Wedding Blog
Recently, Mr. Cupcake had a job interview (side note: please cross your fingers he gets this one!), and the recruiter who helped him get the interview prepped him with some questions beforehand. He told Mr. C to have a few examples in mind of times that he negotiated, in both his former job and his personal life, to get a lower price on a big-ticket item. We were brainstorming together, and he mentioned the wedding. When I really thought about it, though, I realized that we/I did not really do much negotiating — if any — when it came to our wedding.
Maybe it’s just my personality, but when someone tells me that something costs $X, I don’t really debate it. I don’t try to negotiate the same service/product for a lower price, although I could certainly see negotiating a slightly different service in order to get the price down. But it never really occurred to me to haggle with our vendors to get their prices down. If someone’s prices seemed too high for what their services were, or they quoted too far outside of my budget range, I simply went elsewhere.
Perhaps I have a soft spot for vendors and their pricing since I work in a creative industry, and often work with brides and other people planning special events. I have experienced the other side of things, and I know how disheartening it can sometimes feel when a client wants the same great product but for a fraction of the cost. It can make me feel like my time, talents, and resources are not valued, and that is discouraging. I’m not saying that every vendor experiences that feeling — but I’ve certainly seen that side of things!
Maybe we missed out on some great deals by not negotiating services and products for our wedding, but I guess we’ll never know. I’ve come to realize that negotiating is just not my nature, and it actually makes me feel pretty darn uncomfortable.
Have you negotiated with any (or all) of your wedding vendors? Have you reaped a lot of rewards (or extra savings) by haggling over prices, or has your negotiating ever backfired?
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We negotiated only our catering fee. It saved us a couple hundred $.
I can’t remember but it’s not a bad idea. I always seemed to look elsewhere to see if I can get it for cheaper. But, then there are things that I dind’t mind paying. You get what you paid for, right?
My fi used to work in sales, so he has been on the other side and believes all things are negotiable, but so far we love all of our vendors and think they are worth every penny. We have splurged on some things, but have felt lucky in other areas. We actually have some vendors who we think are worth more than they are charging!
Flowers and the cake are the only areas I see us maybe neogtiating, but not really trying to get vendors price down, more of can you add this if we don’t get x? But it all depends, we’ll see how the rest of the planning goes. I go back and forth on whether it is appropriate to try and negotiate with vendors. Luckily we haven’t had to so far.
I can see how on your side of things in a creative field it would be disheartining. As the creative person behind it you set a price you think is fair and you need to make an income.
I’m not a “negotiating” type of person either. My husband on the other hand likes to negotiate, especially when it comes to wedding items that didn’t make sense to him. This was often the reason we argued over wedding stuffs during our wedding planning, since on the other hand I also wanted him to be an involved groom (which he very much was) 
Most of the time I just want an “easy way” and just pay whatever price the vendor told us, but he always tried to find a way to make everything cheaper
I’m a big negotiator. Especially with this wedding. I think the only things that we can’t do anything about is plane fare. But to this day, I pity the poor guy that had to deal with me on my room block. I still think he’s wondering how he got taken so bad
I negotiated with my florist. We are buying $900 worth of flowers. She is a small florist and her typical wedding pays about $300 worth of flowers, so my wedding is a big job for her, and she was trying to get me to pay $5.99 for flower petals, and for my cake flowers $19.99. I asked if she could give me those for free since I was getting all of the rest of the flowers and she did! I know it was only $26, but I just found it crummy that they didn’t offer to give you free petals with a X dollar amount floral package, it just seems really nickle and dimey.
i don’t have a problem negotiating, but my family is dutch and the dutch are known for being frugal! I negotiated with my reception venue and got just what I wanted for what I could pay! it was well worth it.
I negotiate physical products only i.e. linens, anything we’re renting etc. For someone I’m paying for their craft - photog etc I didn’t b/c I felt I was insulting their product, which is essentially themselves. We saved on our linens and furniture rentals though so it was worth asking!
If I’m having a particularly confident day, I will negotiate a price for something that I really want. I really wanted to get married at the venue we chose so I asked if they could do any better than their quoted price. They came down but not enough to make it within our budget. When I told them that, they came back with an even lower price that fit our budget. I plan on negotiating with the florist as well. It never hurts to ask - as long as you’re not rude about it!
We negotiated our venue, our flowers, and our limosine down from higher prices. Especially in this economy, negotiating pays off! We probably saved over $3000….
We’ve done some negotiating here and there. A lot of the vendors we’ve spoken with have expressed their understanding about the difficulty of planning weddings in this economy and have been more than willing to negotiate. For our entertainment costs (DJ and Mariachi band) we’ve saved about $500 total and we’ve also gotten a break on the wine we’ll be serving at the reception.
