Making your dream wedding happen can be quite a challenge! You have to plan a venue, entertainment, documentation, and decorations for 200 of your closest friends and family on the most important day of your life! How do you make sure that you hire the right wedding professionals to make this happen? We created this list of 4 questions that you must ask each vendor before you book to create your wedding dream team!
A wedding providers’ response to this question can tell you a lot about their level of expertise. If your vendor has only provided services for weddings, this may be a sign that they are not on the forefront of their industry. For instance, if a DJ has provided their services predominantly for bars and fire hall weddings, they may not have the etiquette and range of services you are looking for at your lavish country club wedding.
A DJ that has entertained Fortune 100 companies with large budgets and high expectations will be able to cater to a more affluent crowd and provide a wider range of solutions for your dream wedding. Even if you book one of their smaller packages, you can feel confident that your wedding is well within their abilities, even if their cost is only marginally higher than the DJ with less experience.
At Runaway Records Productions, we provide the same personnel and equipment from our $100k audio/visual events for your wedding! We are poised to meet and exceed the incredibly high expectations of our largest clients and we approach every wedding we perform with the same vigor and passion. That being said, it is much easier for us to produce an amazing wedding for 250 people than it is for us to provide sound, video, and photography for 2,000 people in our larger conferences. You can trust that a company like Runaway Records has the ability to provide a wedding experience that other companies in the wedding market simply cannot.
Weddings can be one of the most expensive days of your life! Everyone wants to know how much their service providers are going to cost so that they can remain within their budget. Remember, price is almost always directly related to the experience, equipment, and quality of services offered by each vendor. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
Take the time to explain your wedding vision with each wedding professional you speak with. Before giving a price, your vendor should be able to ask you all of the relevant questions that go into providing their service. If your wedding professional is not asking information about your wedding location, timeline, and your overall expectations, it is likely that they do not have the experience that you are looking for in a qualified vendor. After understanding exactly what you are looking for, the service professional should be able to provide you a quote in writing that specifies exactly what they are providing and how much it will cost.
Beware of shopping for the cheapest wedding professional! Often times, these options are the “weekend warriors” of the industry, concerned with making a little extra money on the weekends, not providing amazing wedding services. Real wedding professionals have heard countless stories about the colleague from work (hence “weekend warrior”) who backed out of the wedding just days before the big day. We get at least two desperate phone calls per year the week of someone’s wedding who hired an unqualified vendor and needs a real wedding professional to make their day happen.
Photo booths are a great example of getting what you pay for. Many companies now provide photo booths in addition to their main service; these are often low quality imitations of the real thing and should not be confused with a quality photo booth provider.
Photo booth provider “A” offers their booth with unlimited prints for 5 hours for $500. On your wedding day, the photo booth shows up with a webcam, a consumer inkjet printer, and the booth attendant spends more time fixing their equipment than entertaining your guests. The pictures look terrible, the prints are even worse, and you feel like you have wasted your money.
Photo booth provider “B” offers their booth with unlimited prints for 5 hours for $1,000. On your wedding day, the photo booth is set up when you arrive, the professional DSLR camera takes excellent pictures, their printer makes lab quality photo strips, and you receive compliments on how much fun the photo booth was 2 years after your wedding.
When shopping for your wedding products and services, be concerned with value, not price.
If your vendor lets your know that they do not provide their clients with a contract, find another service provider! Contracts are designed to protect both the wedding professional and the wedding client. You want to have a guarantee of services you will be receiving and your provider should want a guarantee of expectations they will be providing you with. Any wedding professional that does not have a wedding contract with their clients is taking money without any repercussion if they do not deliver what they promised on your wedding day. Don’t take any chances, only hire wedding professionals that provide their customers with contracts!
You should only hire service professionals that carry liability insurance in the unfortunate event that an accident occurs at your wedding. Vendors that care about their business and clients will carry policies meeting or exceeding 1 million dollars of coverage. Make sure to have their insurance company mail, fax, or email a copy of their policy. Many “fly by night vendors” will purchase insurance, receive proof of insurance, and cancel their policy so that they can “show proof” of insurance without actually having it. Receiving a copy of their policy from the insurance company guarantees you that your vendor is actually covered!
Asking these 4 simple questions will help you narrow down your choice in wedding vendors and keep the unqualified “professionals” away from your big day! At Runaway Records Productions, we will always take the time to answer your questions and learn your dream wedding vision and your wedding vendors should too!
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