I have been in the event industry for 20 years with a focus on the wedding industry for the past 10 years. During that time I have toured over 800 wedding venues and worked with hundreds of wedding industry professionals and engaged couples. I have experienced wedding industry chaos in so many different forms but it never fails, just when you think you’ve seen it all….someone calls with another wild issue and that is why I love the wedding industry! It’s NEVER boring! Wedding venue owners have the best opportunity to help engaged couples avoid wedding scams from shady vendors. Wedding venue owners with solid wedding vendor resources to offer their couples are providing one of the best values a business can offer a client! Wedding venue owners who don’t connect with vendors, don’t know much about the local vendors and don’t offer any guidance to their couples, are leaving couples at risk. So, engaged couples, if you are reading this, make sure you choose a venue that invests in their vendor relationships and looks out for you by providing vetted and screened wedding vendor lists and referrals. When it comes to wedding bargains and scams, have you experienced a scam? Share it with me in the comments section so we can help engaged couples avoid these problems.
PHOTO BIZ BURNOUT – When it comes to wedding scams, discount deals come up frequently. One example I dealt with directly was a photographer we’ll call Sam. Sam was starting a new business and eager to book clients. So, she offered full wedding photography packages for $500. This is extremely low, depending on where you live and the services you need, expect to spend $1500 to $8000 or more on quality wedding photography services. There is a saying in the wedding industry, “It’s not the images and the artistry you are paying for, its the editing.” Some photographers spend as much as 80 hours editing one wedding. If our photographer Sam spends 80 hours of work on your wedding photography needs from beginning to end, that’s $250 a week salary. AND if Sam has booked one wedding a week but each wedding is two weeks worth of work, you can start to see how this attempt to get business rolling in quickly gets out of control. Sam shared her low rates in Facebook wedding groups creating a frenzy of budget brides wanting to book with her. Suddenly she had tons of bookings but could not properly edit the images and could not afford to hire help. Sam wasn’t making enough money to pay her bills and yet she was working constantly. Sam quickly realized she had created a terrible problem and did not know how to fix it. Why is this a scam and not just a poorly managed business? The scam comes into play when Sam realized she could not fulfil her contractual obligations and continued to take fees from unsuspecting couples. She knew should was under water and processed payments for at least 8 additional couples before sending emails to clients informing them she had gone out of business. At first she promised to wrap up the editing and eventually get the images out. But weeks turned into months and communication stopped. There were lots of couples who claim they never received edited images.
TILL DEATH DO WE PART – The DJ who faked his own death. True story, you can Google the news article it happened in Virginia. This DJ had a too good to be true deal to offer, I can’t recall for sure but I believe it was something like $450 for the a full service wedding dj package. FYI depending on your market, expect to invest about $1200 to $3500 for a quality, reputable, trustworthy, experienced DJ. This particular DJ (similar to the photo booth) offered an insanely low fee but the catch was you had to pay the entire fee at the contract signing. This made it easy for him to get cash in his account. His clever idea was to spread a rumor that he had died, I believe he emailed clients claiming the email was sent by someone else using his email to send notice that he had died and would not be at their wedding. Wedding clients didn’t buy and showed up at his apartment demanding answers and the roommate spilled the tea. This particular DJ actually did face legal consequences but the wedding couples still had to go through all this unnecessary stress. NO ONE LIKES IT WHEN I SAY THIS….invest in reputable wedding professionals, value their services and you won’t likely deal with these issues. Hunt for an unrealistic bargain and you just may end up paying double in the end.
FAST FOOD COMBOS COST MORE THAN THIS CATERER – A similar issue happened with a catering business out of Richmond. This was a caterer operating out of his home and again, offering insanely low fees. For example, one wedding contract total was $800 for 100 guests! He also used Facebook wedding groups to promote his too good to be true pricing and booked lots of budget brides. One day I got a call from an upset bride letting me know that this caterer no showed a wedding and that couple had outed him in the same wedding Facebook groups where he had promoted his catering. The caterer did not call or provide any notice that he would not be showing up. Brides who had booked that caterer became panicked and began calling, emailing, messaging the caterer but no one was able to get ahold of him and he was not returning calls. I offered to help the couple find another caterer but she wanted the same pricing. I explained that I don’t know any reputable caterers offering fees that low. Most reputable budget catering will start around $25 per person. For 100 guests that would be about $2500 for a basic menu, that would not include alcohol, linens, dinnerware, staffing! So, maybe this caterer was offering a drop off disposable buffet set up with disposable chafing dishes and paper plates, no staffing. Even then the cost of feeding 100 guests would be $1800 to $2500. When I explained this to the bride she became irate with me for making her feel bad about having a small budget. This was not my intention. I have worked with all types of brides and all types of budgets. I understand that some couples have a small budget and feel strongly that not matter your budget you can have a great wedding, when you have reasonable expectations. In total I recall about 4 weddings where this caterer did not show up. He didn’t have a business license, website and very little information on who he actually was. This is a big issue, all this caterer would have to do to start taking bookings again is to just create a new website, new social media, under a new name!