I’m the worst negotiator. If I feel like something are out of my range, I pretty much stop wanting it because I feel bad negotiating
I thought about writing a post similar to this often. In my video business, people negotiated with us a lot, but typically just for the first time’s service (and typically, they’d come back and pay full price for the 2nd video they’d had made with us). So, that was OK… just a discount to get them in the door. With weddings it’s different… you’re likely never to come back to most vendors (because you only get married once!). So I’m typically not OK with negotiating… I assume that people charge a fair price for their services, and I don’t want to be “that person” that has haggled with them and made their life difficult. I treat my customers with equal respect to how they treat me… so I’m typically slow to respond to people I know are hagglers, or out to just milk me for every penny I have… and I never wanted vendors to feel this way about me, so I never negotiated.
We didn’t really negotiate with our band, but we did end up getting a GREAT deal. They told us their price and we told them we could do it for that price so we were going to find someone else, then they called us back and said they would do it for our desired price. It wasn’t a negotiation technique, but it worked
My dad is the ultimate negotiator and has haggled for almost all of my wedding purchases! Reception venue, food, decor, flowers… His motto in life is “you work hard for your money so you shouldn’t part with it easily”. I always get embarrassed when he does it but he has saved us thousands so it was worth it!
I’ve negotiated a few items: DJ, makeup artist and videographer (this was the biggest savings at $450). I’m about to do the same with our florist/decor lady.
I always try to be as respectful as possible, letting them know that we do value their time and talent and that they are our preferred vendor. However, realistically speaking we have a budget, this is what we can pay, can we make this work?
We negotiated the price for the hotel but that was more on customizing the package. If I take x, you can give me y, if we give you a guarantee of this many people for the hotel rooms we can go to another price range. It was all in good faith from both sides. And so glad it worked out.
We have not done any negotiating with any other vendors. Like you, if we felt it was out of our price range, then we looked for someone else.
I was like you in the beginning…someone actually told me “you can’t negotiate in the wedding industry..” HA! Boy, were they wrong…ESPECIALLY in this economy. I never negotiate unless it’s a lot of money we are talking about…so with our venue we are already spending thousands upon thousands of dollars…so I got them to take off about $1500 total…then our DJ (who is also doing our uplighting for the venue) knocked off about $400…I must say…if you can and when it is appropriate-negotiate..we already ended up saving $2,000 and we don’t have everything finalized. AND even if you can’t get them to reduce the price, sometimes they will throw something extra in (extra appetizers or table linens) most places expect to be negotiated with but it has to be done in the right manner.
Thankfully I took the graduate negotiating class in business school - its where I learned the ins and outs of the craft. I’ve learned how to negotiate without insulting while keeping things within my budget. I look forward to creating good relationships with vendors so they can be flexible with my budget
Oh, I think you’re a lucky girl. My fiance is in sales and he wants to negotiate EVERYTHING! Mostly because all of his customers try to negoiate everything with him. The upside of that is we’ve been getting crazy discounts. The downside is that I fear that we’re going to end up with shoddy service because he keeps haggling with everyone. :S
I’m a lawyer so I think negotiating is always in the back of my mind….
I negotiated the venue fee by $2,500 and got us a plated dinner for $20 cheaper per head than the listed price. That’s savings of like $4,500 right there!
With my florist, I didn’t really negotiate, but more told her what I was willing to spend on each item and asked if she could do it. It ended up she could : )
The appropriateness of negotiating, I think, depends on what you are trying to negotiate. To me a venue fee is BS, particularly if the venue is doing your food for you too (which, in my case they are). So I felt food and venue are fair game.
As far as musicians, photographers, and paper products…I wouldn’t have tried to negotiate because I agree those are creative efforts and they set their price according to their skill/talent/overhead.
Some we negotiated, some cuts were because we used friendors.
Negotiated- photography but this was a lot of back and forth for months, us hiring another photographer and it didn’t work out. The photographer we ended up with felt bad for us and took us on.
Friendors- flowers, the big band (Hubby plays in the band), caterer (I use them for work), my friend was my DOC, and ceremony musicians were friends. My cousin did my makeup and my friend did my hair.
I had no problem telling people what our budget was and a lot of them were very responsive!
First good luck to Mr. Cupcake on the job…and 2nd I feel the same as you…if the price doesnt match our budget we look at another vendor or we just dont call that place at all. I just dont want to waste our time if we know it isnt the right price. And those prices are set for a reason.
I negotiated with our photographer and saved $300 (we did contact him for one of his bigger packages costing us $6,000.00 so i dont think $300 was a big deal to him).
