, see how she was doing. And when I got up there, she said, "Oh, have you heard about the little wrinkle?" I was like, "No, what's going on?" And she tells me that the florist had just texted her saying that she was not coming to her wedding because she had double booked. I believe the text message also said that she had thought that the wedding was Sunday instead of Saturday, and that she would not be coming to the venue with flowers. She would not even be providing any flowers. And that's all the text said. There was no remedy or solution from the florist's standpoint. So of course, being the person that I am, knowing that I want my couples to have the exact day that they wanna have, I immediately picked up my phone, called one of my good friends who's a florist in the area. Unfortunately, they weren't available, but they gave me a couple names to other ones, and one of them I was already going to call because they have a flower farm in Philly. So I called them up, they were like, we're going to help you, we're going to make something happen, just give me a little bit to like figure it out and put it together and we'll get someone over there. I should also preface that there was a coordinator for the day, like a, a coordinator hired by the couple that this florist should have called or texted before they even thought about texting the couple, and that coordinator had already started working on their own way of trying to figure out how we could get flowers here for the wedding.

That is such a dream crew right now. The fact that we've got not only the coordinator, that the photographer is clearly like, no, no, no, like they were on it too, but I was also on it. What a dream team. Outside the floor. That is— I've never had this happen. I've never had this happen. And honestly, this makes me a little nauseous.

At that time, I decided that I was going to call the original florist who wasn't showing up to see where the flowers were, because I know, having worked with plenty of people that are florists, that she has probably already made the bouquet. It's probably sitting in a fridge somewhere, as well as all the other flowers that I know would have been bought for this couple's day. So I give the florist a call, I go straight to voicemail, and I leave a message just being like, hey, You should at least get the flowers here somehow so that whoever we can get here to make arrangements and a bouquet and things like that can do that. Come to find out that the mother of the bride and the father of the bride have gotten in touch with the florist and are going to the other wedding that the florist is working at to get a bouquet, a boutonnière, and a couple of small arrangements for the bridesmaids. It's also around this time that I have heard back from the florist I reached out to. And one of their people is on their way. They just had to go pick up the flowers that they have in the cooler to bring them to the venue. And luckily, those people that helped out created beautiful work for the literal 2 hours that they had to make something happen. I cannot be more thankful to those people, and I am so grateful to call them friends that would do anything at the drop of a hat. For me and for my couple in order for them to have the day that they wanted to have.

Okay, I need to pause this for a sec. This is so not normal. There's something— this just reads— this reads scam. This reads scam because as a florist should be receiving your greenery and your florals for a Saturday event, should be receiving it like a Wednesday. They pick it up, they do the processing, they trim the ends, the florals and the greenery can get fresh water. They take off all the guard petals off the roses. They give all the blooms time to open up. They feed them with flower food and they start doing the setup. They start putting the arrangements together the next day. Like you start with the greenery and then potentially like on Thursday and then on Friday you start adding the florals and then Saturday morning you're doing the final details like the boutonnieres that don't, they can't sit in water. Like they have no water source. So they have to be done at the last minute or any flower combs or hair pieces or anything like that. Corsages that don't have a water source. Have to be done at the last minute. There isn't a lot of wiggle room for that. But most of the bouquets and the centerpieces are done the day before. They're done the day before. So this photographer is even trying to give grace of like, hey, do you just have the florals that we can assemble at this point? No, they should be done. They should be totally done. What we should have run into in a situation like this, should have run into in a situation like this, is that the florist said, I can't deliver them. Not I don't have them, not that they don't exist. They should have been there ready to go a day in advance unless there's some sort of— and I know there's plenty of like mom-and-pop shops who work well into the night. One of my best friends in the world is a wedding florist, and if I had a nickel for every time I got an email from her or text from her at 1 o'clock in the morning saying I'm putting on a pot of coffee right now because she just thrives and will just go all night, like she will just create all night and everything's ready on time and beautiful and gorgeous and wonderful. So even if this was that scenario, the florist still would have known the day before that she would not be ready in time, and she should still have some things done. The flowers should be ordered, the bouquet might be done already. If not, then the arrangements should be on the centerpieces, should be done already. None of this makes sense. And so this is reading very much scam.

