The Importance of Wedding Contracts and Communication
Even though contracts and engaging in regular, honest communication with your vendors can go overlooked in the booking process, they can become one of the most important parts of your wedding planning journey.
In the wedding industry, contracts and communication are crucial to both vendors and booking clients, such as yourself, however, they can become some of the easiest things to cause stress or be pushed to the back burner. Here are some ways that you can make sure your wedding planning and your booking processes go as smoothly as possible!
You can start by openly communicating your ideas and desires when looking for vendors to book for your big day. Start by telling the vendor you are working with what date your wedding is, and how many people you expect to attend the event.
Go off of the total amount of people you sent an invitation to, not just off of who has currently RSVP’d.
Unfortunately, a good few people won’t RSVP, and will show up simply from getting an invitation or a save the date. You want to make sure that they are accounted for!
For example, when speaking with a potential caterer, you want to let them know how many people you’re expecting so they can get an accurate measure of how much food is to be prepared (after all, you don’t want anyone to go hungry!).
You also want to make sure that you communicate what kind of cuisine you envision, in as much detail as possible so the caterer can let you know if they will be able to make your vision come to life. Be up front and honest about your desires for the kind and quality of the dinner you’d like on your special day.
Make sure you make your likes and your dislikes known!
Setting those expectations early and honestly will help rid of any confusion later on in the booking process, and can also help you and the caterer get a more accurate estimate for how much the service will cost.
If you are unsure about a service that a vendor provides, don’t be afraid to ask in depth questions about that service.
Ask about their process, how many weddings they have participated in, or if they have any extra fees that could be added on. For example, with a caterer, plates, cups, utensils, or extra staff may not be provided outright, but can be added on for an additional fee. It is essential to fully understand the type and the quality of the services that you will be paying for in order to make sure that your vision becomes a reality.
Next, once you have received an estimated cost for the service, and you decide you would like to move forward in the booking process, some vendors will require a deposit to book your wedding date (pro tip: it’s okay to get multiple estimates from different vendors, as some may work better within your budget, or may be a better fit to carry out your vision).
Make sure that the amount of the deposit is clearly communicated on both your end and the vendors end to avoid confusion, and to avoid possibly not having your wedding date secured due to paying a wrong amount.
When paying an agreed upon deposit, it may be wise to pay through a secure website such as PayPal or Square, as they offer buyer protection or the ability to dispute a charge in the event that something goes awry. If you pay with a check or cash, make sure you get a receipt to keep with your records, as it can also serve as proof of payment.
Once the deposit is paid, some vendors (others may use a different process when booking) will send you a contract to sign.
This will serve to secure your wedding date and all of the details that were previously discussed with the vendor. Contracts are a great way to solidify any details and expectations that may have been spoken about during meetings, emails, video calls, phone calls, or direct messaging with vendors
Make sure you look closely over the details of the contract, and make sure any services that you discussed are listed out clearly.
Take note of when the rest of the amount you owe will be due (some vendors require the rest of the amount to be paid anywhere from 2 weeks to 30 days prior to your wedding date) and put it in your calendar.
Having a contract also makes sure that the price you are paying for the service is in writing, and won’t abnormally change when the rest of the amount is due to be paid.
Based off of a recent Facebook poll, one commenter said that in their experience, once a client gets a contract from a vendor, after the first couple of contracts that they go through with other vendors,“they don’t really read it.” Reading the details and fine print of a contract can help you make sure that your vendors are going to be providing the services that they said they would early on in your meetings.
Not reading over the contract could lead to missing out on some of the things that you were expecting from that vendor.
For example, say you and the caterer you booked agreed on adding plates, cups, and utensils for an additional price to be added to the estimate they gave you. You are sent the contract, yet it doesn’t specify anything about the addition of the plates, cups, and utensils that you spoke about previously.
If you take the time to fine tune the details in the contract like the example with a caterer here, you can make sure that nothing gets missed before everything is signed and set in writing. This helps eliminate the possibility of something not living up to your expectations on your wedding day.
Another detail to be mindful of is to assure that you have the correct contact information for the vendors you book with.
Making sure that you have correct email, phone number, address, etc. can be one of the most important ways to reach out and communicate with the vendor in the future, outside of the booking process.
It may be a good idea to create a folder to keep all of your contracts and receipts in. Have a digital copy as well as a printed version in the event you need it on hand, or it gets lost in an email.
“I had never received a signed contract back from you…Big yikes.”
My Personal Learning Experience
From personal experience, I can give you an example about why contracts need to be made a number one priority when booking. When I was planning my fall wedding for late September back in 2020, I had “booked” a photographer to capture our wedding day.
I sent the photographer the 50% deposit that we had agreed upon, and pushed the thought to the back of my mind thinking that everything was taken care of. It’s easy to push something to the back burner when you are in the midst of trying to plan your wedding.
I had tendencies to want to move on quickly to the next thing on the list just to try to get everything done.
Fast forward to about 3 weeks before our wedding date, I was at a planning meeting with the owners of the venue we were getting married at.
The owner was taking all of the information I had about our vendors such as names, phone numbers, the services they were providing, etc. so that they could make sure everything was coming into place with just a mere 21 days left until we would say “I do”.
Everything was going smoothly, until we came upon the subject of the photographer.
I explained to the venue owner that I hadn’t heard from the photographer that I paid the deposit for in months, and they encouraged me to reach out to see what was going on. I reached out to the photographer explaining that I hadn’t heard from them in a long time, and that I needed to know when the remaining 50% of the total I owed was supposed to be paid since the wedding was now only 3 weeks away.
Then the words came, “I had never received a signed contract back from you.”
The only problem was, as I went back through my emails thinking that I may have missed or overlooked the contract to sign, I could not find it anywhere I looked. Big yikes.
Not only did this mean that I was out of a photographer with only 3 weeks to find a new one (mind you, during one of the busiest times during the wedding season), but there was nothing I could do about the 50% deposit I had already made.
The deposit I made was paid through Venmo, so I couldn’t dispute the charge, as Venmo doesn’t offer buyer protection like a payment service such as PayPal does.
In hindsight, I was able to find a photographer and videographer just in time (check out our good friends at www.weddingphotographyandfilms.com), and we couldn’t have been happier with the quality of the work that they provided.
They immediately made sure that our expectations of each other were clear, and had every service they would be providing written out clearly in the contract that they had sent to me.
The communication between us was immensely different than my first go around with the other photographer, and they made sure to answer any questions I had pertaining to the contract.
However, this event was extremely stressful due to the time crunch I was facing and the loss of the deposit, which could have been entirely prevented by having a signed contract and effective communication in the first place.
If you are currently in the planning process, and you are not sure how to go about booking vendors, or how to make sure your contracts are valid and lay out essential details, we at Roanoke Wedding Planner offer a virtual wedding planning service to help with that.
We offer an hourly virtual meeting with our staff to get guidance or help with your wedding planning needs, whether that be help with timelines, general planning questions, or vendor negotiations like contracts (for more information about virtual wedding planning, visit us at https://www.roanokeweddingplanner.com/virtual-wedding-planner ).
As you can see, contracts and communication are vital to your wedding planning process.
Having open conversations and effective communication are definitely the best way for your planning to go as smoothly as possible.
Using these tools for booking and setting expectations early on, and learning the booking process before diving into it head on can be a great stress reliever, and a great way to ensure peace of mind throughout your entire booking process.