And interesting question! Since we are getting married in the winter (not wedding prime-time), we have negotiated a bit with our photographer and our DJ. We are not bold about it (my mom is a master negotiator and is fearless). We did it, but we did it after the DJ and Photog had already hinted that they were desperate for the job and would be responsive to negotiation. I am glad we did though! The worst they could do was say no.
My FI is the KING of negotiating! Our venue typically requires the higher priced “Platinum” package for Saturday nights, which starts at $120, not including tax or service charge. We managed to get the venue on a Saturday night for less than $75 a head pre tax/service charge. With tax/SC, it will be about $100/head, still a nice chunk less than their typical. We aren’t getting ALL the options with the platinum package, but we are happy with it. He also negotiated with all our vendors - went back and forth between two photographers for a week before finally going with one.
For our honeymoon (we are cruising Down Under) he is contacting the tour companies and mentions we are on our honeymoon when he asks information. Some have given us discounts for that, and others offered us half off or free trip if we can bring 10-20 other people. That’s pretty simple, since he’s addicted to Cruise Critic and met people there.
The awesome negotiating power doesn’t go to just wedding stuff. He got his car, brand new, for a fraction over what the dealer ACTUALLY paid for it (not the marked up values they CLAIM is “under invoice”. What they actually paid is public information, and then got them to throw in 5 years of free maintenance and oil changes.
I am not good at negotiating at all. I’m like Cupcake. I leave the negotiations to the FI.
I don’t normally negotiate, but when we were looking for a cake & groom’s cake, one bakery offered a much-reduced price on the groom’s cake, regardless of whether we got the wedding cake with them. We brought their price to our preferred bakery and asked if they were able to match it… It was a really good negotiation strategy - “this is my alternative, can you match it?”
i’m not a negotiator even though my mom is a champion haggler. too bad that isn’t genetic.
I am also non-negotiator person when it comes to ask for discounts, but I am a really big fan of bartering, even though it can be a kind of negotiation, in my case I’m not asking to not pay for a service or pay less, I just love to save money with my own work.
I am with EngineerBride - my FI negotiates everything. Wedding or not, price is negotiated. It does get under my skin at times, but he is always professional about it. He always tells me he looks at it from the owners perspective - “do they really want my business? do they really need my business? will they do anything they can to make me happy and a repeat customer?” I see his point, but he goes to the extreme.
This isn’t necessarily a case of “saving money” but just last Sunday we were at a Theme Park. Day was dreary and started to rain; we had waited in line over an hour for go-karts (the course is really long, elevated up to 4-stories and goes around and around). We were close to our turn and they shut down the ride because it had begun raining and the course was too slick. My FI asked to speak to the manager and got him to agree to go to the front of the line of the most popular ride there (that people had been waiting for 1.5 hours for)… unbelievable, right? I was so humiliated but this is the kind of negotiating he does on an everyday basis!
Like many of you have said, there are only certain things that we [he] has negotiated for our wedding. In fact, pretty much everything he has been a part of - contacting vendors, etc. - we have gotten deals on those. Savings:
Harpist: savings of $50
Ballroom rental: savings $200
Dinner rentals: caterer was going to charge us $7.00 for each place setting not including linens; FI got it down to $5.75/place setting including linens - savings of approx. $360
Uplighting: savings of $200
Photog: complimentary e-session, not taking anything out of our package - savings of $200
Photobooth: waived travel fee - savings of $110
Bed and Breakfast stay (night of wedding): negotiated $225 room to $165
Catering: waived delivery fee - savings of $50
and the biggest savings of all:
Caterer wanted to charge $19.90/person for open bar (their first estimate did not include our 1/2 barrels, wine or soda! Just the hard liquor for 160 guests!!!) Add $1100 for beer, $450 for wine, $75 for champagne and $200 for soda on top of it and we were like OUCH! (because we initially wanted to put a certain amount of money down for some hard liquor but not leave it totally unlimited), FI negotiated:
$18.95/person (including gratuity/tax) for a totally open bar - including hard liquor, five 1/2 barrels, assorted beers, wine, champagne and soda!! People under 21 are only being charged $1.95 for soda.
Savings of $2,110!!!
Total estimated savings by negotiating: $3,340
I’m with you, Mrs. Cupcake! I don’t like negotiating. What I did do to save money was book my vendors early. We booked our venue in time to get 2007 pricing! We also saved by choosing a non-Saturday and choosing a date that isn’t in peak wedding season. And we booked our photographers right after they raised their prices, but we got the old prices.
