The Price is Right: Negotiating with Wedding Vendors

Life can be overwhelming, there are lots of curve balls Things get complicated but before you get too overwhelmed take a breath and listen. You’ve got questions we’ve got answers. A little guidance just might go a long way. When dealing with life’s biggest moments we could all use a little simple advice. So what’s been really exhausting for us at this point is negotiating with vendors, so we could use any tips you have on that area. Alright here are my top tips for negotiating with vendors. Number one, negotiate everything. From the flowers, to the food costs, to the venue fees, photographer fees, negotiate as much as possible. Second, do your homework. Approach different vendors, get different quotes, and when you find the vendor that you actually want to work with then you can go back to them and say alright you know X company over here offered me this price, do you think you can beat that? And that way you’re educated, you’re informed and you’re going to them with a specific price that you think they would be willing to give you. Another tip is to be careful of freebies. A lot of vendors love to throw in all these additional freebies but in reality they’re increasing the price somewhere else. Ask for the specific line-item breakdown so you can see item-by-item how much everything is costing you. Oh so it’s not necessarily that they’re putting the freebie in the line-item, it’s that there’s just a bump in the cost somewhere else. Exactly. Good to know, yeah. Another tip would be to lend a helping hand. So for example uh you can bring your own table linens, maybe someone in your family has linens you can borrow because that can be very expensive. Maybe the table linens is part of the catering package but if you bring your own you can reduce that fee. Yea, yea. And finally trade services. For example you have your cleaning business, mmhmm, you might go to some of these vendors and say look I would be willing to give you some free cleaning services in exchange for an additional service or a lower cost. Do you think it would be good to ask if they have any discounts as well, like we both come from military families? Great ideas, always ask for discounts if there’s any associations you belong to or specific groups you belong to, see if they would um offer you a discount for that. Good, thank you! Yea. And again it’s your big day so don’t worry about what everybody else thinks is important, it’s what’s important to both of you.