The Truth About Good Wedding Budgets And Discounts
I want to shed some light on a common topic in the wedding industry. It’s about discounts and a Good Wedding Budget. Despite what society tells you, your wedding has no right or wrong budget. You might have a wedding budget in the high six figures. You also might just have a wedding budget for just a few thousand. Both are perfectly fine. What matters most is that you’re realistic about what you will spend.
Weddings have many moving parts: caterers, reception, pictures, videography, makeup, etc. All of these things cost money, which makes the price tag add up quickly. It seems only natural for some to ask for a discount or become completely unclear as to what your budget is. We live in a society where we have businesses constantly fighting for our business. When planning a wedding, when is it appropriate to ask for a “Discount”? How can I become more clear about a what a good wedding budget is? These questions and conversations are inevitable when it comes to planning a wedding. They are completely unavoidable.
In this blog post, I talk about the following topics:
Conversations Regarding Budgets
When is ok to ask for Discounts
Give Yourself Permission to Rethink Your Budget
Both wedding discounts and a good wedding budget go hand in hand. This will help steer some of your conversations with the most important categories for your wedding.
Conversations Regarding Wedding Discounts
Determine and be very clear about “who” you are having a conservation with when it comes to discounts. Are you speaking with a “Supplier” or a “Service Provider”? There is a difference; most of them will tell you somewhere within the information they provide which of these categories they fall into.
If the item you are purchasing is not associated with personalized services, you are buying from a supplier. Items such as Mini Plants or Jars to accommodate your “honey” favors, products to fill your gift bags, or lanterns to deck out an outdoor reception are things you ask for a discount for because you’ll likely need to buy those items in bulk from a “supplier.”
Discounts from Suppliers
Additional items will surprise you, such as flower bouquets or even a wedding dress you can buy from a supplier such as Amazon or Costco. These require very minimal service if any at all, making the item purely transactional. So it’s perfectly ok to ask “suppliers” for a discount. So always bear in mind for any item you are purchasing that doesn’t come with a service or the service is very minimal, you are working with a supplier.
Asking for discounts here is fairly easy; they are readily available and are practically given when you show up to “inquire.” Tread carefully with suppliers; while the discounts on the front end may help with your “wedding budget,” the cost will be significant when it’s time to use or put together that specific product, so the item will likely, in the end, still cost you. This creates a great deal of stress when you’re planning the wedding of your dreams.
Discounts from Service Providers
Nearly most of the wedding professionals you hire are “service providers” and will spend a great deal of time with you and the decision-makers (family members) from the moment you book. Even more so, closer to your wedding day, as they must execute to give you desired results.
These are your Photographers, Florists, Planners, Stationers, Cake Artists, etc. These individuals will provide a service first, and the end result for most of the aforementioned is likely a cherished product or unmatched results that could be nearly impossible to achieve on your own or by a single person.
When you hire either of those professionals to provide a service, you’ll likely pay a premium. Unless the person providing the service is relatively new and has serviced very few to no weddings at all.
In this case, a discount is still not appropriate to ask nor negotiate their price down for two primary reasons:
The service and the long-term working relationship will be affected, and things may not go well down the line. The second reason is that many of these service providers are investing hours of their time. In addition to their physical presence anywhere from as little as 8 hours to as long as 12 months to provide a service and deliver results. Time invested by the service provider varies depending on the service, and so will the price.
So the goal here is to hone in on the value of the service and how important this particular service is to you on your wedding day.
Conversations Regarding Budgets
What is your wedding budget? You must be prepared to answer each time you pick up the phone or send an email to inquire. It’s really going to be helpful for both parties involved. Every wedding professional can attest to this who has their business model properly set up and aligned. Let’s provide a scenario.
Imagine speaking with a florist who has asked about your budget, and you respond with the general answer, “we haven’t figured out a budget and just shopping around.”
You still need pricing, so the florist will continue on to learn more about your wedding and provide a beautifully written proposal of services.
You look at the proposal only to be sticker shocked and can’t imagine paying the price proposed. A day or two later, you tell the florist it’s “out of your price range.”
Technically you had a wedding budget all along.
So, in reality, what just happened is that you and the florist have spent a great deal of time getting to know each other, and all of the time invested on both ends has been wasted because a budget that technically existed was never disclosed.
Being upfront about your budget is always the best approach while planning your wedding. While you may not know how much you’ll want to spend, you know how much you’re NOT willing to spend.
Give them the “out of your range” amount. A wedding professional will (and should) be able to tell you if they can accommodate what you have allocated to spend for the service. If they can’t accommodate that amount, most will make some pretty amazing recommendations; they are very resourceful and really do want to help.
Give yourself permission to rethink a good wedding budget if you need to!
Pencils were invented for budgets. This is your wedding day; we’re not shopping on Amazon here. That’s a big difference. You want to create beautiful lasting memories and include the most important elements within all this history you will make with family and friends.
If you find a service that you always wanted, but your pre-allocated budget won’t allow for that glamorous look, then you may have different priorities for your wedding. For some, the dress is the most important item, while for others, it may be the cake or those glamorous wedding invitations.
Look through your budget and see if there’s another area of the wedding that you can possibly cut back if there is a service that means that much to you. In the wedding industry, we call this prioritizing your wedding categories. If you really want something, you can make it work.
So now that you have all these points to consider to help drive your conversation around wedding discounts and a good wedding budget.
How does this fit in the picture of your overall wedding planning? I want to hear from you and share your thoughts!
about the author
Ruby Brewer-Watkins is a Certified Wedding Planner, Chef, and Hospitality Professional specializing in full-service wedding stationery and etiquette. Her guest list planning and creative process created efficiency within her client projects, which allowed her to effectively collaborate, design, and create beautiful wedding invitations and “day of” stationery for countless couples since 2015.
Hi, I’m Ruby, your creative wedding professional. FINALLY, you made it! You can catch a glimpse into a few things I love, specifically how I passionately create wedding invitations and details for the “day of” for couples. I hope that that my blog posts and articles contained within this beautiful space truly inspire you. I offer unfiltered advice and space to give yourself permission to be creative and explore options, and ideas that are available to you to celebrate life's greatest moments.
