How to find your Wedding Vendor Dream Team
How to find your wedding vendors
The wedding industry is full of different services and vendors for you to choose from with lots of different ways to find them. Online directories like The Knot or Wedding Wire or ZOLA are a good place to start. But here’s a list of our most helpful places to search for vendors:
Referrals: Likely the best way to find a quality vendor that has a known and proven track record is through referrals. Ask your friends who recently got married who they used. The next thing to do would be to get referrals from other vendors. Chances are, you already have one or two of your vendors in mind. Maybe you already know your photographer from engagement photos or you’re already set on a venue. Ask them. Vendors love to work with people they know and trust and it ultimately leads to a much better experience all around for everyone involved in your wedding day.
Magazines: While you might not shop the shelf, magazines offer more than just print options like social media, blogs, and website articles to help you find vendors and gather tips and advice for your wedding planning. Most states will have state specific listings of vendors in your area. We’re in Wisconsin and so we’re listed in Wisconsin Bride Magazine. Their parent company also manages Arizona Bride and Minnesota Bride. Do a little searching with “your state bride” or “your state weddings” to discover what magazine offerings are near you.
Online Directories: An example of this would be The Knot, Wedding Wire or ZOLA. These search tools can be really helpful when you have no idea where to start. They have vendors listed in almost every category and tons to choose from within each one. The hard part can be filtering through which ones are good, have a lot of experience and fit your budget. Vendors need to pay to be listed on these sites and they can pay more to be listed higher. Now, while that probably means they’re doing well enough to afford to be listed higher up, it’s not a guarantee that they’re the best.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest will all have wedding vendors showcasing their work. Search for a venue that would have a physical location like a venue or a bridal boutique. From there, check out their tagged photos and see what other vendors pop up. This is especially useful when you find a photographer’s page that you like.
Showcases: Wedding showcases are popular and seem to happen most often between January and March. In order to find out about these and when they’re happening, you may have to ask someone you know who gets the paper. This is a great chance to meet vendors in person, but make sure to make a day of it.
What to Look for in a Wedding vendor before you pick them
Free initial phone call or video chat: Most wedding services have a person behind the product. And in most cases, you’re going to have to work with that person at some point in your wedding planning process if not on the wedding day itself. It is so vitally important that you like the vendors that you hire, who have good personalities that fit your vibe. So look for a vendor who is just as interested in letting you have the chance to meet them. Lots of times this will be in the form of initial meet and greet phone call or video chat.
Trust: Just as important as liking the vendors you hire, you need to be able to trust them. Critical questions you should be asking yourself: Do they have a contract? Are they responsive? Do they answer my questions completely? Do they have a secure form of taking payment? Make sure you fully vet your vendors before committing to anything. It can be stressful at times when there’s so much to do. So when you find a vendor you like, you’re tempted to book them right away. Take a day, think about and feel confident. If they’re a legitimate professional, they won’t be hounding you for your business. And if they do, chances are they’re desperate for work and might be for a reason.
other things to look for…
A website: If they have a website, they’re at least serious enough about the services they provide to spend some money. If you find a wedding vendor through Facebook or through an online directory like The Knot, but they don’t have a website, it might be a red flag.
Reviews: Vendors love getting reviews and ask their couples for them after every wedding. It’s a supportive way to help new couples feel confident in booking with them. Reviews can tell you first hand what previous brides and grooms thought of their vendor and the number of reviews they have is a good indicator of how many weddings they’ve done - it’s never an exact count, but it’s probably pretty close.
Awards: Most newspapers, magazines and online directories have annual awards given to the top vendors in the wedding industry. It’s a way to encourage vendors to continue to advertise with them, but it also makes their services more helpful for a bride and groom searching for their vendor team. Awards are based on voting or the number of 5 star reviews received, so you can be pretty confident that they’re well deserving of the award.
Tagged in Social Media: Once you find a vendor you like on social media, see who they tag in their photos. And don’t stop there. Keep scrolling and searching and see which vendors tend to pop up more than once. This is a good sign that other vendors like working with that business or professional and they’re probably reasonably popular within the industry.
If you follow these simple tips, you’ll be well on your way to finding the right vendors for you. And if you’re planning your wedding right now, we want to hear from you. Click the contact me link below and we will happily give you a full list of vendors we trust: photographers, videographers, DJs, venues, florists, hair and make up, caterers, bands, cake and dessert shops, and a whole lot more.
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Are you curious to learn even more about what it’s like to have me guide you through your wedding ceremony? Please contact me so we can get to know one another.
