The Ideal Order to Book Your Wedding Vendors In
When you're finally ready to start planning your wedding, it can feel daunting trying to determine how to get started. Booking your wedding vendors is a logical first step. After all, having your vendor team in place is an important milestone when it comes to wedding planning. But how do you start to book your wedding vendors? As experienced wedding planners, we're here to help!
Tips for Booking Wedding Vendors
Make sure you have a vision for the overall experience.
What is the 'why' to your wedding? How do you want guests to feel? I touch on this in a blog post I wrote for Lovely Ever After. You need to solidify what kind of wedding vendors you need to contribute to the overall guest experience that you want to create.
Prioritize your bookings based on your budget & preferences.
Write down a list of all the wedding vendor types you will need. Put them in order of most important to least, based on what's important to you and the overall guest experience you want. We send the list below to all our planning clients as a guiding basis when we begin the vendor search:
· Venue / Location
· Food
· Drink
· Event Design
· Photography
· Videography
· Stationery & Paper Goods
· Lodging
· Transportation
· JP / Officiant (Ceremony experience)
· Entertainment
· Beauty
This is just a starting point! As you can see, some of these encompass multiple elements. Food and drink will include your cocktail hour food, dinner, bartending, and desserts. Event design will include florals, linens, event equipment rentals, lighting, drapery, balloons, etc. Entertainment can be your band, DJ, roaming magician, photo booth, etc. If there's a particular element that you know is important to you, add that specific one on your list. So, if you're dying to have a snow-white bounce house to let out your inner child, make sure it’s on your list.
Keep your rankings handy as you allocate your budget and make vendor decisions.
Now, you're ready to start your vendor search and confirm bookings!
The Ideal Order to Book Your Wedding Vendors In
When it comes to booking your wedding vendors, here’s what we recommend.
Start with your essentials
Surely, you'll need a place for your guests to go and food to eat. Your venue and catering will naturally be your biggest expenses. It can easily eat up to 50% of your budget. However, if creating incredible design and an ultimate guest experience is important to you, your combined venue and food/drink cost shouldn't use up more than 35% of your budget.
This is also when you should hire your wedding planner - especially if design and the guest experience are important to you, which can be between 5-15% of your budget, depending on the type of planning services you're looking to book and the scope of your wedding.
If you're hosting a tented event and bringing in outside rentals for everything, this is also the time to determine what items you need, and find a rental company to make it happen. Start, at least, with your tent and furniture, and get a rough estimate on glassware/food vessels/silverware (your caterer can help you with quantities once you book them). It's easier to decrease the quantity than it is to increase, so guess high if you have to.
Hire the wedding vendors that book up quickly
Some vendors provide a service that allows them to be a part of multiple weddings in a single weekend or even in a single day. But for those who can't, you should book them as early as possible. Your photographer, videographer, entertainment, beauty team, and officiant might be part of this group, especially if you know who you want to work with right off the bat. This is when your list will be important. Start with the ones that are most important to you and work your way down.
Pick your design team
By now, you hopefully have an idea of the type of design you're aiming for. Maybe it's classic and elegant, or a boho maximalist. Either way, there are design vendors that have their own styles and will be a great fit for the feeling you want to create, even if you're not exactly sure what that might look like. Consider what type of vendors you need to make that happen and get them booked ASAP. Florals, linens, specialty furniture, lighting, draping, custom installations/builds, custom signage or place cards, and even your stationery. These are what will really determine the guest experience, and you'll need a team to bring it to life, no matter what it looks like.
Don't forget your guests
If your guests are coming in from out of town, you'll likely need a room block and/or transportation. Don't wait until the last minute for these! This is also a great time to book any vendors/services you need for the smaller items you plan on having, like favors, place cards, simple signage, gift bags, guest book, etc.
You'll notice that we didn't include every possible vendor here, and that's because that list is exhaustive and truly custom to every wedding and couple. If you need any guidance when it comes to booking your vendors, schedule a consultation with us, and we'll dive deep into your vision and establish a clear path!