Part II of the Cranky Bride Chronicles: what should I expect from my wedding vendors?

Following on from my moderately successful post on guest ettiquette, I present my next blog post as a cranky bride, where I will be covering expectations from wedding vendors. This one will be a bit of a doozy but I promise it is worth the read, as I can give you my unique insight as both a bride and a wedding vendor myself.

As a relatively ecclectic pair, my fiancé and I spent a lot of time looking into all of the aspects of our upcoming wedding before making any major decisions and here are the top things that we expected from our potential vendors.

1. Punctual Replies

This really sounds like it should be a common sense thing but honestly after the amount of enquiries I sent out I can tell you how much time I spent waiting for people to get back to me. In Perth particularly, peak wedding season is between October and May. We got engaged in early November 2015 and spent a week and a bit on a previously planned holiday before getting stuck into wedding planning.

During peak season please allow businesses time to get back to you! On average as I was sending enquiries in peak season a reasonable amount of time for me to wait was 2 weeks. I am also possibly more patient then most, however there were multiple businesses that took between 4 and 8 weeks to respond. This is far too long.

2. Professionalism

This one is a big one! Some of us brides have been known to be a little demanding and sometimes even difficult. If you have enquired with a quality vendor or even booked a quality vendor and you are not being realistic you should expect professionalism. From a brides perspective, I expect my vendors to be punctual, and be professional in their communication as well as their presentation.

As a vendor working with other vendors for your big day, I expect to be able to work with YOUR chosen team and that we all be respectful of each other's needs. This in my case is usually interacting with the other hair stylist/makeup artist and also the photographer, ensuring they work together with me to get you ready for your big day on time!

3. Terms and Conditions

As a bride you should expect to receive terms and conditions from your vendors. What this means is that they have covered themselves and you in case of anything happening. I highly suggest you read through them properly as it will generally cover everything from what to do in case of them not being able to make it etc and also what they expect from you.

If you do not receive these please think about it before you book with your vendor. As a hair and makeup artist I hear lots of stories from brides who have booked with artists who don't have terms and conditions or have under-quoted and have found that they need to replace their artist weeks, sometimes even days before the wedding.

4. Quality

Please ensure you do your research! Look at their previous work, ask for recommendations from other brides. I can not stress this enough. If you aren't sure ask to see further work, with social media so accessible these days it shouldn't be hard to look through vendors work and make decisions for quality vendors for your big day.

If you have a particular vendor in mind enquire early as vendors in high demand can book out 12+ months in advance, this is particularly the case with photographers, makeup artists and hair stylists so please keep that in mind.

5. Follow through

This one is feeling like a common sense thing but if your vendor promises to do something they should follow through with it.

As a bride when I was promised something especially from the vendors already briefly touched on in point 1, if I had any sort of gut feeling I'd have issues I wrote down what was promised on what date and when it was promised by. This gave me a visual representation of when to let it go, that these vendors did not deserve my cash.

May your wedding planning be stressfree!