You should not be canceling on a couple on the wedding day. That should not be happening. There were plenty of emails sent out leading up to this wedding day with the date in the subject line that the florist and the coordinator had had between each other. How does that happen? Truly, how does that happen? And the florist's decision not to come or show up to that wedding has a trickle effect, not only for the couple, not only for the couple's parents, but for the coordinator who had to do more outside of their job to get flowers on the tables. To me, the photographer, who took 45 minutes of my time that I should have been photographing to try and figure this out for the couple. The florist never once reached out to anyone to try and figure out a solution. They literally text the bride that they weren't coming and that they were sorry and to not hate me. Them, and then that was it. It literally took all of us trying to get in touch with this florist to even figure out a way to get a single bouquet. Now, I don't know what's happening with like a refund or anything like that. I've been told as of this morning that the couple has not gotten a refund, and I will be on top of this situation to make sure that this couple gets a refund because this is not how you run a business. I will say also that this is not typical In the 5 years that I have been a wedding photographer, this is the first time that something like this has happened. So don't let it scare you, but there are things that you can do in order to make sure that this doesn't happen. When you book with a vendor, on their contract or whatever thing you're signing, make sure that you— your exact wedding date is on that contract somewhere. That's the first step. Second step, leading up to the wedding day, a month before at the least, check in with every single vendor. Put your date in the subject line, put your date in the email, make sure that they are— it's all right there in writing that you are verifying that they have your date in their calendar. And lastly, if you are ever questioning on working with specific vendors, always, always, always check in with either your planner, your coordinator, or your photographer. There is a reason why I offer a preferred vendor list. It's because I know that these vendors can be trusted. I've worked with them. They are my friends. They produce amazing work. I enjoy the work that they produce, and I want them to be able to work with the people that I'm also working with. And also, I get sticking to a budget, but if it feels too good to be true, then it might be. It might be too good to be true. You're not only paying sometimes for the product and for the service, but also for the reliability. So if the florist does see this video, and I hope that they do, I really, really urge you to think about this situation that happened, figure out why it happened, and make it so that it never happens again.

I— this one hurts. This one's so strange. This is not normal. I've never had a situation like this happen. But this is also— I do appreciate, you know, coming from a photographer's perspective, he's got some really good insight. As a planner, I'm going to layer on top of that, okay? So he's like, make sure your, your date is on the contract. At this point, it didn't matter, right? I mean, at this point, a lot of things didn't matter. There were probably— it probably was the right date on the contract. It probably was the right date on the follow-up emails. He even stated that's the case. You know, it could be a budget situation, right, where the couple thought they were getting a really good deal and it wasn't. You wouldn't know that unless you did more research, unless you contacted 3 to 5 florists in your area, presented your vision, and received quotes back from all of them before selecting the one that you want to go with. You don't know what the going rate in your area is until you do enough research. So you have to be able to look around enough to compare quotes. My husband works in construction and he works on the general contractor side of things. And he has always said from estimating to now being a PM or a CM, that when you look at the numbers, the quotes that you get back from subs, if there is one outlier that's super, super low, they're missing something like they didn't read the plans properly. And he would be so proud of me for incorporating this analogy into my video. Thanks, babe, for talking about work all the time. Although it is quite funny because there is a lot of overlap between what he does and what I do. Like he does this with subcontractors. I do this with the vendors, but if it's so low, something's missing, something's wrong, something's not right when all the other numbers are here. What is it about this outlier that, that stands out for not a good reason? So I would argue that even before we get to this point, before we get to the point of signing the contract and sending out reminder emails, make sure that we're doing our due diligence to, to verify quotes, to look for reviews, to see if you can get word of mouth feedback. I love preferred vendors lists specifically because if you book with me, I probably have