Wedding Your Way: DIY Playlists, Picnic Receptions & Ignoring the Haters | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello, lovely humans, and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern-day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way, because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the Master Plan course And answer your questions in live time. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real-life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master Plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. I'm so stressed about music. Oh, I'm so sorry. I never kept an arsenal of music on my iPod to refer back to, so what do I do? The fact that you said iPod makes me feel so good. Thank you so much. Where do I go for recommendations? Okay, so my favorite go-to is we have a music guide from Griffin, DJ Griff, who we know personally and I've worked with for a very, very long time. He created a whole music guide including playlists for you guys that you could just download and use. There's a link right there because Rebecca is on it. I think he has multiple playlists that you can use, so you can kind of pick through and see whatever's a vibe for you. That being said, if you don't want to go download that, that's totally fine. There are a ton of pre-existing wedding playlists on both Spotify, on Apple Music. There are a ton. The only thing you're going to need to do is just make sure you have enough playlists going on, or like enough length of time on these playlists to cover the entirety of your ceremony, your cocktail hour, and your reception. Um, are you Angelica, are you hiring a professional DJ or are you DIYing it? Because if you are DIYing it, I highly recommend going for that music guide. That's gonna be your best bet because it— he also puts together all of the lists of the specific songs that you're gonna need. So processional, recessional, so you can plug in different songs. But yeah, most people don't have an arsenal of songs, like a bunch of playlists that they're referring to. It is a very rare breed when I work with a couple and they're like, oh, don't worry, We've been planning our wedding playlist for the last 6 months. Like, oh, that's, that's different. Most people don't, and that's okay. Most of the time couples are hiring a DJ and they have preexisting playlists. That's wonderful. If you are DIYing, you don't have that. So you can either use the one that Griffin has provided for us, or you can kind of go hunting around and kind of make it— hopefully it'll be like a fun challenge to look through some of these and maybe listen with your fiancé and see what ends up being kind of the vibe that you want to go for. But one thing, if you are doing it yourself, is we kind of want the day to build music-wise. I don't know if we've got any musical theater junkies out there, but like, we all know that music can make you feel something, right? And so we can set the tone pretty early on with how you want your day to feel. We hear a lot of Vitamin String Quartet before a ceremony. There is no shame in that. It's— you hear a lot of it for a reason, because it's really good. So that way you can hear hip and/or popular songs, but done with strings, which makes it really unique and kind of fun to listen to. And then during cocktail hour, we recommend, you know, something a little bit more upbeat, a little bit more vibrant. During dinner, Bublé always slaps. Okay, Bublé, Frank Sinatra, you stick on some crooners, and all of a sudden everyone's like, yeah, this is great, this wedding is going to be a vibe. And then you can get into the even more dancey type stuff. As the evening goes on. So just kind of keep that in mind. Don't get overwhelmed by that. Just kind of use that as a very minor sliding scale. So we don't want to be playing Pitbull ideally before you walk down the aisle, because that's just gonna mess with people. I mean, maybe in a really good way. Maybe you should do it as just as a social experiment and report back to us how it went. But again, if we can build almost both in how it feels and then in the For lack of a better term, reverse maturity. You know what I'm talking about? How like early on in the evening it's like, oh, these proper songs, and then everything with the letter E at the end of the song comes out later kind of thing. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to. And you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie, actually, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over ten 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 at wolferandco.com/ tmp. That's wolferandco.com/ tmp. Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to weddingpriorities.com. I feel like there's a lot of anti-wedding sentiment on the internet. I'm planning our wedding 18 months out because using your budget sheet, which is wonderful, by the way. Oh, thank you so much. My dream day is going to be about $30K, and 18 months is how long it will likely take us to put together such a large sum of money. Good on you for thinking this through and going, you know what, we're going to take our time. We're going to make sure we're intentional about our finances, and we are going to make sure that we're intentional about how we're spending it. That is hard. I think for a lot of us, the temptation to just like Get the wedding happening, um, which, I mean, to be fair, I also had quite a short engagement. So I, I'm— when I say a lot of us, I know that intimately. Um, but sometimes it can be hard to make those steps. So just want to call it out when I see it. That's awesome. I don't think I'm going to regret spending the money, but the opinions of strangers on the internet are making me doubt. Again, we would not be using debt to fund the celebration, and I know a marriage is more than a wedding. But should I slow my roll and plan something more modest? I think that budget shaming comes in all sizes, for sure. I think that, um, you know, obviously those who are working with $5K or $10K would, would think it's awesome to work with a larger budget, but also those that work with $100K aren't even thinking about it. I think that it sounds to me like you and your fiancé are already pretty fiscally wise. You're already going. Here's our finances. Here's what we can logically pull off over the next 18 months. We're not using debt to do it. I think you're okay. I think you're totally okay. I think obviously, if you've been around long enough, you know I love when a couple's balling on a budget and they're like, "We're going to use our money with intention." I think all of you are. I think that's why you're here. You know, I'd be remiss to not say that. But I think that if you are planning this out and you're spacing out how you're going to be setting aside these funds. I think you're okay. Now, I have seen regrets, yes. And that's why I caution, don't just get something because somebody told you to. Don't just book a vendor because someone's like, oh, you're not having a videographer? Your wedding's not gonna count if you don't have a videographer. I don't want you listening to that noise. I want you to— oh my gosh, that wasp is out to get me. I want you to be making decisions because it's something that you're excited about and it's something that you've considered, it's something that you have crunched the numbers on. So all things considered with the information that you've given me here, no, I would not be concerned about setting that aside and making sure you're investing and/or using that with intention. I listened to a video recently where you mentioned your couple went with a free-for-all picnic reception theme. Yes. And I listened to another one where you said you absolutely will not do a wedding without a seating chart. Oh, yep, I've said both of those things, but I'm interested in the picnic idea. I've been drawn to that specifically since hearing you mention it. So how did you make that flow? Here's the deal. No tables. They weren't sitting at tables. There were a couple of tables for those who couldn't, like, get down to the ground and come back up. My issue with not having a seating chart is not meshing at tables properly. When you have a limited amount of seats or chairs per table, And the limited amount of tables, that's where things get chaotic for me. Also, way to be like the most ardent student of the channel to catch both of those. When we're talking about a picnic style, what I was referring to with that specific wedding is they brought blankets. They brought so many blankets. And so you and your family would grab a blanket, go plop it down on the ground, and then just go get your tacos and come and sit down and eat. So there wasn't a structure of we are limited to this amount of chairs or we're limited to this amount of tables. tables. It was more very much picnic style. So I still love a picnic wedding. I think it's absolutely dreamy. I think it's so charming. There's a reason that 15 years ago, I think 14 years ago was this wedding, and it still sticks out in my memory as one of the more unique ones because they did choices like that. The reason that I ever talk about having a seating chart specifically is because of the number of tables and number of chairs and how that get really complicated if people don't mesh into the correct numbers. So hopefully, hopefully that helps to explain it a little bit. What should I do about event insurance when we are using an Airbnb that does weddings? They ask specifically for all vendors to have insurance. I'm assuming that means catering, DJ, photography. We are serving beer and wine without a bartender. Is Brightco a good contender for this? We have contracts for the venue, DJ, and working on catering and photography. Videography contracts now? Again, a great question. So what you are looking for from your vendors is something that we often shorten to COI, which is also known as certificate of insurance. That is what the venue is requiring from all of your vendors. So you just let them know, and they should know what this is. This is very common. Either they will purchase it on a per-event basis if it's required, or they have year-long coverage, and they will just simply need to send a certificate on over to you. Or on over to the venue specifically. So you shouldn't, uh, it shouldn't shock any of them that you're asking them for this. Um, if they don't know what it is, they might be a little bit newer to the industry, but just say, yep, our venue requires that you have, uh, that you provide a certificate of insurance. 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 at 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 5-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! Bye!