Hurry Up! . . . And Wait . . .
January 31st, 2008 @ 3:11 pm by Mrs. Hummingbird
When it comes to the wedding, I know I’m kind of a keener. I mean like any bride, I’ve had (and continue to have) moments where I am totally uninterested in wedding planning, but most of the time, I’m working on crossing things off our wedding checklist like a fiend. In fact after Christmas, we broke down everything we had to accomplish between now and the wedding into month by month checklists and I managed to finish up my January list a couple of weeks early.
So with a little extra time on my hands, I figured I would get a jump on some of the other smaller things that were going to be clogging up my February since, I figured, the more I get done now, the less I’m going to have to worry about dealing with right before the wedding. I mean even though I’m looking forward to it, the week or so before the wedding is going to be a bit chaotic and stressful, so why not work to reduce that as much as I can, right?
Unfortunately, of the half dozen vendors/sellers I contacted about wedding stuff in the last two weeks, I have successfully received replies from . . . no one. No calls. No e-mails. Nothing.
I don’t mean to be snippy, but I can’t help but feel a little annoyed. I know they have other clients and everything and I totally respect that - hey, they’ve got to make a living and this is a busy planning month as I’ve heard from many other summer brides - but when a lot of their websites insist that you give them X number of days notice on projects and then they won’t even acknowledge the fact that you’ve contacted them, it’s frustrating.
I definitely don’t want to be a Bridezilla, but I don’t know how I should proceed from here. Should I e-mail all of them again? Call them up and beg? Drive out to all these places, dance around in my underwear and fling five dollar bills* at them? (I know Mr. Hummingbird would probably get a kick out of that last one, but Canadian winters are cold and unforgiving and my skin is so lily white right now that it’s probably visible from space.)
Since I’m unfamiliar with vendor etiquette to a certain degree, I put the question out to the hive - How long is a reasonable period of time to wait for a vendor response? What is the polite way to follow up? If someone doesn’t respond, at what point should you consider them a lost cause?
Any advice from those more seasoned than myself (I know a lot of vendors read the ‘Bee) would be greatly appreciated. 
*= The five dollar bill is the smallest form of paper currency we have in Canada since our one and two dollar denominations are in coin form. Although I suppose I could have gone with those in this underwear scenario, my sense of logic made me decide against it, since I would either look weird holding a bunch of change in my hands or I would have some rather jingly panties.
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16 Responses to “Hurry Up! . . . And Wait . . .”
Hmmmmm. I would assume that any vendor that doesn’t contact you back within a week doesn’t want your business very badly, or has some pretty bad business practices. Either is probably a great reason not to hire them.
I agree — a week is my max. I’m in the client service business and can safely say my clients would fire me if I didn’t get back to them within 24 hours, let alone a week!! But the wedding industry is, shall we say…unique, so a week tops it is.
My impatience has gotten the better of me in a few cases where I’ve e-mailed a HIRED vendor about a pressing issue/issue with a deadline. In those cases, if I don’t hear back within 48 hours I turn into stalker bride.
I gave my vendors a week to get back to me. If they didnt and I would think twice about working with them. Just a polite phone call or email is the way I went about trying to reach them.
Are these vendors you’ve already hired, or vendors you’re looking to hire? If the latter, then it’s way past time that they should have replied. I rarely give vendors I haven’t hired a second chance if they don’t reply to my first email: there are too many vendors out there to put up with that. And if they’re slow to respond BEFORE you’ve given them money, chances are they won’t improve after.
But if you’ve already hired them, then, while I think they should have replied to say they got your email, I guess the amount of indignation I’d assign would depend on what you want from them. If you just want them to confirm that yes, you have hired them, they haven’t lost your contract, they know they’re hired to worked for you, they’re still in business, then yes, they should have got back to you. I’d send a freindly follow-up email asking them to confirm again.
If, however, you want something more substantial like to set the timeline for the reception, discuss what the centerpieces should look like, decide on what portraits the photographer should take, talk about your do not play list with the DJ, etc., then I’d cut them more slack. These are things they are doing for brides who are getting married in February or March, not June.
I was amazed when I hit January (I am getting married in February) and vendors I had hired who had replied to me rather casually in the past abruptly “woke up” and started answering questions swiftly. Some even contacted me without my emailing them first!
While I think you are certainly owed an acknowledgement of your email, I think you should trust that your vendors are professionals and do a million weddings, and your particular wedding is unfortunately not an unusual or urgent thing for them. They know exactly when they need to do certain things, and your trying to do them early just throws off their timing, interferes with other brides and, perhaps in their experience, is counter-productive because it means if you change your mind they’ll have to start over. You have plenty of time to think about your one wedding; they are focused on a lot of other weddings. Heck, my florist flat-out told me she wouldn’t really focus on my wedding until the week before when she can see what the flowers are looking like.
