Wedding venue owners with strong vendor relationships and a savvy vendor management program consistently have better reviews, higher quality leads & lead conversion, better SEO, better social media marketing content & are more likely to be profitable. I travel the country visiting wedding venues and learning the best strategies for success directly from the most successful wedding venues. Join me on an upcoming Wedding Venue Owners Working Vacation! One thing successful venue owners have in common, they have an effective vendor management system. You cannot be accidentally successful with your vendor relationships. You must have a structured plan in place defining who your recommended or preferred vendors are, the policies surrounding your vendor program and what your expectations are when it comes to your vendor partners. These Wedding Vendors Should NOT Be on Your Recommended Vendor List – as you read along please remember, I would love to hear your thoughts & get your feedback in the comments section at the end of this article!
Who should NOT be added to your vendor lists? Vendors who will not develop a mutually beneficial partnership with you, should not benefit from your vendor partner program. Period. Wedding venues create jobs, they create opportunities, they generate revenue for the local wedding economy. Wedding venues need & deserve more support from their wedding industry, their venue colleagues, local tourism and the local business community in general. This deserves more explanation, in another blog post. For all that our wedding venues provide, it is not too much to ask your vendor partners develop a working relationship that is mutually beneficial.
These Wedding Vendors Should NOT Be On Your Recommended Vendor List:
- Vendors that don’t have a website: Every vendor who works with you should have a professional website (on brand) with your venue linked on their site. Visibility is important, backlinks are important. This is a basic, and in my opinion, non negotiable term. Well established websites & social media help establish trust, brand and confidence. There are a lot of scammers out there, little to no online presence is a red flag. Additionally, local vendors who invest in their online presence deserve your support. They are creating valuable awareness for the local wedding industry.
- Vendors without a strong social media presence: Each vendor you promote actively on your recommended or preferred list should have professional, updated, on brand social media accounts. They should be sharing your content, checking in when they’re at your venue and tagging you in EVERY post they share of an event from your venue. You should be able to easily find your vendors social media accounts when you want to share their content, tag or promote their services. I am going to dive a little deeper here. What type of impression are you giving your engaged couples when you provide vendors contact information and the couple can’t find them online or when they do find them, their pages are outdated and unprofessional. This is a direct reflection of your brand! In my opinion, vendors without websites and social media are putting all the online workload & expense on the venue. The venue needs online support from their partners. Most venues are building backlinks to improve their SEO. Most wedding venues are providing backlinks and valuable SEO support to their vendors but getting none of that support in return. Most venues want blogs written about their venue. Wedding venue websites and social media need promotional support from their vendor partners. I can already hear the angry responses, “Well I am an outstanding wedding vendor, providing the best service in all the land and I don’t need a website or social media. I have been booking clients without any of that.” Correct, thanks to venue owners who refer you and invest heavily in their online sales tools. They need your support in creating online exposure for the locally owned wedding venues. **The big corporate wedding factories buying up venues and dominating local markets are far more likely to enforce kickbacks & other toxic policies. Support your local wedding venue owners. One final thing here, there are so many amazing vendors who work hard on their website, social media and SEO. These vendors deserve an advantage over those who don’t. It may be time for a vendor review and purge.
- Vendors who refuse to get event liability insurance: Wedding venue owners have more risk than most wedding industry businesses. You need to be able to depend on your vendors to help you reduce risks, not add to them. Find reputable wedding specific insurance options in the Wedding Venue Owners & Management Community.
- Photographers who will not provide you with content. Do NOT attempt to force photographers to provide content, or create a policy that makes demands on photographers. Build trusting relationships with on brand, talented photographers who are willing to share content. Photographers who do share their work should be provided with extra exposure, increased opportunity to connect with your booked couples and tons of online appreciation (blogs, links, features). Wedding venues need beautiful content, many venue owners fail to develop strong photographer relationships and their bookings struggle along with the quality of leads. Venues live and die by the value of their content. Photographers who refuse to communicate with you to develop a clear agreement on wedding content, OFF THE LIST!
