Weddingbee Blog

The other day, I was getting my teeth cleaned. (That really has almost nothing to do with the story, except that the hygienist who cleans my teeth is always super chatty, and usually asks me questions while that sharp pointy hook thing is in my mouth, painfully scraping away at my gumline. This makes it pretty hard to answer, as you might imagine.) The point is, I’m sitting there, and she’s scraping away, asking me questions about our wedding. She was going through her usual line of questioning, with me trying to utter a “mmhmm” for an affirmative response or a ”nunhuh” for a negative response. She then asked me a question that nobody has asked me, thus far, in our planning. She said, “So…with your wedding in this economy, you must be getting great deals, hey?”

Source

Hmm. Well, not exactly, Ms. Hygienist.

While car dealerships are offering fantastic deals right now with cash back and 0% financing for 60 months, the wedding industry (to me) seems to be a bit immune from the economic crisis. We have gotten some deals on things for our wedding, but that’s because we’re having it on an “off” day — not on a Saturday. Now, I understand that wedding vendors need to make money just like everyone else – it’s their job and it’s how they feed themselves and their families (see Nancy Liu Chin’s recent Weddingbee PRO post – she does a great job of outlining the financial reality that a lot of wedding vendors face). But, I get the feeling that some vendors aren’t exactly struggling, either.

Several DJs and florists that I contacted back when we were looking were already completely booked, or weren’t accepting any more appointments. The DJ that we ended up selecting said that he was glad that we weren’t having our wedding on a Saturday, because they were already booked from May through September. While he might have been exaggerating a teensy bit, I’ve gotten a lot of “sorry, we’re booked” responses. One cake designer that I contacted wasn’t accepting orders at all – of any kind – any time in 2010 because she was already so busy.

As you can imagine, when vendors are already booked up and spaces are filling fast, brides-to-be don’t feel like they’re in a position to haggle over price. Sometimes they’re just grateful to be getting a space! Granted, some vendors are a lot more popular with brides than others, which means that spaces can fill up fast, regardless of the economic environment. But, I get the sense that vendors are just as busy, and brides are the ones who are trying to make economic sense out of it all. Cutting expensive letterpress invitations so that they can afford the photographer of their dreams, for example. Nixing the chair covers so that they can have a more delicious cake. Doing away with favors completely so that they can invite more people to the fete.

I know that Mr. French Fries and I have had to make some strategic budgetary moves – we prioritized in the beginning and are sticking to what we thought was important: food/drink and photography. To keep our budget in check, my dream dress was purchased on the Weddingbee classifieds. We’re DIYing a lot of our decor. Letterpress invites are just not in the cards for us – I’ll be making them myself, instead. I’m okay with all of that, though, because we won’t be in debt after our wedding. And regardless of what the current economic conditions are, that’s the smartest decision of all.

What have you done to keep your budget in check? Have you gotten any deals as a result of this economy?