The Type A+ Podcast Episode 43 - On Wedding Planning with Brooke Weidenfeld of Sunbursts & Stardust
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Episode Description:
Beth does not typically plan weddings, but when she does, she hopes that Brooke Weidenfeld is her partner in the endeavor! A Type A+ person in her own right and one of Beth's favorite co-working buddies, Brooke is the owner of Sunbursts & Stardust where she produces weddings and creative social events "for the bold, unique, stylish and starry-eyed."
In this episode, Brooke shares her Type A+ tips for planning your wedding, ensuring you won't have FOMO on your next vacation, and the ways having Type A+ anxiety contributes to her success.
About Brooke:
Brooke’s obsession with weddings began as a wide-eyed little girl ogling over Disney princesses and their gowns. Fast forward to high school, and the princess obsession turned into many a-nights being way too invested in Say Yes to the Dress. During her college career at Penn State, Brooke got her first internship in the events industry and immediately fell in love with the craft. This passion for events mixed with her lifelong enthusiasm for design, styling, fashion, and all things beautiful made Brooke’s career path a no-brainer.
When she’s not planning a wedding or dreaming up her next styled shoot, you can find Brooke watching Bravo, drinking iced coffee, listening to Taylor Swift, making sarcastic jokes, or traveling the world.
Follow Brooke on Instagram or visit her website!
Links mentioned in the episode:
PODCAST:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
HOST:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth and other Type A+ Guests will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips on how to optimize your work and life.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Beth Lawrence: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the type a plus podcast. We have a very good friend on the show today, Brooke Weidenfeld of sunburst and stardust wedding planning. And she's just all around one of my favorite people in the entire world, fellow type a plus person, so excited to have you, Brooke, will you please introduce yourself to the listeners and tell them a little bit about you?
Brooke Weidenfeld: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm Brooke. I am the founder, owner, all the things of Sunburst and Stardust. It's a wedding planning company, in Philadelphia slash greater Philadelphia, South Jersey, the shore area. My main focus is on weddings. That's my passion. That's what I love to do. The designing, the logistics, the different ideas, coming up with color schemes and themes and everything. I do do some events, like, birthday party, shower, but it has to be something that really excites me. Whereas Beth likes corporate events, I'm the opposite. I like social events. So we're opposite in that, but we have a similar skillset. Yeah, I would definitely say I'm a type a plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus person,
Beth Lawrence: and I feel like you're, you're selling yourself short because Brooke is absolutely brilliant, absolutely incredible.Not only does she have the logistics brain, but she has. An amazing vision and an eye for design and color and theme that I just admire so much. What do you think you're most type A about in your personal life and then in your business?
Brooke Weidenfeld: Everything, all of the above. This might be because I just planned a trip, but when it comes to trip planning, I am extremely type A.
Beth Lawrence: Ooh, fascinating.
Brooke Weidenfeld: I probably spent four or five hours planning out my trip the past two days. We're going to Maine for a week, which isn't crazy, but just Googling restaurants and looking up recommendations from different like travel facebook groups i'm in and asking all my friends and like google mapping okay if we go here then how far is it from here and like my itineraries are just like crazy but i try not tomake it like the griswolds where it's like okay we're here for 10 minutes then we have to leave here and 20 minutes here it's more like Okay, we're gonna go to this restaurant and then we'll go explore and then whenever we're done exploring we'll go to this bar and then we'll go to this restaurant, but other people I talk to they're like You make itineraries for your trips.
Brooke Weidenfeld: I just kind of go, I'm like, what are you talking about? How do you know what to do? And you can be missing stuff that you didn't know was there because you didn't research.
Beth Lawrence: It's so funny because I'm the other people, like I'm the one I'm lucky because my husband is like you. But I, for some reason, I love doing it for other people so much, I love doing it for clients for myself, it feels so draining.
Beth Lawrence: I don't know why that is.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Yeah, but it's for fun stuff, but don't you feel. Don't you get FOMO when you're there to be like, there could be this really cool store, this cool restaurant, or this cool activity I don't know about.
