Choosing Your Wedding Vendors

Decisions, decisions, decisions!!! You just got engaged and you don’t even know where to start! Step 1: Take a deep breath. Ok…now. We are convinced that THE most important thing you can do to make your wedding day as magical as you always dreamed it would be is to get the right vendors on your team. Vendors can be anyone like your venue, photographer, dress boutique, and DJ all way to your cake, florals, decorator and everyone in between! When you make those big decisions correctly, your day will be just as amazing as you planned it! Here are a few tips from our experience that might help you get started.

Also, be sure to check out our tips for choosing your wedding photographer as well!

1. Examine your priorities.

This is great place to start. Make a list of vendors you need to make your day go smoothly and then prioritize them from your most important to least important. Maybe EVERYTHING is important to you and that’s ok, but you should be able to determine a list of most to least important. Once you have done that, now you know where to start! For example, our brides normally book their venue first and then photographers are usually second on the list. We don’t say that to be self-serving at all. There are plenty of people who put photography much lower on their list. And that’s ok! But the couples who book US usually have photography pretty high on the list! So in this example, you would find your gorgeous venue, book the date, and then find your photographer and book them next. When you have your priorities lined up, it’s easy to see what to do next! Sometimes that can also help you budget because you know where to spend the most money: on the things that are most important to you!

2. Filter advice from friends

One great way to find your wedding vendors is to ask your married friends who they used! Maybe they had a great experience. And maybe they had a bad experience. Well that is helpful to know! On the other hand, just because someone else had a great experience doesn’t mean their favorites are the best choice of vendor for you. Maybe that seems counterintuitive, but here’s why it makes sense. Every wedding is different. Your wedding is your wedding (no kidding, right?). Your personality may be very different from the person giving you advice and while they may have had a great experience, maybe you won’t mesh with the venue or coordinator or photographer that they are recommending. Now, chances are, their friendly advice is great. But just to make sure their advice is best for you, see the next tip!

3. In-person. In-person. In-person.

This is a big big deal! When you start getting down to some of the lower portions of your priority list, this may not apply. But when you are nailing down your top people who are going to be helping you along this amazing journey, you really need to meet with them. Why is this important? Well, the way we see it, these are going to be some really important people in your life for the next 6 months or so. Why wouldn’t you want to get to know the people you are entrusting the most important day of your life to? Your coordinator. Your photographers. Your DJ. Your minister. Your florist. These are the people making it happen. Not to mention, you are going to be spending a lot of time with them. Make sure you like them! Make sure they will make it a fun process for you. We can’t stress this enough!!

4. When you know, you know.

Isn’t that what they always say about finding THE wedding dress? “You’ll know.” The same applies to all of your vendors. We can’t tell you how many times we have had couples come and meet with us and then contact us and say that after they met with us in person they “just knew.” They knew they wanted us to be their photographers. And the same is true with other vendors as well. So many times, you will just know. It’s amazing when that happens! We give our couples some advice when they feel overwhelmed about all of the decisions they have to make. It’s great advice that we got from our realtor when we were looking for our first house and we asked when was the right time to put an offer on a house. He said, “When you get that feeling that this is the one for you, don’t wait. When you know, you know.” That advice has proven true time and time again for us and for our couples. We know how big these decisions are, but take it from us, when you know, you know! Go for it!

You will get plenty of advice along the way, but this is our two cents based on our experiences. We wish you and your fiance the best as you begin this amazing journey! And if you love our work, we would love to be a part of it! You can get in touch with us on our contact page here. Let’s get to it! Best of luck to you!