What To Look For In Your Wedding Vendors
Have you run across those generic checklists that tell you what to ask when you interview a wedding vendor? Have you ever noticed how stale and robotic those questions feel when you sit down and ask them from a real human being? Well, you’re not wrong, and that’s because every vendor in the wedding industry is a different kind of artist and service provider. Let’s talk about what you should focus on when interviewing your wedding vendors!
Images courtesy of Kate Miller Photography
Venues: Hosting Magicians
Your venue sets the tone for your celebration. The venue often dictates the first set of boundaries for your event, the style of your event, and the requirements from other vendors to host. When searching for a venue, pay attention to what different venues require as they are often the largest influence on how you may host your guests.
Planners: Community Magicians
Your planner is your community builder. They are the person who gets to know you most deeply, who most fully understands the scope and depth of your event, and who is in charge of vetting and introducing you to the vendor referrals who can support your vision and budget. They spend innumerable hours developing community and referrals for their clients. When hiring a planner, find the person who “gets” you, who has a portfolio that reflects your vision, and who shares the same values you do in wedding planning (and life!).
Coordinators: Time Magicians
Your coordinator is the master of time. From project managing your planning process to making shi!t happen on the day of your event, they have their finger on the timing of every detail. When something shifts, they are in charge of communicating the knock-on effects to all affected vendors and activities. Find a coordinator that you can lean on with every detail and decision. Know that they are the most capable party when it comes to managing and executing what is possible on time, every time.
Photographers: Light Magicians
Your photographer is a visual storyteller. Throughout the documentation of your day, they are negotiating with light and subject matter to capture the look and FEEL of your celebration. Lighting has so much to do with how your photos feel after the event and the right photographer will be able to negotiate with lighting to nail that footage. When interviewing photographers, look not only for a personality match that you want to invite to share the date, but also look for a portfolio of work that evokes the feelings you want to have during your live event.
Videographers: Storytelling Magicians
Your videographer tells the living story of your celebration. There is nothing like film to capture the full effect of a feeling, a party, and a moment in time. When looking at videographers, notice how they tell a story through their films online. What kind of content do they capture? What kind of accompaniment do they choose? What are the feelings they evoke? The story they tell? The variety they show across their samples? Will it stand the test of time and be a product you are proud to revisit for years to come?
Bartenders: Connection Magicians
Your bartender is the person who interacts with the greatest number of guests at your event. Weird, right? But when you think about it, they’re the people who share the greatest number of conversational exchanges with the greatest number of people. Sometimes your bartenders are rolled in with your catering and/or venue hire, and sometimes you hire them third-party. However they come into your team, take time to ask about their personalities and why they choose to work weddings. A great bartender can affect both someone’s mood and experience, so we recommend taking a little bit of time to do a “vibe check” to make sure they will encourage a positive guest impression.
Caterers: Caretaking Magicians
Your catering team is the most critical hire for hosting your reception. The level and style of service, menu, staffing, coordination, and resources provided by this team set the tone for how your guests are hosted and taken care of. They are both the largest team on site and contribute to the greatest overall impression of your event. When hiring a caterer, take the extra time to do your research on what you want from the reception experience and come to your calls and tastings prepared to advocate for yourself. The caterer who can understand and serve your vision with the greatest sensitivity and attention to detail is the one for you!
Pastry and Dessert Chefs: Inner Child Magicians
Dessert is for the kids, and by that, we mean it’s for the kid inside of all of us. Dessert brings out play in the form of food. With so many options available, from so many cultures, and so much creativity swirling around on the internet, dessert is a great place to express yourselves through food. If your caterer provides dessert options, you can streamline costs and logistics and source your dessert menu through them. If you want a specialty item–like a designed cake or a unique creation from your favorite bakery–you might arrange a tasting (or five) and explore bringing it on site for your caterers to serve. And remember: there’s no reason you have to stick to just one dessert. If you like different things, we say yes and yes to more desserts!
Staff: Experience Magicians
Most folks never think about staff as a separate category but, unless the staffing for your event is included in your catering contract, then staffing is another area that is key to the overall experience of your event. Your staff is typically in charge of setting up your rentals, putting together displays, maintaining the facilities, cleaning up after the event, and prepping rentals for return. In short: they are the magic fairies that make the ethereal experience of this once-in-a-lifetime event happen smoothly. In order to know whether you need to hire additional staff, be very explicit about what responsibilities your caterer, coordinator, and venue manager do and DO NOT take care of for you. If you find you need more support, then invest in these experience magicians!