Definitely a week tops. I’d call and say something along the lines of “I emailed you last week and was wondering when you’d be able to respond…” One of my emails to a vendor had somehow ended up in their junk mail folder…so it’s always worth that phone call!
I wouldn’t discount the underpants dance, but I’d definitely consider using Loonies. A pale, frantic woman hurling dollar coins would be hard to ignore! 
Seriously, I must agree that a week is a more-than-reasonable expectation for a reply. If these are vendors you are really keen on, then I might give it one more try– perhaps gently mentioning that you are “paring down your list” of potential vendors, so you will assume they are not interested/available if you don’t here from them by X date.
I certainly think that you are giving them too much credit actually, waiting two weeks to even consider following up with them. My usual strategy is email, wait a week and if I haven’t heard back, send follow- up email. Then they get two days before I phone. Some people just don’t really like email as a method of communication. It’s my preferred method so I always try it first, but if it doesn’t get the results that I want then I try something new.
so, i had this issue with our minister! i left TWO messages and an email, and then my fiancee sent an email and called him again, after a month of my frustration…turned out he was in India doing mission work without computer/phone access….so, then I felt bad….
so MAYBE they have a good excuse? but if not, forget em!
I know the feeling. I prefer to e-mail rather than phone so I e-mailed our car hire company to finalise details (a month out from the wedding) and never heard from them. Finally, I rang them and the woman referred to the details in my e-mail while we were talking, but had been “too busy” to reply to it. Um, so it took you less time to have a 5 minute conversation with me than to type ” Thanks for those details, that’s all fine, see you on the day”?
I would try calling them, email isn’t reliable; it gets lost, the wrong people read it and could delete it and many people just don’t like using it. Actually talking to a live person is always best.
unrelated to the vendor question, I recently went to Canada for a friend’s wedding and I brought some REALLY OLD paper money that I had left over from 1986. I tried to use a $2 bill at Starbucks and they looked at me like i was crazy. hehe. I ended up including a few old $1 & $2 bills in the card of my friend’s wedding present, just for kicks. =)
To answer your vendor question, I found that many vendors are quicker to respond, the closer it gets to the wedding. When you’re more than a few months out, they tend to take longer to respond. I say, a week should be sufficient for a response.
What I have learned recently, since my wedding is in about 2 months and we are trying to schedule our final meetings, is that this is the slow season for weddings. A lot of vendors are on vacation or a short break. I have been giving my vendors 2 weeks, unless I need to know immediately. But when I get back to them if I don’t here from them, I do reference the prior email/phone call. If they don’t reply again, call them (assuming you emailed).
This is down time for most vendors (except stationers). Most of us are on vacation or have downsized our staff for the winter season (if its a boutique company). Some days they can just get bombarded by email inquiries and it’s easy to miss one.
Dec-late Feb Give your vendors 2 weeks and be sure to try and place a call. Emails get lost in the shuffle and many times the vendor has in fact responded, but your spam filter might be blocking it.
And yes, if you have an event happening between now and May, the vendor will most likely respond within 2 days.
Hehehe beanchar. And gotta love the phrase “stalker bride”. I just picture some girl hiding out in the bushes across from a florist, wielding binoculars and spying on centerpieces.
Thank you very much for the advice ladies, especially those of you who are associated with the industry and have given me the inside scoop.
Things have been a little rough just because we’re planning the wedding:
a) in a town we do not live in and b) in an area that has few local options for vendors. We can get stuff brought in from other places but it will come with a bigger price tag.
But I think I know how to proceed now so thank you.
Oddly enough there is a funny story about loonies in Jenna Jameson’s book “How To Make Love Like A Porn Star”. Apparently when she was still going through her drugged up years she did a guest spot at the infamous Brass Rail and when the patrons started throwing coins onto the stage she flipped out because she thought they were throwing quarters. She was unaware of the fact that we no longer had $1 bills and that they were throwing $1 coins on stage.
Mrs. Hummingbird, Toronto
Age and Occupation: 25, Publishing Coordinator
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Videogame Designer/Cartoonist
Engagement Date: May 4, 2007
Wedding Date: June 28, 2008
Blogging Since: September 18, 2007
Venue: A garden wedding followed by a tented reception on Mr. Hummingbird's father's property.
About Me: I’m a pop culture loving, vintage obsessed foodie living in Canada’s biggest city with my fantastic fiancé and our lovable fluffy cat Bettie. I’m stoked to marry my best friend and to throw what I hope will be
the most fun and colourful party of our lives.
what a great post… i cannot wait to hear the responses because i am sharing your frustration with vendors right now!