Episode 39: How to negotiate for your wedding

Note: This episode is about finances - specifically wedding finances. I completely recognize that many decisions people make around finances are due to a lack of choice/circumstances that limit the options for good decisions. It’s not lost on me the privilege to have a wedding how we want and pay for it.

Weddings are incredible. It’s the one event where family/friends from all walks of life come together to celebrate you. It’s also when people justify blowing their budget because of family or societal pressures.

Multiple friends told me they financed their wedding with 0% credit cards, asked family members for loans, or depleted savings (e.g., cashing out 401k) to fund their wedding.

I understand the pressure; my wife and I were not immune a month ago when we married. We worried that people would think what we did was cheap or be pissed off that they weren’t invited or kid ourselves that we would ‘work it out later’ when it came to the budget.

~A month later, I’m happy to report that a) we didn’t blow out our budget, b) we ended below the budget c) it was the wedding of our dreams.

Here’s how we did it:

People > Data Points

Articles like this one show “the average cost of an Indian wedding in the USA is between $225,000 and $285,0000” and set an unrealistic anchor. Other articles that share a range of $50k-$500k are also not helpful. The reality is that there is a spectrum, but the missing components of those spectrums are talking about the levers that help you go up or down on the spectrum.

Our approach was to reach out to couples whose weddings we attended to see if they would be down to do a retro with us a few months later. We diligently took notes covering what they would have done differently, don’t regret at all, and how much they actually paid by vendor and by event.

Since these were weddings we attended, we could then build our own spectrum of single-day, single-event, < 100 people to multi-day 300+ person event. We also got the couple's input on the ROI (from their perspective) for each.

You don’t need a negotiation masterclass to get good data. Weddings are stressful because of information asymmetry, so if you are currently planning, I encourage you to reach out to the couples and ask them to share. They will likely share everything openly.

For example, we got a quote from a decor vendor for $20,000. It sounded like a ridiculous amount of money, but then articles I saw shared that people paid 2-3x of that. It wasn’t until after we talked to couples that we realized a) decor vendors upcharge tremendously even if renting b) the bulk of the cost is flowers which you can get from alternative sources like Amazon (assuming synthetic is fine).

Everything is negotiable, but you cannot negotiate everything

It took us 9 months of trial and error to figure this out, but choose your top 3 spend categories and decide which is non-negotiable. Assign the higher end of the spectrum budget to that category and figure out how to decrease the other 2.

Our top 3 categories:

1. What we wear

2. What we eat

3. What we drive (for the wedding)

It took some time, but we finally landed on clothes, food, and car as our top 3 priorities. If we had exactly what we wanted in these 3, the rest didn’t matter.

These are in order of priority, so we tried to negotiate for clothes, but at the end of the day, we were willing to pay a premium for our outfits.

This also helped us realize the large cost drivers that didn’t matter to us - e.g. large venue, guests > 100 total, real vs. synthetic flowers, DJ, so we quickly cut those out.

Of the ~$26k total, we spent ~$10k on outfits. We were very open with every clothing vendor that our total budget was ~$10k for both of our outfits, and they helped us figure out how to get what we wanted within our budget. If a vendor is unwilling to be helpful or is rude to you (one vendor told us our budget is unrealistic), then it’s a good signal that you are talking to the wrong vendor and need to walk away.

Food was the 2nd largest line item. Because we didn’t have a venue, we had total creativity on where our food came from / what we served. With venues, you often have restrictions on who you can cater from or have to pay a premium to bring in an unapproved vendor. Our village came together and surprised us by making a bulk of our food at home, which decreased our catering expenses.

The car was something we decided to add at the last minute, but we were able to find a car on Turo. Turo added a bunch of fees and required insurance payments, so we messaged the owner to see if he was willing to go direct (cash) and he agreed. Saved us $400 in fees.

Be Kind

Our 3rd largest line item was photography. We decided to forgo a videographer, but the initial quote for photography was ~2x more than what we budgeted. We chose a photographer to try for an engagement shoot and liked them, so we also asked them to do our wedding.

When we went back to ask for the wedding shoot, they initially declined due to our budget. When I asked about this, they mentioned they regularly re-evaluate and update their pricing (as they should), so their latest pricing was outside our budget. We could either try and negotiate or find a new vendor.

Enter kindness - we knew the only way this would work was by being honest about our budget and reiterating how much we wanted to work together. We respectfully went back and forth on pricing over email where I asked if there was something meaningful to them (e.g. referral to specific type of client or reviews) that would warrant an additional discount.

Here’s the final email where we agreed to a price:

2 weeks of emails later, the “no” turned into a “yes”. In the end, we went over our photography budget, but we had zero regrets because they showed us they were willing to work with us initially.

I wrote 6-7 drafts in my notes before sending this. My main objectives were a) let them know that this isn’t personal / we would be more accommodating outside of pricing b) lead with empathy/kindness c) let them know that we would sign immediately if they agreed.

Wedding planning was great practice in applying negotiation skills. The initial assumption was that we needed to pay a planner to access a secret price list that no one else knew about. The reality was real data points, prioritization of what was truly important to us, and kindness was all we needed.

Note: This is not to say wedding planners aren’t helpful, but the skills needed to plan the wedding we had between the two of us and the cycles to plan ourselves.

If you are currently wedding planning and want any lessons learned / templates for planning, holla anytime!

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

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