Sponsored weddings are the new way influencers are saving money

As soon as Yola Robert got engaged last July, she started house hunting, hitting the gym and scouting out her dream wedding venue. Then, she slid into the DMs of her favorite brands.

The 29-year-old was set on having an Instagram-worthy wedding, but when she priced out vendors for flowers, food, liquor and limos, she got serious sticker shock and realized she needed to spend upward of $100,000 for the wedding of her dreams. But Robert could realistically only spend $20,000 of her own money on her June nuptials, which were held at a private estate with a winery in Paso Robles, California.

And so, the lifestyle and beauty influencer, who has more than 50,700 followers on Instagram, got creative.

“My husband and I sat down and mapped out our connections and relationships we’d made with brands,” Robert told The Post of her conversation with hubby Mark Huntsinger, 33, who is a physical therapist and TikTok influencer with over 122,000 followers. “We said, ‘Is there a way we can make it work for both of us?’”

The dream wedding is becoming a budgeting nightmare thanks to inflation, rising gas and real estate costs, and wage stagnation. The cost of the average wedding rose a whopping 79% from 2020 to 2021, from $19,000 to $34,000, according to the latest statistics from wedding website the Knot. So some brides-to-be are using their social media savvy to score freebies and sponsorships to save tens of thousands of dollars on their big day.

“A lot of millennials my age are in this position because we haven’t been able to save up fast enough and compete with the inflation,” Robert said, adding that the couple wanted to put most of their savings toward buying a house, not throwing a wedding. “Our parents giving us $5,000 a couple of years ago would have been a big help, but not anymore. So we tried to find party hacks and partnerships to help offset the costs.”

Since Robert isn’t a big drinker, she envisioned a mocktail station to balance out the booze bar for her 110 wedding guests. She reached out to the nonalcoholic brand the Free Spirits Company for a mutually beneficial bargain: If they supplied drinks, she’d share photos of herself enjoying them, which the brand would be allowed to repost on their own social media.

The beverage brand went for it, providing her with $4,000 in cash, plus a case of their faux spirits. With that, Robert bought all the essentials to build the booze-less bar, including glasses, garnishes and mixers. She was also able to hire three bartenders to shake up mocktails all night long, plus a photographer to capture the content. In exchange, she gave Free Spirits about 50 to 60 high-resolution images for the company’s use, plus a high-res reel of her and her wedding guests enjoying the free bevies. She also agreed to post three different story frames tagging the brand on her personal Instagram page. 

“It was really great because we have a lot of friends who are sober, so we came up with a whole menu. They paid for the product and I took that money and paid the bartending team to bring it to life,” Robert said.

Robert also teamed up with Hum Nutrition, which gave her $3,000 in cash, plus various supplements, gummies, beauty products and other merch for the big day. In return, she supplied the brand with high-res images and videos of herself and guests holding up the products for their usage, and she agreed to post at least three images or videos on her own Instagram story.

The bride also got free tequila seltzer from friends at the canned booze company Onda for her wedding weekend. The drinks were a gift, though Robert did give them a shout-out on Instagram.

Fashion came next. Her bridal party of six was gifted silk robes from Papinelle and matching black tank dresses from the brand Splits59, with both hauls worth around $1,000 each. She saved another $2,000 by getting SloCal Photobooth to do a pop-up for free; the business was new, so the exposure was payment enough, she said. All of these brands sent her the free merch in hopes of her posting organically; there was no contractual obligation. She still posted photos as a thank you on her Instagram Stories and her bridesmaids tagged them too. It was all fairly effortless, the recent bride said.

“While some people might look down on working with brands during this special moment in your life, my husband and I found it to not only be super fun, but it allowed us to save and have the wedding we really wanted,” Robert said. “It allowed us to do other things that we may not have been able to without them — like hiring a belly dancer.”

Even if a bride-to-be doesn’t have a huge number of followers, some wedding planners say it’s worth reaching out to get a deal.

“Everyone’s an influencer these days, and even if you’re not, brands are giving away things for free to get the exposure and free advertising,” said Amanda Orso, a party stylist who runs the High-Low Hostess, a New York City company that curates welcome bags and events.

But, Orso cautions brides to approach potential partnerships with caution.

“It has to feel cohesive, not like you’re hawking a bunch of things a company is trying to get rid of,” Orso said. “It can’t look rinky-dink.” 

It shouldn’t look shameless either. In 2019, Marissa Fuchs, who runs the popular Instagram account @FashionAmbitionist, caught flak after a 13-page pitch deck geared toward potential sponsors for her “surprise” engagement leaked.

To Robert, the brand deals were smart, simple transactions that allowed her and her husband to expand their guest list. She still scrimped as much as she could, shopping at Costco for flowers — which only cost about $500 — and wrangling centerpieces and decor from supplies she bought at Dollar Tree and on Amazon and Facebook Marketplace.

“We splurged on the ring and the dress and cut corners everywhere else,” Robert said, admitting they still went $10,000 over their intended budget, even with their sponsorships. “I call it ‘high-low.’ You don’t have to have a million followers to make it work.”