Planning a wedding can be stressful. Just ask Morgan Absher, the podcast guru who reigns over an audio empire between her three hit shows, Two Hot Takes, Father Knows Best, and her latest true crime addition, Clues by PAVE Studios. Between sessions in the studio, Morgan also happens to be planning a wedding to the love of her life (and THT co-host), Justin Thunstrom. “I’m in the height of it right now, so I like all the wedding stories I’m just living for right now,” Morgan told me.
A self-proclaimed horse girl, Morgan is knee-deep in the hay of bringing her Minnesota farm nuptials to life. But planning a wedding isn’t all fun and games (even though Morgan has teased that there will be arcade games at her reception to THT listeners). Sometimes the stress leads to some very unbecoming bridal behavior, and even crimes. When I asked Morgan if Clues had a wedding episode, she told me so far they’d unearthed frightening lesser-known facts about the Lacey Peterson case, but adding a bridal-related case was now on the to-do list.
To hold the fans over, I asked Morgan for her hot takes on the worst bridal scandals in history, and if these brides were, in fact, the asshole.
Is This Bride The Asshole? With Morgan Absher Of Two Hot Takes And Clues
Is it ever okay to be a runaway bride?
Julia Roberts, Rachel Green, and Elaine Robinson from The Graduate; fictional runaway brides have been points of fascination in pop culture for some time now. But none of these narratives compares to the real-life mayhem bride Jennifer Wilbanks allegedly unleashed when she disappeared for three days before her wedding, and eventually called her fiancé from a different state, claiming she’d been kidnapped and assaulted by a random couple. She’d later admit to the FBI she just “needed some time alone,” thanks to big day anxiety.
It’s not hard to imagine what Reddit verdict Jennifer would receive for pulling such an elaborate scheme, but with so many layers, what was the most asshole-ish part of her runaway escape? “I mean, asshole all around, but I think what’s hard is that she then involved potentially innocent people and just dragged their name through the mud. I’m like, girl, all you had to do was say I’m having cold feet. Can we call this off versus runaway hide for three days?”
Calling off a wedding, though taboo, is always an option, according to Morgan. “You’re not even married. It’s a breakup. I even think after you say I do [you can call it off] if you, at any point, have a partner that’s not respecting you and clearly not for you.” Even if that realization comes from something as seemingly lighthearted as aggressively smashing cake in your face, “if they don’t love and respect you, leave them. Leave them at the altar, leave them right after [if you have] a reason.”
As for runaway wedding guests who don’t attend after paying for their plate, Morgan has this advice: “You have to notify the couple, whoever you’re connected to,” even if your wedding invite still allows you to change your RSVP. “I think it’s so disrespectful and rude to be a no-call, no-show. It doesn’t matter what pops up,” she doubles down.
What happens when you say the wrong name at the altar?
Saying the wrong name or flubbing your vows isn’t just something that happens to Ross Geller on Friends. Princess Diana actually botched her husband’s name during her Royal Wedding by saying it backwards — oops! Considering the lack of happily-ever-after in that particular union, is saying the wrong name a kiss of death to a newlywed couple? “I think you can chalk it up to nerves. I hate public speaking,” Morgan laughs, because despite recording regularly, “doing live shows for the podcast is very nerve-wracking.”
As for her own vows, Morgan has a special plan to avoid the nerves taking over: “Something I’m doing for my wedding is we’re going to do our full vows in private. While we’re up there, we’re going to give everyone the best of the vows, like a condensed SparkNotes version. People love love, so you do have to give them something.”
How do you decide who gets your mom’s wedding dress if you have sisters?
Morgan has read plenty of Reddit stories revolving around one big white lightning rod for wedding drama: the bride’s dress. From guests playing dumb and wearing white to SILs over-inserting themselves, a wedding OOTD has ample opportunity to go wrong. Katherine Heigl’s canonical work, 27 Dresses (which happens to be one of mine and Morgan’s favorite romcoms), exemplifies one wedding worst-case-scenario that brides with big families deal with in real life: how to split your mom’s wedding dress.
“It’s so hard,” Morgan muses, “The ideal scenario is that one of them really loves it and the other sister doesn’t care.” But if more than one heir wants to wear the family heirloom, Morgan thinks a good rule of thumb is “whoever gets married first gets to use it first,” but, “you can’t make any permanent changes if you need to take it in a little bit, we take it in, we alter it, but fabric doesn’t get cut.”
To avoid any outfit faux pas by well-meaning guests, Morgan added a blatant disclaimer not to wear white at the bottom of her invites. “I’ve read enough Reddit stories to know I need to say this,” Morgan says, explaining this is the only area where she’s at risk of going Bridezilla. So what’s her backup plan if someone does it anyway? After reading a Reddit story where the couple gifted neon orange t-shirts declaring the guest’s faux pas in black, bold letters, to offenders, Morgan came up with a slightly more elegant solution. “They’re going to get a robe, and you’re going to wear the robe, or you can go. Because it’s going to be a nice silk wrap and you chose to wear a white, are you kidding me?!” Sounds fair to me.