Beth Lawrence: I guess, I guess I do the Instagram research more casually or whatever, but my partner just loves to plan all that stuff, but I, if it wasn't for him, I don't know what we would have done on our honeymoon, we went to Key West, we probably just would have been like on the beach, or, Just walking around seeing what's there I'm very much like let's wake up and see what's happening and even saying that is probably giving you anxiety.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Well if it's a beach That's different because yeah, you just wake up and go to the beach period, but when it's like an exploring trip, that's when I need plans. For this one, Brett was like, why don't we just do one day where we don't have plans and wing it. And I was like, no, no can do. Well, because we're going to waste it. I don't know. I just need to, I need to know I'm like getting the most out of the trip. And also I'm not crazy in that, something doesn't work or like we end up being too tired for something. I'm not like. We can't, we have to do it, but I just like to have ideas of like where we're going, what we're exploring, whatever.
Beth Lawrence: Because the dreaded question, like, what do you want to do? Or where do you want to go eat? You could spend hours talking about that. So I love that you're type A about that. Everybody needs a friend like you that wants everyone to have fun and wants to make sure that if you're going from a restaurant to a brewery, you're not having to take three trains and a cab or whatever.
Brooke Weidenfeld: The other thing I'm type A about in my personal life is... Well, this is probably just situational because I just bought a house, but decor, like planning, I know it's a weird thing to be type A about, but planning out each room and this little accessory is going to go here, and I'm going to hang a shelf here, and then this wallpaper is going to go here, and we're going to do this color., I don't know how I can be type A about decor, but I make it happen somehow.
Beth Lawrence: Oh, yeah. I definitely know. I feel like when we were talking, even before you moved in, you were already figuring out what you had to hang in your head, and I love that about you. Again, I feel like the dread for me sets in. Once I see the vision, I'm excited. It takes a little bit for me to see the vision, I feel like. If you had to pick one thing of all of the things, what are you most type A about in your business?
Brooke Weidenfeld: I would say my timelines for the actual day of wedding. I don't want there to be any questions and I want it all to be on the timeline. My timelines are crazy. But I wanna know, what everyone's doing for breakfast, because if they don't eat breakfast they're gonna be miserable. I need to know, who's delivering the breakfast and who's gonna pin the boutonnieres and who I'm giving the marriage license to after the ceremony. I literally need to know everything and I want it on that timeline because that's just how my brain works and I need to know. I can't just be like, oh, well. We'll see that day.
Beth Lawrence: This is why we get along well, bro. When you came to that wedding, when we worked together, your timeline was so buttoned up. And I came from a venue side where our timelines had to be to the minute when it comes to service. And we used to have these big meetings with our vendors because Like you said, everybody has to be on the same page. Every single detail has to be on there. I need to know what's happening in the other room so that I can anticipate all the things that go wrong.
Brooke Weidenfeld: I worked for other planners, if they're double booked, I've been a lead for them and they send me their timeline and it works for them. I literally go and make my own version of their timeline Before I go to their wedding because like I need everything written out. I'm just crazy with that...
Beth Lawrence: Type A I mean It's do you think it's anxiety as well?
Brooke Weidenfeld: Well, I think we've said this before but I think to be in events you have to have anxiety because you're always like anticipating the worst thing and like with events you have to do that because that's part of your job, anticipating problems and fixing it, et cetera. So I actually think having anxiety helps us in our careers, even though I don't want to have anxiety. I do think it helps cause I'm always thinking about the next step, what's going to go wrong, who's going to do this, what happens if it starts raining?
Beth Lawrence: Yes. What happens if, oh my God, if we wrote a memoir about our careers, I feel like it just could be called, what happens if? Do you think you attract a type A bride or do you think you attract brides that are more laid back because they need someone like you in their life to be on all the little details?
Brooke Weidenfeld: I think it's probably like a 50, 50 mix. A lot of type A brides hire me and they're like, I'm very type A. I like to plan, but the day of. I don't want to be that way and I don't want to be thinking of all the details I'm worrying because I know I will and I get that because I know on my wedding day I'm not engaged for the record.
Brooke Weidenfeld: But whenever I get married, I'm going to have to make a cognizant effort to not be thinking about all the details and stress and are we on time? And did this get delivered? Et cetera. So the type A brides that I hire usually tell me they're type A and tell me they want help specifically for the day of, because they want to relax and they can hand it off to me
Beth Lawrence: Mm hmm. I empathize with that and they know that you're type a too. Yeah, they're like, okay great I know that I'm in good hands because you're more nervous about this than I am.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Actually one of my couple just emailed me. After their wedding. They're like it was great and We have minimal stress, which is a major accomplishment for us. Like that's unheard of basically and I was like, yes Yeah.