a florist that I've worked with in my area that I love, that I would love for you to work with as well, that's also probably gonna fall in your budget very conveniently. Preferred vendors are 100%, can be a really, really good way to go. Required vendors from the venue, that's where pricing gets a little bit like, where you kind of get like stuck into things. But if you can find a preferred list, if you like me as your planner, you're probably gonna like the people that I recommend. If I fit well into your budget and you're not necessarily splurging on me, then the likelihood of the vendors I recommend fitting into your budget is pretty darn high. And at least you have someone, a professional's input saying, yeah, I've worked with them, I approve, I would like to do that again. Their aesthetics, their personality, their price point, everything about them I enjoyed and I wanna put my name next to their name again. That's what that is telling you. But even if you do all these things, even if you plan as much as possible, things can still go wrong. And that is one of the many reasons I love BrightCo Event Insurance, specifically because of their cancellation insurance. Not only do they have your typical liability insurance coverage, which theirs is like extra compared to every other coverage that I've seen— they cover 5 days surrounding your event. So if you're doing rehearsal, if you're having events a couple days before or a brunch the day after, they have that covered. They also have a zero deductible policy, offer host liquor liability and property damage, all a part of their liability insurance. In addition to that, they have something called cancellation insurance. And here's why I wanted to them specifically in the scenario. If you have a vendor no-show or a vendor ghost you throughout the process, they will help you secure your lost deposits. In a scenario where you have done everything that you need to do— no one wants to think that they need liability insurance, no one wants to think they need cancellation insurance, but you've done all the things, you've done all the things, you've checked off all the boxes, you did everything you're supposed to do, and someone still drops the ball— where's your coverage there? And as far as I know, Brightco Event Insurance is the only event insurance that does anything like this, and we've been working with them for over a year now, and we've got great stories and feedback back from UA specifically and from our circumstances working with them where we see these wonderful scenarios where they pull through because there are things that are unexpected and there are things that we don't anticipate. They also have COVID coverage or cancel for any reason coverage. One thing that I actually love on their website is they now have like general quote numbers for you to look at to give you a better idea. They have the example of a wedding in LA for 412 guests, which is like astronomical for so many of us with a $42,000, almost $43,000 budget in LA. Liability coverage would be $114. Cancellation coverage would be $341. And if you get both of them together, again, for that amount of people and for that much money spent, it would be $409 to have both coverages for your wedding day. Folks, you have worked really hard to create a wonderful wedding day experience for yourself and your guests, and you've worked really hard to find the right vendors and you vetted and you've tried and you've done everything possible and you wrote the right dates down and you did all the things that you needed to do. And yet there will always be things that are outside of our control, like in this scenario with that florist not showing up. I firmly believe that they just didn't even order the flowers. We'll get to the comment section in just a sec on that one, because this, this one, it's reading the scam. But if you want to make sure that you're protected and your deposits are protected and your event space is protected and you just want to take the concern and the guesswork out of it, might I recommend checking out BrightCo today? You can get yourself a quote in literal minutes. And again, BrightCo, thank you so much for sponsoring today's video. Thank you for being so intentional to create insurance coverage that makes sense for real people in real life scenarios with real situations that pop up that are out of our control. All right, this person said the original florist didn't have their flowers. Creator goes ding ding ding. Yeah, no, if you had them, they'd be prepared, they'd be done. My guess is this florist, if that's their real name, might have dropped the ball so hard that they didn't even order the florals, uh, because something would have been done, something would have been prepared, something would have been ready. Florals would have been purchased wholesale already that someone else to go pick up and then assemble. There are way too many points that this should have stopped at that my guess is the florist didn't even place the order weeks in advance. My guess is the flowers didn't exist. I worked a wedding a few weeks ago and the florist delivered a straight up dead bouquet. It was horrible. The