Negotiating with vendors

One of the ways I tried negotiating was to try to take out services not needed. For instance we had 10 courses in a pre set menu but I tried taking out 1-2 of those courses aha.

I was never really able to “negotiate” with my vendors. If I didn’t like the price, they suggested smaller packages, less hours, or less food. I had to shop around until I found a vendor in my budget.

A lot of this depends on your region and what's being offered.

We didn't negotiate with our venue, at all, because they were offering the best price around by far... but we got married in NYC. Prices here are eye-popping.

So, if a price seems high, take a look at what they are offering/where they are.

Depends on what vendors you want to negotiate with. Usually the easiest ones to do that with are hotels, and they will usually give you a 10% discount if you meet certain criteria.

I agree that it depends on the vendor. You could try negotiating by asking for things to be included at no additional cost that aren't currently in the package you want (such as, adding uplighting), or you could ask if they're willing to work with you on price (such as, package that includes 8 hours for the price of 7 hours).

It all depends on what vendor. For instance, we had a custom menu created for our wedding. When we toured the venue, the venue coordinator stay down with us to discuss the menu since they provided the food. The pre-set menus were out of our price range and all plated options. She said our best option would be a mixture of stations and buffet so that's what we did. I also tried to negotiate with a florist I reached out to and was basically told I would have had to pick cheaper flowers.

We couldn't really negotiate with our vendors since they basically have set prices, they did have different packages to choose from.

Definitely depends on the vendor. When we looked at venues that offered catering, we asked if we would be able to take away certain food stations that we didn't want, or if we could add/subtract certain things. The venues we liked all had customization options for food, so that helped to narrow it down. Our photographer we were able to get a couple discounts based on bundling photo/video, location, etc.

Once receiving your quote, you can go back to the vendor and say “We have $X.XX to spend, where can we make cuts?”, and see what they offer. We did this with our florist because I just refused to spend but so much on flowers that would die in a week. We ended up getting exactly what we wanted for a few hundred dollars less!

I don’t find vendors to have a lot of wiggle room on laid out prices per services. HOWEVER, I think it is easy/good/reasonable to negotiate services. For example, my catering quote was high for us, so we looked at the itemized breakdown and figured out what we could cross off the list— for us it was things like eliminating a few appetizer options, and negotiating rentals (choosing a cheaper option of chair).
For us, photography was too expensive so we ended up hiring our photographer for a partial day instead of the full event.

Some vendors are more willing to negotiate if they don't specialize in weddings. They create packages and charge what they do because they know some brides won't blink when given those prices.
Look for outside the box vendors. A favorite restaurant that caters, a florist wholesaler where you can DIY if need be, etc.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for your feedback. I would have never thought to look at some of those things. We will definitely consider some of the approaches you and your FH have made.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for your feedback. I’ll definitely look into the things you suggested. Unfortunately our venue for day 3 comes with a cater and we don’t have the option for outside catering unless it’s additional. But I will definitely look into the wholesale florist.