Jamie Wolfer
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What Would You CHANGE? Real Advice from Real Brides
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As someone who has been involved in planning a LOAD of very small budget weddings, my #1 tip (before we get into saving money) is FIND SOMEONE (a family friend, the organiser, whatever) to field and sort negative interference from friends and family. There WILL BE negative happenings, people are strange! The couple will have enough stress and the wedding should be about love etc, not family and friends bitching about the venue or cousin Suzi not being invited, or "I want to bring more guests" etc. Just get someone to be that "horrible" person to put their foot down and say NO.
Hilarious AND helpful! Love these videos.
Can you link the diy video you referenced? I don’t see it linked anywhere! Thanks
PHOTO WRANGLER 😁
I married over 20 years ago but my advice for any bride is to consider if the vision of people you have in your party is worth what they may put you through. I always wanted my sister as my MOH. However when my chosen wedding date (based on my fiancé’s military leave) interfered with a college trip she wanted to go on, she tortured me up to a couple days before the wedding that she might just leave me in the lurch. Honestly, that was on par for how our relationship was. I wish I had been strong enough to tell her to skip my wedding and go on the trip because the guilt tripping lasted for years afterwards.
Yeah that seating chart can be crucial. I went to a wedding with open seating and every table was full so I sat ALONE at a table that was directly in the sun & felt physically & emotionally uncomfortable the entire time.
Fully agree with the cake sitch! It’s why we’re cutting the cake as soon as the speeches are over and before dinner is served so the cake will be available as soon as our guests are done dinner. My fiancés cousin did this at her wedding and as soon as the waiter took our dinner plate away the dessert table was already full and laid out! We had our cake and then danced the night away!!! It was a brilliant move!!!
As a wedding DJ who takes pride in my ability to help couples navigate the planning phase of their events, I can't get enough of your content. I find myself screaming "YASSS" at my phone all the time! Thank you for your passion and your content! Also, please forgive me for repackaging your 'perfect day myth' discussion.
Wrangler 😂
My best advice is:
1. Find a venue before choosing a date. I see so many brides get disappointed when their dream venue isnt open on the date they chose.
2. Consider a weekday wedding for big sayings and when most venues and vendors are available. I found a brand new venue through my coordinator for $300.
3. Meet with wedding planners/coordinators before making any decisions. They can give you ideas that may save you money. Some get discounts for the vendors they recommend and can do all-inclusive packages.
4. Find a venue or a wedding coordinator that has things you can use like decorations, florals, signs, tables, chairs, chafing dishes, charger plates, dinnerware, etc. These things add up. I found a coordinator that paid for herself just by offering all thise items with hwr services.
5. Consider exchanging services. My daughter's gift was our DJ and she exchanged dog training services for 4 hours of DJ service with a photo booth.
6. If you're doing bourdoir photos, consider doing your make up and hair trial just before bourdoir pics so you dont have to pay for extra MUAH.
7. Consider nontraditional caterers like your local grocery store like Food City or a locally ownes restaurant. Many wedding specific caterers charge more.
Some of these tips are timeless. I got married in 1984. We had a professional photographer for traditional pics but then we provided a camera and film and hired someone who knew us and many of the guests to take photos of tables of people and especially anyone he didn't recognize. That way we got candids of coworkers, relatives, and our of town friends.
Another piece of advice: if you have children in your wedding, designate someone specifically to keep the children occupied the entire day and make sure that they are where they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to doing when they are supposed to be doing it. And please make sure that this person is someone that the child(ren) feel comfortable with.
I once attended a wedding where the flower girl was the bride's 6yo daughter, and it was a total disaster. There was absolutely no one keeping an eye on her. First, she had a total meltdown because she couldn't be in the bride room with Mommy (even though Big Sister was a bridesmaid, and therefore was with Mommy). Then, she ended up sneaking into the room where the reception was to be held and managed to find the cake. One of the groomsmen (I think) finally catches her and looses his temper at her. Another meltdown ensues, of course. Thankfully, only one side of the cake was ruined. Finally, the bride caught onto the idea that leaving a 6-year-old unattended at such an important event might not be the best idea. They had to spend about half an hour just getting her cleaned up and calmed down. And then, instead of someone showing her what to do with the basket of petals, they just hand it to her. So, you'd think this bride would have learned her lesson? Nope! When they were ready for the ceremony to start, the flower girl was nowhere to be found, so they just started without here. The girl showed up to the ceremony about halfway through and spent most of the time she was there on her hands and knees, placing the petals on the edges of the aisle.
There was another wedding where the bride was on her game when it came to the flower girl and ring bearer, the groom's sister's children who were 7 and 4 respectively at the time. Not only did she have someone appointed specifically to look after the children so that her soon-to-be sister-in-law could take part in the event as a bridesmaid, she also set up a designated location for them with various activities. In addition, she arranged the schedule so that the kids were in play clothes until the very last second and STBSIL could sneak away and help her kids get ready.
Feeling like i got scammed with The Perfect Wedding Timeline purchase. Paid $30+ for what amounts to a 14 day free trial…that I could have got for free directly through the platform, Timeline Genius. Which interestingly is not mentioned anywhere on the Perfect Timeline website at all, until after you have given your money. I'm guessing that's so you get people before they realize they can get the free trial, well..for free! Seems very sneaky and dishonest. Sent an email asking about it and just got back a form response with FAQs that have nothing to do with my concern. Very disappointed. Buyer beware!