My FI and I have 9-5 jobs but we moonlight in the wedding industry as well in web design and graphic design. So we saved some money in different areas from our own skills and then bartered with some vendors. We only approached vendors about the barter once we felt the vibe from them when they realized and were excited about our web and design work. Between two vendors it saved us over $800. I will say that it didn’t go over with one vendor. This vendor had a lousy website and, based on her profession in the industry, it should be updated after every couple of weddings yet it hasn’t changed once in the year and a half since we booked her. In fact, I know first hand from her other colleagues in the industry that they only give out her phone number and not her website. When we got the sense she wasn’t that interested we dropped it. We didn’t want to push it and create a negative relationship.
On a side note I know a photographer who worked a wedding where almost every service was bartered for a new website, including the venue!!
Good luck to Mr. Cupcake! It’s a jungle out here so it’s good to hear when someone gets an interview.
And yes, I am a negotiator but to a certain extent. Like I won’t asked for a reduced price but for more options or time. Like with our reception location. It was suppose to be for 5 hours for X dollars. Personally, I think a space rental fee is silly when you have to work with the provided caterer. So I ask for a reduction or an extra hour. I preferred the extra hour and that is what I got.
Same here - as a daughter of entrepreneurs, I’ve always had a soft spot for people who sell (as opposed to us greedy consumers 
). I never tried to negotiate during my entire wedding planning process. If I felt that a price was too high, I just simply went with another vendor.
I’m not a negotiater, but I think it’s really advantageous in a market economy. The way I see it, someone selling a service or commodity will not sell you something at so low of a price that they lose money. In a recession, people want to sell and it sometimes means cutting prices (which just cuts into their margin of profit). They may not be making as much, but they’re still making money, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. I hired a wedding coordinator to do all of my negotiating for me. She’s been awesome! She negotiaties for things I never would have thought of. If a price isn’t negotiable, I determine if the product/service is worth it to me.
I don’t know if it counts as negotiating, but we asked our photographer to do a customized package for us. We loved her work but her set packages just didn’t fit our needs. I’m glad we did it–we were able to get just what we wanted AND keep things within our budget.
Agree with you on the ‘moving on’ stance. I did, however, inadvertently ‘negotiated’ with my make up artist because I had thanked her for her quote and said it was outside of my budget.
But she asked how much I was willing to spend, and then came to a compromise, so I saved $300!!!
I almost always negotiate - I love to do it! Unless I am at a big box kind of place or the grocery store, I’ll ask for $5-$10 off. (Although my father also loves to negotiate and will do so at Sears - you’d think that was a joke, except he actually gets better deals that way!) Sometimes they say no, sometimes yes. I feel like vendors should price their items a touch high to anticipate negotiating. To me, that’s smart pricing on the vendor’s part. As far as planning a wedding goes, we received discounts on just about everything by negotiating.
I’m really not a negotiator either. We’re going with a photobooth after getting an email saying they were going to be halfprice…I thought it was a great deal, but my mom thougt I should ask about getting it cheaper yet. I felt bad about asking since it was already “on sale” so I never did.
Yup, we negotiated a bit for the wedding. I think my motivation for doing so was knowing (generally) what my sister and her husband had paid just about a year earlier while planning — and seeing how dramatically prices for everything had increased when it was our turn!
I didn’t necessarily negotiate the price, but I did request some additional services or amenities. For example, I got our limo service to throw in two bottles of champagne. Really, it was less about the champagne itself and more about the fact that I wouldn’t have to remember to do it myself. It seems to have worked well, as the little amenities don’t cost the vendor too much, but they do provide something important to me.
I’m definitely not a negotiator, it’s really intimidating to me. I’m all for reworking the package to get the price I can afford for the services I actually need though!
FYI, you should ALWAYS negotiate with wedding vendors. My theory is “what is the worst that can happen? They will say no and I’ll pay the original price.” It is true that vendors build buffers into their prices so they can discount or will have little “add on” things they can throw in to your package to add to the value without increasing their cost much (extra prints, flowers for cake, etc)
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Mrs. Cupcake, Philadelphia
Age and Occupation: 27, Graphic Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Construction Project Manager
Engagement Date: February 10, 2007
Wedding Date: September, 2008
Blogging Since: December 7, 2007
Venue: The Desmond Hotel in Malvern, PA
About Me: Mr. Cupcake and I hit it off at a Halloween party and immediately began a long-distance relationship. After two years, he moved to my neck of the woods, and a year and a half after that, he proposed at the “place we fell in love.” I am a true perfectionist who enjoys designing and creating more work for myself, so wedding planning is my perfect outlet. Mr. Cupcake and I are both old souls, and we hope to weave that aspect of our personalities into our wedding day.
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