Our wedding was super DIY and used a lot of volunteers from friends and family, so many of the wedding roles were their wedding gifts rather than something we paid for. Of the things we paid for, I think we tipped the caterer, the bartenders, the photographer, the videographer (who ended up giving us a shitty ass video and didn’t earn their tip), and the day-of coordinator (we didn’t employ a planner, but we did hire someone to coordinate the various paid roles on the day of, so that we and family and friends could focus on enjoying the wedding). The wedding industrial complex does suck, and about the only way around it is to have talented friends and family who like to help. Even then, you’ll still have to end up paying through the nose for things, so focus on making things easy and pleasant rather than picture perfect. You should hopefully enjoy your wedding. I certainly enjoyed mine.
They’re included in the flat rate we paid, but they also suggested tipping them. My understanding is that if they work eight hours for a five hour event, we’re paying the servers approximately $35/hr out of the flat rate and the bartenders more like $40-45/hr.
Including if they owned the business? I think our florist, videographer, and photographer all own the business.
This is good advice for my general happiness, probably, but I just can’t let it slide if I’m getting ripped off. Like I want everyone to be paid fairly for their work. I want the servers and bartenders to make at least what they’d make working a decent restaurant or bar for a weekend night. But I can’t smile while being extorted, I don’t have it in me.
Did you tip the ones that own the businesses too? Most of our vendors do.
Our day-of coordinator works directly for the venue on a salary with a 401k and all, but they suggested a $300 tip. I feel like at some point they just realized that since everyone only does it once, nobody knows who is actually working for tips, so they just ask for a bunch and everyone winces and pays it and says it is what it is.
The photographer was independent, and also a friend who gave us a deal. We tipped to be nice and to pay somewhere between the discount and her going rate. Similar for the videographer, but he was a referral from the photographer and not someone we knew personally. The caterer had servers who’d need to be tipped out. Coordinater was independent, but I’m not sure of the bartenders. She hired them, so we tipped.
I got married young, had a large wedding, and our parents paid for everything. So I don’t really know the answer to this. But if we hadn’t gotten married young and were paying for it ourselves, we would have had a super small and casual wedding so we wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this.
Our photographer was also a friend and I hugely regretted it. He was kind of a big time photographer who felt and acted he was doing us an enormous favor, although we still paid him a tidy sum imo. I wished we’d just hired somebody we could direct more easily.
When I was in college someone in one class used the term “marital-industrial complex” to describe the wedding industry and I lost it.
That makes a lot of sense. I considered asking a friend who’s invited who has officiated a couple weddings to do it for us, but decided I wanted my friends to just focus on having fun. We found a budget level up and comer and we’re going to talk to him in advance in detail and hope he does a good job. Saved like $1,000 on the high end quotes and a few hundred on the low end quotes, so hopefully he comes through.
If he fucks up, I guess we just have to all get drunk enough to either find it funny or forget about it.
Yeah that’s a kinda stressful spot to be in given lot of people going to have opinions. Although obviously nice after the fact to not have had to pay for whole thing.
Not sure if still an option now but at least when I got married it was still possible to find pretty decent venues that don’t have their own required vendors so you could just hire whatever cater/food trucks/etc you wanted for way cheaper
Right, and it’s kind of awkward on multiple levels because they thought they were giving us enough of a budget for an above average wedding, but they gave us enough for about 2/3 of an average wedding. Now, we’re grateful either way, but they are definitely visualizing an above average outcome here so we’re chipping in some and budget shopping super hard and DIYing a lot. We’re also flying her family in and paying their accommodations out of pocket, so it’s a lot all at once for a currently single income household.
We’re super stressed that it’s going to look cheap or that we’re going to not pull it off, and trying not to show them the stress because we don’t want them to feel pressured to give us more money or to think we’re not thankful, but then every now and then we just lose our shit because that’s how planning a wedding goes. Seems like losing your shit at escalating frequency approaching the big day is just a time honored part of the tradition.