About eating, I also wasn't hungry but I hadn't ate in like 4-5 hrs and the food looked so good. I ate most of my plate and am super glad i did. Somehow eating the cake later on was easier lol
1) I would not buy a dress in the first store. It was a compromise dress (I asked lots of stores if they had lacefree dresses and no one had any, so I gave up) but I absolutely don't regret buying it, I had a wonderful wedding day in it – what I regret is not trying on more dresses. I tried about 4 in total, none of which had the style I wanted as "clean" dresses seem to be not in trend here right now … and feel I really missed out on a unique experience in my life. I later went to a different store where you don't have to get an appointment so I didn't prevent the employee from making money with a "real" customer (I went in the morning at a weekday so I was the only customer) but it didn't feel the same as shopping for my wedding dress (even though I could have gotten another dress for my courthouse wedding). It's different if you don't plan to buy one. Also, they didn't have my dream dress style, either … In hindsight, I would have searched for a big store (hard to find in Germany) who has some lacefree dresses and at least try on my dream dress. Chances are that it would not even look good on me, but I would have liked to try it on once to get it out of my head!
2) I would start earlier with DIY projects. I still finished some decoration the day before the wedding and made my bouquet at the morning of my wedding (that was okay, though, I had nothing else to do at that time, as I skipped the "getting ready" time, just put make-up on). The reason was that I sewed my bridal coat the weeks before the wedding – then we got summer temperatures shortly before Halloween so the time was wasted, but nobody could have known this beforehand so I'm not mad about it, it was just bad/good luck (couldn't wear the coat, but it didn't rain and wasn't cold outside so we could use the nice venue better).
3) I would do more research to really know what kind of pictures I like. In hindsight, I love pictures with LOTS of landscape around the couple – our photographer only did SUPER near shots with hardly anything around us. I only had 1 hour to pick a photographer (originally, a photographer friend should take pictures but he got sick the day before the wedding) and I just wanted to get it out of my way quickly. Would have been much easier if I knew what I wanted beforehand!
But in the end, I'm still happy with my pictures after a big disappointment directly after the wedding. I needed some time to get my vision of my dream wedding photos go and now I don't regret my choice anymore.
What I still regret: I did not tell the photographer to get a picture from my dress from the front – I thought that went without saying! Apparently not. My sister had the same issue.
4) I would have liked to sit at every table and talk a bit to every guest. But I'm an anxious person and was a bit overwhelmed with all the people (65 guests, German weddings are smaller). So I guess I COULD not have changed this, I just wish I had been a different person, but well …
5) I wish I had done couple pictures before the wedding – it wasn't possible for logistic reasons (home, church and venue too far apart from each other; in Germany, you can't really just have a wedding anywhere) so we had no other choice but we lost SO much time! But then, we could not have known that my husband's relatives got absolutely crazy with games and performances (first wedding in his family for decades) which took a lot of time from the reception. So it wasn't a wrong choice, I just would have changed it if it had been possible.
Agreed, you need to eat your yummy food! I am a very slow eater so I was worried about this. We did get to sit briefly for a nibble BUT our amazing caterer packed up numerous boxes of all the wood fired pizzas we picked to take on our honeymoon the next day. Not leftovers, but fully made pizzas just for us. I was SO incredibly grateful ❤❤
00:10 Slight ningling thing here, but "penultimate" means next-to-last not second-after-first. Not a big thing, but maybe you or others didn't know!
We had 2 friends video our ceremony and speeches/dances using a tripod and a decent video camera. It was all we needed to look back on our special day since we weren't interested in a professional-quality edited video. Only thing I would change with our set-up would be that we should've used mics at the altar – ONLY because we had an outdoor wedding and the wind was blowing the whole time. We had to spend hours of editing our video afterwards to turn down the volume on the wind frequencies so you could hear the words being said! We also ended up adding subtitles in post-processing to make it easier to hear.
My fiancé’s cousin told us not to splurge on huge florals (like bigger than my head bouquets on every table). They spent a ton of money and it looked amazing on the day of but it doesn’t last and they had a heck of a time getting rid of the massive floral arrangements after.
Oh also, you were 1000% right about making a seating chart! I wasn't going to bother with only 17 people total, but then I saw a video of yours where you said having one was a good idea. It was trickier than expected, but it turned out great and meant that we got to decide who was directly next to/across from us during our dinner, so we actually got to eat and enjoy the meal!
Just had our wedding three months ago and it went great! Super small (15 guests, uner $6k budget for everything). Your videos were soo helpful in planning, Jamie! Thank you!!
Things I would do differently (not very many, tbh):
1. Full dress try-on including all undergarments and accessories. I used booby tape instead of a strapless bra and practiced that a bunch (it was awesome, btw, highly recommend for plus size ladies who hate strapless bras), but I didn't bother practicing with the sticky fashion tape and I wish I had! My dress material was thick enough that the tape only held the inner lining of the deep v-neck in place and I had to borrow my dad's tie pin for the ceremony then fix it with safety pins at the reception (always bring safety pins in your purse!). It worked out, but added way more stress while getting ready than there needed to be.
2. Plan something special for the next morning's breakfast. We had a pretty decent continental breakfast at our hotel, so we ate that the morning after our wedding. The bummer was that after I let another hotel guest go in front of me in line for the waffle maker (towards the end of breakfast, because we had all been up late), the guy proceeded to take the last of the waffle batter to make two waffles instead of one. It was kind of a bummer, so I wish we had planned to have someone go pick up donuts or something.
3. Serve cake later after dinner. We were on a tight budget and hired a photographer we really liked for only 4 hours, which was 100% the right call…but it meant that right after finishing a delicious dinner we had to go get pictures of us cutting our ice cream cake and everyone was completely stuffed! Everyone ate it anyway (because ice cream cake is amazing), but it would have been so much better if we had asked them to serve it an hour or so later. Even so, we brought the leftover ice cream cake out for brunch at our house the next day and it was a big crowd pleaser!