Beth Lawrence: Props to you, Brooke. I love that.
Brooke Weidenfeld: But then others are [00:08:00] very opposite, they're very chill, so I get the whole spectrum, I would say. I think people Book me and they benefit from me in different ways, you know?
Beth Lawrence: Mm hmm Yeah, I feel like people don't notice necessarily all the little details that go into a wedding because you're running around getting stuff done or in the background getting stuff done. But people notice if you don't have a type a wedding plan or if you don't have someone on it for you, because yeah, all that stuff can just slip by or someone can lose the marriage license or forget the rings or whatever it might be. But throwing away the timeline in your own wedding day is probably going to be the hardest thing of that time and period in your life.
Brooke Weidenfeld: I know. I already worry about it. Yeah. Crazy. But I'll definitely have people from my team there so you know what I mean?
Beth Lawrence: Yeah. Thankfully, I was laid back on my wedding day, but I feel like it was because to your point, I knew that if I did a traditional wedding, I would be completely threw the roof anxious. So I just didn't. Because I was like, I know that I'll be watching to see if every linen touches the floor. . Yep.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Yep. Yeah.
Beth Lawrence: Biggest pet peeve. So, what's your advice to the bride that isn't super type A and isn't super motivated to get stuff done when it comes to their wedding? And then what's your advice for a very type A bride that's really on it, really anxious, really crazy, can't really make any headway because they're stuck in the decision mode?
Brooke Weidenfeld: For non type A brides? My advice would be to answer my emails, realize you have to make decisions and you should make them sooner rather than later because if you don't people are going to book up. And the most important thing with non type A brides is booking their vendors and locking them in. And sometimes they're just like, yeah, we don't know. We'll think about it. We'll get to it. And then, guess what? Everyone's booked. So yeah, just make sure like you actually have your vendors locked in. And you don't need to decide on the color of your welcome sign until a month out, that's fine. But a photographer and a florist and transportation, you have to answer my emails and tell me who you want to book because everyone's going to book up.
Brooke Weidenfeld: So that's for non type A. For type A, I would say you have to know that, something is gonna go wrong. That's just, the rule of events and the rule of the world. I'm not saying, you know, if your wedding catches on fire, you have to be okay with it. But you have one less tall centerpiece than you ordered. You just have to be like, well, there's nothing I can do about it now. Just going to keep getting married and have fun.
Beth Lawrence: Like it's one day and that's the hard part of being type a too, because you could literally miss it. No, you cannot redo it.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Knowing something's going to go wrong and not everything is going to be exactly as you like wrote it out or discussed. Cause it's just, that's just the rule of life.
Beth Lawrence: It absolutely is. So. If I'm a bride and I want to book you, how do I find you? How do I book?
Brooke Weidenfeld: You can find me online, my website, which I just redid, which I'm obsessed with. Shout out to brandwell, they did my website. You can find me there, there's an inquiry form on there. Of course my Instagram is going to be the most updated, most recent work because it's just easier. I already need to re update my website that I just got redone because I get new galleries in all the time.
Beth Lawrence: Yeah. And who has the time to do that?
Brooke Weidenfeld: Yeah, exactly. None of that style shoot that we did is on my website yet, even though I'm obsessed with it. I just haven't had the time. So it's all over Instagram. Yeah. Instagram is like for the most recent up to date and then website, you can definitely like get my vibe and like type of weddings I do, et cetera. And then, yeah, there's an inquiry form on my website or you can just It's brook at sunburst and stardust. com, which is a long website.
Brooke Weidenfeld: We'll put it in the show notes to make it really easy for everybody.
Beth Lawrence: Brooke, I want to talk to you about so many other things, but because it's a short form podcast, I'm going to end it here, but if you are a person in the tri state area Philly, Jersey, New York, really any of this region that you're looking for someone to do a fantastic wedding or social event, Brooke Sunbursts & Stardust is your girl.
Beth Lawrence: Thank you so much. We will be back next week on the Type A Plus podcast.
Brooke Weidenfeld: Thanks. Bye. Bye.