PHOTO BOOTH BETRAYAL – There is one wedding search site known for finding the cheapest wedding pros, I won’t mention it hear but many of you know which one I am referred to. You can search photo booth and hundreds of listings will come up. I find this odd because there are only a handful of legit photo booth companies in most markets. Sometimes DJ’s or photographers will offer a photo booth package but for the most part there are limited stand alone photo booth companies. I did one search on this website and 300 results came up for a suburb an hour outside of the Washington DC market. Based on my experience, even in a large city there will usually not be more that 15 reputable photo booth businesses. So when I got yet another frantic call from a couple asking for help with their photo booth they found on that cheap wedding pros site, I was not surprised. It was one week before their wedding and the photo booth company texted them saying she went out of business and was not coming to their wedding. The couple was offered a too good to be true fee of $300! Most reputable companies will charge around $800 to $1200 for the photo booth. Sometime you can find one for $600. This is how the scam works, the photo booth company can charge a low fee because they were never going to come to the wedding. The fee is so low that the photo booth scammer says, “Its only $300 but you have to pay the entire fee up front”. I got all the information I could from the couple and found the photo booth still on Facebook. So I sent a private message claiming to be looking for a photo booth for a corporate event, she responded right away that she would be able to book my event. She had not gone out of business, she never was a business. She had no website, just a Facebook page and a cell phone number that I could not link to any other businesses. The couple felt embarrassed about choosing a too good to be true deal and while they were angry, they decided not to do anything about it. Which is another smart part of this scam, if you charge a small enough fee you might not have someone come after you. This is a common scam and really, kind of easy. If a scammer has no intention of showing up to your wedding, they can offer you any too good to be price because they are never going to show up, they don’t have to purchase equipment or pay for staffing. ‘
Use These Tips To Avoid Scams!
- Ask vendors for a list of the last 5 wedding venues they have provided services at and the dates! You can call those venues and ask if there have been any issues. This is far more reliable than looking at reviews. Scammers always have friends & family that can write up a review.
- Ask vendors how many recommended wedding vendor lists they are featured on. If you are serious about your career in the wedding industry you have most likely worked very hard to earn the trust of local wedding venues. So, your vendor should be on at least a couple of those lists. Once they give you a list of venues where they are a preferred/recommended vendor, pull up those websites. Most often their vendor lists are published and you can verify this yourself.
- Make sure they are licensed and insured. Depending on the state, many vendors will have a business license, if they don’t have a business license they should at the minimum have business insurance. Any vendor complaining about having a license and insurance is not a vendor I would trust. **Disagree, share your comments!
- Don’t use the big wedding websites to find your venues and vendors! Those national sites are charging wedding venues and vendors a fortune and most often they do not vet or screen anyone. Instead, use local wedding associations, wedding networks and the venue preferred vendor lists. If you think weddings are too costly, you can place some of the blame on the cost of wedding website advertising. The more you use those big wedding websites, they more they charge small business owners.
- Ask your wedding venues if they charge kickbacks or fees for listing the vendors. This diminishes any true referral value, its unethical and in my opinion its just a terrible way for a venue to add a little extra revenue. There is so much more to be said about this but I will save that for another blog.
- Make sure the vendors have a website and established Business profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest. The more time and energy they have invested in building up their social media and online presence, the more likely they are to protect their reputation by honoring their professional obligations.
- There are reputable wedding vendors for all types of REASONABLE budgets! When you buy a designer bag from the trunk of a car at a rest stop, you can’t complain when it smells up your car & the bottom falls out. If you don’t really value a particular wedding service then just leave it off your list! Don’t call reputable vendors and beat them up on pricing and don’t expect disreputable vendors with unrealistic pricing them to be as good as a reputable vendor. REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS is the key to a wonderful experience for everyone involved.
- Check out the local wedding shows, bridal shows, wedding expos and wedding open houses in your area. You can see how vendors have set up their vendor space, how professional they are and ask about fees and sometimes vendors will offer a special promotion at these events. Click here to find some reputable wedding shows all over the country. If you know of a wedding show that should be listed, please let me now, didi@weddingvenueowners.com.
- Vendor to vendor referrals, if you have a great wedding planner they will help you find reputable, trustworthy vendors. However, often couples on a tight budget will not hire a planner. This is such a vital role for any wedding but if you are determined to leave this out of your budget then ask your vendors for recommendations.
- I know that new vendors might think these suggestions leave them out. New businesses can be incredible to work with and bring innovative new services and creativity to the wedding industry. So, if they don’t have established social media, that’s ok, they should have a professional website with contact information. If they are not yet on vendor lists, no problem. They can show their professional dedication by having a business license and insurance.
I hope you found this information helpful. I want to make sure that all those who read this understand that a majority of the wedding vendors you meet work so hard to provide professional services and exceed expectation. The best local wedding professionals take their role at your wedding so seriously and want to exceed your expectations. For couples out there who are determined to hire the cheapest option, I sincerely wish you the best. I understand what it’s like to be in a financial hardship. I hope that this article will at least help you avoid those who might target couples on a budget.
