When it comes to getting the cheapest price from wedding suppliers we are… hopeless. Our ability to strike a bargain is unfortunately somewhat hindered by the fact that, as wedding suppliers ourselves, we assume that everyone sets a price that is fair for the amount of time and work invested in the product. This being our own approach we naturally assume everyone follows the same principal and don’t feel it’s fair to try to haggle people down when we hate it being done to us. The trouble is, whilst most do set a fair price and don’t really leave any room for manouvre, there are some suppliers that expect a bit bit of bartering and more often than not start on a higher price than they expect to actually get precisely for this reason. It is these establishments that far too often see us coming and attempt to woo us with my most hated of approaches: the hard sell.
“How much is this?”
“Ah yes, is very niiiiicccceeee, very niiiiicccceeee no? For you I do special price because I like you very much, only one million pounds.”
“Erm… right… so erm… a million??!”
“That’s right, upstairs they tell me I must get two million but for you I do half price because you are so in love and I like your hair very much.”
“Right… well thank you, it’s just that a million pound for a bag of party poppers is just a little bit out of our budg…”
“Ah but I make these with my own hands, in fact I lost one of my hands after filling one with too much gun powder.”
“But you still have both your hands…”
“Ah, but I used to have three”.
Ok so this may be an extreme example (although not dissimilar from a family member’s recent attempts to buy bread in Morocco) but you get the gist anyway! Actually the hard sell just drives us mad and puts us off immediately, but the point is that if we think the work is good enough we’ll trust their evaluation. But why just go with the initial price if you think you might be able to bring it down? Surely it’s all about making the saving isn’t it?
Well no, sometimes it isn’t.
The thing with the wedding industry is that the majority of the suppliers involved are all small independent businesses. They think carefully about their prices because they do need your business and they also need your word of mouth advertising to help them to survive. Where a big company might not care so much about one individual customer and are more concerned about profits, a smaller company tends to be all about doing a good job and hopes to be to be paid fairly in return. Now that’s all very well and good, but why should you really care?
Mostly because you’re going to be agreeing a price well before the service is actually given to you. If you upset or annoy your supplier early on they will still do the job but maybe they won’t go the extra mile to make your day that little bit more special. Maybe they’ll finish working on your wedding day at 6pm instead of 2am. Maybe they won’t take the time to get to know you and tailor everything to your personality Maybe that handmade stationary will be what you basically asked for but lacks some of the creativity that that supplier might be inspired to put in if they felt you valued their work.
Like any industry there are exceptions, but from my experience generally the wedding industry is full of hard-working, lovely people who genuinely care about your day. Sometimes making a small saving isn’t as important as making someone feel valued. Sometimes making a saving means costing quality. Sometimes the bargain is not worth the price. Sometimes, just sometimes, the price is right.