Some yes, but not food. No outside food allowed, unless you pay them for the privilege of bringing it onto their property. Only thing we can bring on to consume without a fee is bottles of nicer liquor if we want to add it to the open bar, which of course actually saves them money since we already paid for the open bar.
Decorations they still let you bring from the outside, but I’m sure that’ll end soon since they charge like 10x the cost of the items to rent them for a day. For three candles per table it’s $1,000 for 10 tables. Get the fuck outta here!
I don’t mean to sound too much like the anti-wedding fun police, but isn’t “an above average outcome” one where the married couple is happy?
Is there any hope of reasoning with them a little bit? Like “Mom, Dad, I know you just want a memorable event and us to be happy, but we can do that without you spending [insert insane amount here]. We’re grateful for the offer but we’d rather you spend it on [yourselves, our honeymoon, a college fund for a future grandchild, etc.].”
Even ignoring the cost, all this shit you’re describing sounds incredibly stressful.
It really doesn’t have to be this way. Big life events are supposed to be fun.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but our photographer friend was fantastic. We loved her work top to bottom, and at every venue: church, woods (despite drizzly conditions), and reception. It was only the videographer she recommended who was a fuck up. The video he sent us originally had no audio for my best man’s excellent speech, among other glaring errors.
I didn’t really want someone to direct. I had nfi what I wanted for these things. At least the photographer made it happen.
San Diego > LA to visit AINEC
Went on roadtrips that included much of Cali in 2009 and 2012, LA was the bottom tier big city as a tourist for sure. Preferred both SF and SD by a lot.
I can see LA being much better to visit if you know the city well.
I mean, we’re going to be happy because we’re going to be married and that’s all that matters. We’ll enjoy the ceremony and reception, we’re not enjoying the process of seeing how much it all costs and paying the exorbitant fees that are charged for this stuff.
I just think they want it to be an event that looks, if not upscale, upper-middle-class scale.
We debated this when they offered, we’re way past that phase now - we’re in the home stretch. But basically I didn’t want to upset them by rejecting the offer, and we did want a wedding, we just wouldn’t have been in a position to spend it and would have very much preferred the lump sum they spent on this to be saved towards a down payment for a house. But I thought the event was important to them, that they had likely looked forward to it for a long time - especially my mom - and thus we didn’t want to risk offending them or upsetting them.
Oh for sure.
I’ve had the opposite experience, but most of my time “in LA” is not spent in the City of LA. Depending on your tastes and preferences, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, or Santa Monica are your spots. And street tacos, drive around a neighborhood with a working class Mexican population and find someone set up. The kind of place you can only pay cash, they barely speak English, and the prices are shockingly cheap. When you find a place with fresh al pastor, oh my God.
In the beach towns there are lots of good restaurants and bars, depending on the town they may be right near the main strip by the water, or they may be in a few blocks.
Oh and Malibu is beautiful, El Matador Beach is so scenic. Not the best for swimming, but the views are amazing.
Yeah the first few times in the area I had the luxury of a friend who had lived there a while telling me where to go and not go. I think the only times I’ve done anything in the city itself have been street food, hole in the wall food, casinos, and a Dodgers game.
I’ve never gone through the hassle of wedding planning, so all I can offer is the time a reporter asked the late Mike Leach what advice he had for someone getting married in 9 days. RIP to a real one:
Aziz Ansari also has some thoughts that are relevant to your situation:
Mike Leach was a MASSIVE piece of shit.
Oh, I know he was mega-deplorable, and represented all that’s wrong with college football in a lot of ways.
He always gave the most rambling, incoherent non-sequiters whenever someone put a mic in front of him. Made you wonder if it was all an act, or if he really was that weird (he was).
Not too late to switch things up. There’s that giant parking pad at the Oaks where they set up circuses and carnivals and shit.
Hell I bet you could get married at Longwood Gardens really cheap right now (escaped convict sighted there last night).
Tip who you are going to tip. If you over pay by some amount it’s worth it to not stress out over the big day. It sucks but it is what it is. Fighting it is only going to stress you out and not save you much at this point.