I’ve planned weddings for 20 years—here’s how I know who will get divorced

A wed­ding plan­ner has gone viral for reveal­ing the tell-tale signs a cou­ple will get divorced—before they’ve even made it down the aisle.

Robin ‘Birdie’ Yarus­so, from Lakeville, Min­neso­ta, has worked as a wed­ding plan­ner for 20 years, and has noticed “trends” when plan­ning a cou­ple’s big day that she now con­sid­ers “signs” that the betrothed won’t make it.

After work­ing as a wed­ding plan­ner for more than two decades, I’ve learned that wed­dings reveal much more than just a couple’s love sto­ry. In fact, I can usu­al­ly tell—sometimes before the cou­ple even says “I do”—whether their mar­riage is like­ly to last. The signs are sur­pris­ing­ly con­sis­tent.

She told Newsweek that while these trends aren’t “100 per­cent” an indi­ca­tor that a cou­ple will get divorced, “I would argue that I know plen­ty of peo­ple who stay in a mar­riage that is wrong for them or they are unhap­py in.

“With that being said, there are clear behav­iors that come out dur­ing the wed­ding plan­ning process that indi­cate larg­er issues.”

Yarus­so shared these signs to her Tik­Tok account @birdie1216 in August, telling view­ers “I can tell if they will divorce before the wed­ding hap­pens.”

In the clip, viewed more than 2.6 mil­lion times, she explains she’s planned more than 100 wed­dings, and there are “cer­tain things” she’s seen in the plan­ning and wed­ding day that often leads to divorce down the line.

The first thing she not­ed was “smash­ing cake in each oth­er’s face”, and “for some rea­son, none of my brides and grooms who did that are still togeth­er.”

The Cake Smashing Curse

You’ve prob­a­bly seen it before: one part­ner shoves cake in the other’s face for laughs. It looks harm­less, even fun, but in my expe­ri­ence, every cou­ple who did this end­ed up divorced. What seems like a joke often hides deep­er dis­re­spect or a lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Hidden Decisions Behind a Partner’s Back

When one half of the cou­ple secret­ly adds costs or makes changes with­out telling the oth­er, it rais­es a red flag. I’ve seen brides order extra flow­ers behind the groom’s back, or grooms sneak in upgrades with­out dis­cus­sion. This lack of trans­paren­cy and team­work is an ear­ly warn­ing sign.

“We all know there are com­mon rea­sons for a divorce. Mon­ey, trust, con­tempt, bound­aries. If I have a bride that is hid­ing the true cost of flow­ers from her future hus­band, that falls right into mon­ey and trust.

“If I have a moth­er of the groom that is over­step­ping and her son does­n’t cor­rect her, chances are that is going to have an impact on his mar­riage long-term. How do you think it’ll be when they have chil­dren? It’s a clear lack of bound­aries.”

When it comes to cake push­ing, she said it “can be cute and play­ful,” but only if “both par­ties have agreed to it. Oth­er­wise, it’s a strong indi­ca­tor of con­tempt.”

Yarus­so’s video, cap­tioned: “Signs that the mar­riage will fail dur­ing wed­ding plan­ning,” had a huge response, rack­ing up close to 160,000 likes.

One com­menter defend­ed cake smash­ing, say­ing she and her hus­band have been mar­ried for 30 years, and “as long as [you] guys agree ahead of time and don’t get vio­lent, I don’t see an issue.”

Anoth­er claimed: “I played in a wed­ding string quar­tet for over a decade. I could tell from the cou­ple’s music choice and behav­ior who was going to stick togeth­er,” while one iden­ti­fied them­selves as an offi­ciant, and said “I’ve seen tell-tale signs as well.”

“I used to do make­up for wed­dings, and I could often tell if the mar­riage would­n’t last. When a bride spoke to the groom with con­stant dis­re­spect, those rela­tion­ships rarely sur­vived,” one wrote. And a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er added anoth­er bad sign is “if the hus­band con­stant­ly walks faster than the bride dur­ing the cou­ple shots.”

“I’ve sang at 5 wed­dings and all of them have divorced,” anoth­er admit­ted. “Am I a curse?”

In 2023, there were 2,041,926 mar­riages in the Unit­ed States, and 672,502 divorces from 45 report­ing States and Wash­ing­ton, DC, accord­ing to the Nation­al Cen­ter for Health Sta­tis­tics.

As of 2024, the US divorce rate remains between 40 to 50 per­cent for first mar­riages, although this num­ber has been declin­ing for sev­er­al decades, accord­ing to Mod­ern Fam­i­ly Law.

Yarus­so told Newsweek that there are “also indi­ca­tors of healthy and beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship pat­terns” that she often sees while plan­ning wed­dings.

“Cou­ples that laugh at the moments that go wrong, cou­ples that have a strong abil­i­ty to com­pro­mise, cou­ples that unite against oth­ers.”

Parents Who Run the Show

If a parent—most often the bride’s mother—dominates the plan­ning process and the cou­ple doesn’t set bound­aries, it almost always fore­shad­ows big­ger mar­i­tal issues. A mar­riage is about two peo­ple cre­at­ing their own life togeth­er. If they can’t stand up to out­side inter­fer­ence at the wed­ding stage, trou­ble tends to fol­low.

A Partner Who Couldn’t Care Less

Anoth­er clear pat­tern is when one part­ner shows lit­tle to no inter­est in the plan­ning. I’ve had grooms who couldn’t remem­ber the name of their DJ or brides who brushed off every deci­sion until the last moment. A lack of involve­ment usu­al­ly reflects a deep­er emo­tion­al dis­con­nect, which doesn’t mag­i­cal­ly fix itself after the hon­ey­moon.

Final Thoughts

These behav­iors don’t guar­an­tee divorce—but after 20 years in the wed­ding busi­ness, I can tell you they are strong indi­ca­tors. A wed­ding is more than just a par­ty; it’s often the first real test of how two peo­ple work togeth­er.