Tuesday

Why are we so expensive?

Wedding couples often ask me why wedding vendors are so expensive?
Why are they charging for this and that? Can't they see that we are young and don't have a lot of money to pay for 350 guests?

Those three questions carry a lot of weight and I will try to address a few here.
Why are wedding vendors so expensive as opposed to what...non-wedding vendors?
Vendors (whether they are working weddings or not) are a varied lot. You will find some good and you will find some not so good. Since they are people, they will all be different to some degree. For the most part, vendors are good and honest, hard working businesses trying to make a living just like the cashier at McDonald's. Yes, we might charge a bit more for our services, but we do not have a corporate office handling our advertising for us, so we have to part with hard earned dollars to corporate giants like newspapers and magazines who do have money to burn so that we can get our names out to the public; out to where our buyers are. We have overhead; equipment to purchase and update. You want the latest and greatest, so we have to buy the latest and the greatest in order to offer it to you. You want us to appear professional; we need to pay for an office, a secretary, an answering service, nice clothes, furniture to sit on, and business stationary to hand to you so that you will remember to call us back.

We charge for this and that because you ask us to throw in extras without expecting to pay for them. We have school expenses for our children, groceries to buy, mortgages to pay for, business loans, school loans, car payments, and so on. We have to buy insurance for ourselves, our homes, our families and our businesses. We have expenses just like you, so please don't grumble too much when we ask for an extra $30.00 for a delivery service when gas to deliver your service costs us an extra $50.00 more than a year ago.

We realize that you are young and just starting out, so please forgive us when we don't understand why you are upset when we charge an extra $100.00 for the $300.00 services that you would like us to throw in for free. After all, the stretch Hummer Limousine that you have hired for the 20 minute ride from the ceremony to the reception costs more than the services that you have hired us for over 6 hours. Forgive us if we have a slightly skewed look when you ask us to help you decorate your venue as a bonus when your favors for the 350 people that you have invited (because your parents HAVE to invite the co-workers that you have never met) are swept away at the end of the evening by the janitors even though they cost more than our services and we have worked with you for over 5 months!

Do I sound bitter? I don't mean to, just trying to put things in perspective. We do weddings because we love to. We are trying to make a living, offering you the very best that we can at a price that is fair for our services. If we say no, it is probably because we have mortgage payments to make and can't seem to understand why you would get upset while you are drinking down another choco-latte from Starbucks that costs more than our entire family breakfast that morning.

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