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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?
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
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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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