bride called and said, you have an hour to bring me a new bouquet or there will be an issue. And they did just that. But it was outrageous that they even delivered the dead bouquet to begin with. The original creator's like, how could you even deliver it? Yet, no. This is also another good case to making sure you have someone who can speak up around you, whether that's a coordinator or a photographer who's gonna step in. Someone who would be like, no, we're not doing this. Okay? Especially if you're a type B baby girl. Okay? We need to make sure that you've got a type A and/or slightly more aggressive friend and/or wedding planner next to you to be like, hi, no, absolutely not. Or someone to step in and say, hey florist, you don't have the flowers. I know you don't have the flowers because if so, you would be telling us that we could go pick up the wholesale ingredients or items from wherever we could pick them up, or you could meet us somewhere with them because the drop-off doesn't take that long unless you're doing a massive install. And we'll wait, trust me, we'll get the florals from you if you have them. If not, there's going to be a bigger issue. I'm a florist. I can't begin to see how this would happen. I once signed myself out of the hospital with sepsis to complete a wedding and then went back to the hospital after. To not show up, insane. Yeah, no, no. Brides, this is extremely rare for florists but not hair and makeup teams, so vet accordingly. Oh, I don't necessarily feel like I agree with that entirely. I don't think I've had a hair and makeup team ever no-show. I've seen content on the internet that talks about it, but I don't think I've personally engaged in or seen another experience like this. This is— my wedding nightmare was actually my photographer. He had the wrong day, and when I called him 5 minutes past when he should have been there, I learned he was 6 hours away on his way to an airport. He pulled over and called every professional photographer he knew in the area to get someone to us. Luckily, someone came and she was fantastic. But yeah, that was a fun panic attack. Oh my gosh. We plan. We plan well. We plan effectively. We join the master plan if we need to. We subscribe to this channel if we need to. Okay? I'm here to make sure that you make empowered decisions when it comes to your wedding day. I want you to feel good. I want you to take the time to research your vendors. I want most of the time being spent on researching and comparing costs, and then I want you to take your time reading those contracts. I love the photographer suggestion in this last video where it's like double-check that's the right date, send out reminder emails. All those things were probably done, okay? So let's make sure the vetting process is given due process. Let's make sure we're spending an appropriate amount of time here so when we get here to our wedding day, we have full confidence in their ability to pull it off. I feel like so many times we see couples get really excited in the booking stage of things that they just want to sign the dotted line so they feel like they've accomplished something. And I really want you to press pause, and I want you to take your time and make sure you're seeing full galleries and reading reviews and potentially even talking to previous clients of theirs. I want you to vet your vendors because you're spending a lot of money on them, and you should feel really confident in those decisions. And again, of course, communicate clearly throughout the process, and then by the time you get to your wedding day, you know that they're to do their best possible. And in the event that they can't make it, or they don't show up, or something happens, or even if something happens throughout the planning process where they ghost you or they go out of business, Brightcove fills in the gaps. So that's what we have for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you like the video, jump on down there, like the video, and subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern-day bride. Now, most of you probably aren't going to have a horror story. If you happen to share, feel free to dump it in the comments down below, because sometimes it just feels good and cathartic to share these stories with people who get it. Who are walking through the same phase of life that you're in. Because sometimes it doesn't make sense to complain to someone who's not planning a wedding because they just don't get it. They don't, they don't understand. So if you have something to share, do it. Uh, or if you have a positive story to share, a vendor success story, let's buoy up the comments a little bit, you know what I mean? Just like add some positivity down there. How about that? And until next week, bye guys! That's all we have for this week's episode, guys. If you enjoyed it, do me a favor, screenshot that episode and share it on socials. Tag me in it. I would love to see @wolferandco on Instagram. Let me know if you're enjoying it. You can also let me know if you didn't enjoy it, but I'm probably not going to reshare that one. I hope you guys enjoy this week's episode, and we'll see you in the next one.