195: Wedding Weather Witches: What's Your Peace of Mind Worth?

Last year a New York bride paid an online witch two dollars for a spell to guarantee sunshine on her wedding day, and the story has gone viral. Since then, brides around the world have been booking Etsy and Tiktok witches ahead of their own weddings, some paying two dollars, some paying up to two hundred. 

Is it worth it and do you believe that magic will help your chances of good weather on your wedding day? 

You'll learn:

• Why weather anxiety in the lead up to a wedding is completely normal.
• The exact order of operations for bad weather contingencies.
• A story from Ep 57 guest and wedding planner, Hannah Rose, about a British wedding ritual involving a buried sausage.

Resources: 

The Knot 2026 Wedding Trends: https://www.theknot.com/content/new-wedding-trends 

Ep57: 4 Things At Your Wedding Your Fam and Friends Will Actually Care About with Hannah Rose Weddings

Send Unbridely a 90-second audio message on Speakpipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/unbridelypodcast

*The Unbridely Podcast is sponsored by its listeners. When you purchase products or services through links on our website or via the podcast, we may earn an affiliate commission.*

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This episode of the Unbridely Modern Wedding Planning Podcast is brought to you by Easy Name Change.

You simply choose which companies you need to notify, and they send you detailed process instructions for each of your companies, plus ready to send forms, letters, and emails, so you just attach your marriage certificate to them and you're done!

More info on how to change your name after you get married: https://unbridely.com/blog/name-change-after-marriage 

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Unbridely acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we record this podcast on, the Kaurna People. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Transcript

