The internet is full of articles and lists telling you how to save money on a wedding. Some of the suggestions you’ll find are helpful, but many of them are either dishonest, or undermine what you really want out of your wedding day. One suggestion I’ve seen a number of times is to avoid telling vendors it’s a wedding. It’s a popular misconception that venues jack up the price simply because its a wedding. Let’s take a look at a few different vendors that you may hire for a wedding day and talk about why you may want to be honest about why you’re hiring them.

PHOTOGRAPHERS
The reason we, as photographers, need to know that it is a wedding is that, for us, like you, it is a full-day event. We typically reserve the whole day for you. If you don’t tell us that it’s a wedding, we may book your session for, say, four hours, and then schedule something afterward. If we don’t know it’s a wedding we may not know to hire a second shooter, or build a timeline and shot list with you. Weddings are a different beast with many more moving parts. There is a lot more preparation and work that goes into a wedding for a photographer that there is a “party” or “family reunion.” A wedding for me is about 30-40 hours worth of work from booking to delivering your photos. In order to get what you want out of your wedding photos, it’s important that you be upfront about what you are hiring us for.

HAIR + MAKEUP
Your salon appointments are probably several hours before your ceremony, probably even a few hours before your photographers show up. From the time you leave the salon to the time your ceremony starts could be about five to six hours. I have worked with brides whose salon appointments were at 9:30 am and their ceremony wasn’t till 4:00 pm. On a hot summer day, you might sweat through your makeup and your hair might start to hang. Your stylist and makeup artist will want to make sure that you won’t be sweating off your makeup or crying through it and that your hair will still look lovely at 9:00 pm that night. Finally, Hair and makeup for a wedding usually have trial runs, to make sure that what you want to do is feasible, comfortable and most importantly, that you like it. All of these things require more product, time and more intensive labor to make sure your bridal look is on point from start to finish.

FLORAL
Many times, brides like to have everything just so, and their bouquets are no exception. A bride is much more particular about her flowers than a host of a party. This alone makes your flowers a higher stakes job. There is a certain amount of extra that goes into weddings, and with floral, it means designing and crafting a bouquet that holds together and doesn’t wilt throughout the day. When flowers are delivered to the venue, it means the venue and the florist working together to ensure the necessary storage and that the flowers will last. When you consider that you’re not just getting your bouquets, but also boutonnieres, centerpieces, and ceremony decorations, you start to see how saying it’s a party might leave you short on decor.

WHEN THEY SHOW UP TO A WEDDING THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A WEDDING
On the more disastrous end of things, if a vendor shows up to find that it’s a wedding, they may leave and offer no refund, as this could void your contract. While this is not an uncommon practice when a photographer is tricked into shooting a wedding, not every photographer will do this. Some will stay and shoot, but withhold your photos from you until you have paid for a wedding. If you refuse to pay you may never get your photos. Many vendors have clauses in their contracts detailing the consequences of such dishonesty. One of the big ones is a voided contract. You sign a contract for one thing but it’s actually another. Your vendor isn’t necessarily obligated to serve you because they never signed an agreement for a wedding. They signed for something else. In some situations, they can legally leave or not deliver the product. Can you imagine lying to your vendors, and having them take off once they figure out you lied? Not a great way to spend a wedding day.

In the end, weddings cost more because they are higher risk, there’s more drama and more work. Lying to your wedding vendor means you’re assuming that they are out to rip you off. We don’t want to rip you off. We want to make your wedding day everything you hope for it to be, but the work associated with that does not come free. You’re not just paying for the hairdo, the reception/ceremony venue, a bouquet, or the photos. You’re paying for people to set up and tear down those venues and to make sure the event is going smoothly during the event, you’re paying people to store your flowers, design your bouquet, and make your hair last all day. You’re not paying for the product and only the product, you’re paying for a service and an experience. And it pays to be honest with your vendors.

FOR FURTHER READING:
Can Lying to Vendors Help You Avoid the Wedding Markup?