- Vendors who refuse to follow your venue policy: If you do not have clear policies for your vendors then they have no idea how to be a great vendor partner for you. I see lots of posts in the Wedding Venue Owners & Management Community where vendors are venting about venue violations committed by vendors. Often vendors have no idea that you don’t allow parking in certain areas or that you want vendors to use a certain entrance, unless you inform them. You should be getting vendor lists for each wedding. You should be contacting those vendors at least 30 days prior to the wedding to welcome them to your venue and educate them on everything they need to know when working at your venue.
- Vendors who do not have their own equipment: vendors who arrive to an event unprepared or unable to set up without items from you. Not only is this unprofessional it could increase your risk & liability. If a vendor asks you for a ladder to put up floral arrangements for example and they fall off the ladder…. or if you provide a table to a DJ and they are not used to that type of table so they don’t lock the table legs in place and when they put their very expensive equipment on the table it falls causing hundreds maybe thousands of dollars in damage…. what happens next? Could be a law suit or at the very least accusations, demands and unnecessary stress. **”All vendors working a wedding at (venue) agree to provide all necessary equipment for their set up and service. Vendors will not be able to use any venue equipment, tools, devices for their set up. Please arrive prepared or be prepared to visit the Home Depop approximately 2.5 mi from our venue.”
- Vendors who do not provide contracts to clients: I debated adding this because of course, no one still does this, but then I spoke to a colleague last week who once again found out a photo booth business in her town was taking deposits without a contract. This is 2005 behavior.
- Vendors who threaten wedding venue owners or bad review a wedding venue: this happens so often and its is usually because the venue was enforcing a policy the vendor does not like. Venues are threatened often by unprofessional vendors. Threats of slandering the venue and sometimes physical threats. Vendors who are unprofessional or create unnecessary risks to the safety of the venue management are a risk to your clients and our local wedding communities.
- Vendors who violate their clients contracts. Those of you who do not closely manage and monitor your vendor relationship most often have no idea when a vendor is violating contracts. I just researched the vendors on one of my consulting clients lists, this vendor has so many recent bad reviews for accepting fees and no showing weddings! If you provide your couples with a recommend vendor list, make sure you are checking the vendors review, website and social media content for potential issues or red flags.
- Vendors who no show a wedding without a back up plan: life happens, you could get sick or have a death in the family, no matter what, every wedding industry pro should have a solid back up plan.
- In an upcoming article I will address how to handle your banned vendor list, how to properly remove vendors from your recommended list, what to do if couples want to hire a banned vendor and how to avoid the need to do so with outstanding venue to vendor communication programs.
The most successful wedding venues have a strong working relationship with the best, most reputable vendors in their area. The most success Wedding Venue Owners reward, celebrate & acknowledge the professional hard working vendors in their market. One question that comes up so often in the Wedding Venue Owners & Management Community is, “How much should we charge vendors to refer them, should we charge kickbacks.” This deserves its own blog and I will be publishing one shortly. Charging vendors a fee for referring them is a disaster. This is not how you treat the best wedding professionals in your market. The best wedding vendors make your venue shine! They reduce your work load, they are partners in providing the best experiences for your couples. If you start charging a fee simply for having vendors on your recommended list, you will absolutely lose the best vendors and they may never come back. I will dive deeper into this topic in an upcoming article, I welcome your thoughts and feed back. If you feel strongly about this topic, I would love to quote you in the upcoming article. Leave your comments in the section below.
Thank you so much for stopping by this blog. I hope you found this informative and helpful as you develop your wedding vendor management system. If you need help with wedding vendor agreements and policies, please contact didi@weddingvenueowners.com. I provide wedding venue consulting all over the country and have helped hundreds of venue owners develop their policies and procedures. If you have feedback on this topic please share your comments. If you would like to provide your expertise on this topic or any other wedding venue owner topics, please email didi@weddingvenueowners.com. I would love to create a video featuring your advice, feedback and insight.
Join the Wedding Venue Owners & Management Community Group on Facebook. Find videos on my Youtube channel. You can find me on TikTok and Instagram. Tag me in your social media comments about this topic. Join a Wedding Venue Owners Working Vacation, the best strategies for success come from your successful wedding venue colleagues. So, join a Wedding Venue Owners Working Vacation where we will travel to a gorgeous city, tour wedding venue and learn the best strategies for wedding venue success! Didi@weddingvenueowners.com