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What money would you actually pay to guarantee sunny skies on your wedding day? Because right now, thousands of couples are answering that question with an Etsy listing and a $2 spell. So here's the trend. It started in 2025 when a New York influencer credited her flawless wedding weather to a spell that she bought from an online witch. The wedding got so much press, it was called the pinnacle of wedding content creation. And since then, brides across the US have been booking Etsy witches to cast weather spells ahead of their wedding day. Some are paying, as I said, around $2. I've seen some listings that are active right now for up to about $84. And I've been told there are others that are up to $200. Before you laugh this off as a fringe TikTok thing, the Knotts 2026 Trends Report flagged it as an actual tracked wedding trend. Not a joke, not a one-off, a trend. So today I want to talk about why this is happening, what it actually says about the state of modern weddings, and where I land on it. Because, oh boy, do I have an opinion? Let's get stuck into it. Unbridly is a community of pro-wedding vendors who believe in freedom and integrity in weddings, giving you options, solutions, tips, and tricks to create the experience and memories that you and your fiancee really want and deserve. Because we believe that weddings are a team sport with how-to's, stories and interviews with recently married couples. We find out what went right and what they've changed if they could go back and do it all over again. I'm Camille and welcome to the Unbridly Podcast. The obvious response to this is it's silly, it's just another viral TikTok meme, it's Gen Z being Gen Z, but I think that sort of response misses what's actually going on here. The average wedding, as you know, in the US is sitting at around $36,000. In big cities, it's a lot more. In smaller towns, a lot less. New York averages around $75,000 for a wedding. When you've put that much money and attributed that much emotional weight into a single day, any single day, the idea of rain ruining it stops being this minor inconvenience, something you just have to get over, you know, live with it. And it starts feeling like a threat to that investment, right? One bride interviewed about this said it outright. She knew the witch probably didn't have any actual power. No judgment on the witch herself, of course. But paying for the spell did something very real for her anyway. It soothed her anxiety. And that's the part I don't want to skip past. This trend isn't only about magic, whether or not you believe in it, whether or not people have it, all those sorts of things. It's about control, or at the very least, the illusion of it. When you've spent a year or more planning every detail down to the fucking napkin fold, the one thing you know it, you cannot control is the sky, is the weather. And whether anxiety in the lead up to a wedding is real and common, spell or no spell. And when you think about it, this isn't happening in isolation either. This sort of trend is landing alongside couples picking wedding dates by the moon. Not unheard of, and picking wedding dates because they carry a special symbolic sense of good luck. Things like carrying crystal bouquets, booking tarot readers off TikTok. Some couples are treating the witch as an actual backup plan. Plan A is the marquee, plan B is the indoor space, and plan C is the witch. And I actually love that framing because it tells you everything. They're not replacing their contingency plan with a spell, they're adding it on top of a plan that they've already sorted out, communicated, and have there ready to go properly. Which is, if you strip away the witch part, the magic part, actually, pretty sound wedding planning. Have your practical backup and then do whatever helps you sleep at night on top of it. Did you know that most newlyweds spend up to eight hours of their precious time working through changing their last name after they get married? This is where easy name change comes in. Their kits provide you with a sort of shopping list of businesses, companies, and government departments where you simply pick which ones you need to notify. They then send you detailed instructions on how to go about the name change process, because every business is different, and this saves you hours of calling around, waiting on hold, sending emails, waiting for a response, and then remembering to follow up when you don't hear back from them. Easy name change kits also provide ready-to-send forms, letters, and emails, so you just attach your marriage certificate to them and you're done. Starting at $39, the value and time you get back is a no-brainer. For more help on changing your name after you get married, there is an excellent blog post on the Unbridly website, and I'll put a link in the show notes for you. Plus, unbridly podcast listeners get a $6 discount on their name change kits by using the code unbridly6. That's UN B R I D E L Y 6, the number 6, and this is valid until the end of 2025. Get your easy name change kit so you can move on to the fun parts of being grown-ups together, like holidays, getting a dog, building a house, herb gardens. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that a spell can change the weather. And it's certainly not my place to tell someone that their belief system is wrong on this podcast. What I do believe in completely is that ritual works. Not on clouds as such, but on you, on people. There is scientific, well-documented value in having a process that marks the I have done what I can and now I hand the rest over. So athletes do it before they compete. You know, they do all that preparation, they do everything they can. But when it comes down to, you know, the race or the performance or the game or the match, they have to hand it over to whatever happens next and be reacting to that, right? In real time. People do it before major surgery. They prepare, they get everything ready at home, they prepare their mindset, and then they go, I've done everything I can. And you've you've got to relax, right? You go, you've got to let go. Couples have done some version of this before weddings for as long as weddings have existed. It just used to look a bit different. It might have looked like a horseshoe sewn into the hem of a dress, or you know, on one of those little ribbons that you put over the wrist of the bride. It might have been the sixpence tucked into the shoe. It's the something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Long before Etsy Witches, I actually had this exact conversation with Hannah Rose, the UK wedding planner back in episode 57. And she told me about something she'd learnt that burying a cooked sausage in the garden the night before the wedding was meant to keep the rain away. And I have no idea how widespread that actually is, and I'm not holding it up as an established tradition, but at the time it stuck with me because number one, it's hilarious, and number two, it's this exact same instinct, just wearing a different hat. The framing has changed. The underlying human need hasn't. So if paying a few bucks for a spell or wearing your something borrowed, something blue, et cetera, helps you to walk into your wedding week steadier, feeling better, clear-headed, and with less anxiety, I think that's got real value. This is not me being a fence sitter or being diplomatic. I really mean it. Where I would gently flag something is if the ritual actually becomes the plan instead of sitting alongside one. If no marquee is booked, there's no indoor backup, no wet weather conversation with your venue coordinator, just the spell or the sausage, that's not a belief system issue. That's a logistics issue. And it's the one place I'll always push a couple to please be practical first. So this is my message. Sort your actual weather plan first properly with your venue, with your vendors. Then whatever helps you to feel calm on top of that, whether that's a breathing exercise, a special ritual passed down through your family, or it can be, you know, a certain piece of clothing, a certain piece of jewelry, things like that, or a spell from a witch. I am honestly glad it exists for you. Peace of mind is peace of mind, however, you get there. So if there's a real lesson under the witch headlines, it's this wedding anxiety about things outside of your control is completely normal and it deserves a real outlet, not just gritted teeth and hope. For some of you, that outlet is a properly costed bad weather plan and a ritual that means something to you. Could be family tradition, spell, or yes, even that sausage. Those two things aren't in competition with each other. The goal is the same thing either way. Walk into your wedding day knowing that you've done what you can and then let go of the rest. Because at the end of the day, no spell, no backup marquee, no amount of planning gives you full control over the sky. What it can give you is peace of mind, and that is worth paying for in whatever form actually works for you. Until next time, celebrate you people. That about wraps it up for this episode of the Umbradly Podcast. For the links and resources we mentioned, please head to the show notes. And if you love the show, please review and subscribe on the podcast platform you're on now so you don't miss out on a single episode. Thanks so much for listening and remember weddings are a team sport. Catch you soon.