Start watching wedding content on Instagram Reels or TikTok, and @weddingprocass might pop up in your algorithm. The creator, Pittsburgh-based wedding professional Cassie Horrell, offers tips and trade secrets for couples preparing for their big day, with videos on garden-variety issues like making a budget, dealing with vendors, or choosing a venue.
But it’s not the expert advice that makes Horrell stand out among countless wedding social media accounts. Horrell, a wedding planner, venue director, and mobile bar manager with 12 years of industry experience, has garnered over 540,000 TikTok followers with her humorous, often shocking retellings of true stories about bad brides, overbearing mothers, cheating fiancés, and more.
Horrell says many of the stories she depicts happened to her, with contributions from others mixed in.
“Most of the time, the stories come from someone’s personal experience,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper, adding that she sometimes pulls similar elements from multiple stories to create one narrative.
The dramatizations are the stuff of wedding reality TV nightmares, recalling the over-the-top antics of Bridezillas or the behind-the-scenes drama of Say Yes to the Dress. Recent examples include a 10-parter about a mother who secretly rents a wedding venue for her unengaged daughter, and an eight-parter about multiple thefts at one couple’s wedding. Others cover everything from bitter bridal party members to a deadbeat dad who suddenly wants to walk his neglected daughter down the aisle.
Horrell estimates that she has produced around 700 wedding horror stories since 2023.
“It’s fun,” says Horrell, adding that it allows her to express herself creatively while still offering a service to her followers.
Each serialized story plays out through multiple short vignettes, with Horrell acting out scenarios in her kitchen, using items she finds around her house. They unfold like low-tech, DIY one-woman shows, with Horrell playing each character, wearing ball caps for dads and grooms, scarves for mothers, and shawls or old-fashioned eyeglasses for grandmothers.
Horrell says releasing the stories in small bits comes from necessity, as recording longer versions would likely be interrupted by her two small children, who can often be heard in the background. Still, signs of them appear in the videos — for example, a toy cell phone and laptop substitute the real things, and in one, a wedding ring comes in a Disney princess music box.
Beyond delivering riveting entertainment in bite-sized bits, Horrell believes the posts serve as cautionary tales, reminding viewers that weddings can often bring out the worst in people and providing insight into the potential headaches of executing what should be a celebration of love.
“When you’re planning a wedding, you put a lot of pressure on it because it’s supposed to be your ‘best day ever,’ and you want everything to be perfect,” says Horrell. “But there are other things related to it, like family drama or your budget and the monetary commitment.”
She says the “impact of social media” can make wedding planning even more difficult, adding, “You’re comparing yourself to everybody else.”
To that end, Horrell works to counter the perfectly curated dream weddings and influencers of TikTok and Instagram, often filming her videos sans makeup and in sweats. She slips in nontraditional ideas, such as asking a grandparent to be a flower girl, or a bride asking her best male friend to be her maid of honor, to show that there’s no correct way to do a wedding, even as opinionated relatives and online influencers say otherwise.
Horrell says that, from the start, couples should decide exactly what they want and try to follow it as best they can.
“The first thing you should think about with your partner is writing down your priorities and what things are important to you,” she explains, adding that a “non-negotiable” might be having the wedding during a certain time of year or at a specific location, while things like flowers or decorations might take a back seat. She also recommends carefully considering who to involve in the wedding planning process, and “figuring out your budget very early on.”
Overall, Horrell wants to help couples avoid becoming part of the wedding drama that drives much of her content, and her videos are mostly about how “people are learning how to set boundaries.”
“People are like, ‘I don’t ever want to get married because of your story,’ and I’m always like, ‘No, that’s not why I do it,’” she says.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2025.