Florists: Nature Magicians
Nature is by far our favorite kind of decoration. Seasonal florals and greenery that set off your color palette is the best investment you can make in bringing a room to life. There are so many ways that you can be both ethical and impactful with your arrangements at many price points. Consulting with a florist about your budget, your design, and your options early on in the planning process will help you minimize the need for other decoration costs. We love collaborating with florists early in the design process to pull in the maximum amount of inspiration to the design. What you and your florist decide will help you set the direction for your ceremony and reception design, allowing you to pull in small upgrades or details that help bring the big picture together.
Band, DJ/MC, or Musicians: Vibe & Flow Magicians
Your band, DJ, instrumentalist, and/or MC are all key characters in making sure your event flows smoothly. Guests typically look to those with the microphone to lead the progression of the event, whether by music, tone, or announcements. The best musical acts are ones that can read a crowd, anticipate their needs, and step in to serve them before questions are even asked. When hiring a musician, be clear about their performance repertoire, their ability to read a crowd, and their personna on the microphone. All of those areas contribute to how guests experience the overall evolution of the event and how much fun they’re having during the party.
Entertainers: Memory Magicians
You might think: aren’t photographers the memory magicians? But no, entertainers are the folks who create the “wow” moments at an event that guests talk about for years to come. Whether it’s marching bands, live sketches, tattoos, Bollywood dance lessons, or acrobats and performers, entertainers provide the surprise element that guests tell in their stories after the event has long since ended. They aren’t a must-have for many folks planning a wedding, but they are an incredible investment for those who have the resources and enthusiasm to seek them out.
Rentals: Environment Magicians
Very rarely do you find a venue that is inclusive of every single piece of furniture, dinnerware, lighting, and linen that you need for your event. That’s where rentals come in! They take your venue from a beautiful container to a complete event space. Rentals are your event environment from top to bottom. When supplementing your space with rentals, get really clear about what your venue and caterer provides, then be prepared to supply the rest. This is a BIG category – think everything from soft furniture to restroom trailers – so take the time to be both patient and complete when sussing out your rental needs. This is an area where planners can be a HUGE help in clarifying what you do and do not need for your event vision to succeed.
Lighting: Party Magicians
While your rentals support your environment, your lighting is what sets the mood for your party atmosphere. Color, tone, location, movement, spotlighting…all of it brings emphasis to different areas and aspects of your event in different ways. Some couples work with venues who have good daytime lighting and pair it with DJs who bring after-dark lighting. Other couples choose to customize and niche their lighting plan beyond what comes with other hires by working with specialist companies. The level of lighting is entirely up to you, but is not something to be overlooked or left to the last minute.
Decorations: Personality Magicians
We will lead by saying that having a decorator is a rare-but-available specialty in the wedding world. Your planner often doubles down as a designer who consults on decorations, but in some instances, a couple may need more decoration support. For that, you bring in a third party with design training to create and/or execute a design plan in coordination with your planner’s timeline. If your event vision requires multiple hours of specialty items being assembled and placed–and the responsibility lies outside of a planner, rental company, or lighting company–then chances are you need a third-party decorator’s support. They are dedicated to making that next level vision of yours come to life, creating a one-of-a-kind experience for you and your guests.
Hair & Makeup Artists: Confidence Magicians
Your beauty specialists are there to make you feel the most elevated version of yourself. Not only does your beauty artist set the tone for your day, but by the time they are done, they highlight a version of yourself that readies you for the exciting, vulnerable moments that follow. When hiring a beauty specialist, find someone who sets an energetic tone that you’d like to start your celebration day with and who produces a look that will make you feel like the best and baddest version of yourself!
Officiants: Ritual Magicians
Your ceremony is not to be overlooked! We know that sometimes this ritual kick-off to your wedding day can get lost in the sauce. But it’s important that your moment of marriage, and particularly the words you employ to bind your lives together, be given the thought and care they deserve. Choosing the right officiant can be the best first step in creating the container that takes your relationship from partnership to marriage. There are officiants that range from light-touch and humorous, to relationship coaching/counseling and deep emotion, and everything in between. Being thoughtful about who you ask to officiate can both ground your day and set the tone for how you enter into your marriage.
Every single person who owns a business in the wedding industry is an artist. As planners, we are the liaisons between our couples and the larger vendor community. It’s our job to learn how every vendor works and what they need to be successful. Then it becomes our job to make intelligent matches between the larger vendor community and each of our couples. We are basically walking libraries of the wedding community. As a result, we get an incredibly unique perspective on how wedding vendors work, and we love to highlight how each vendor is an artist and magician in their own right. After reading this article, you now know what core feature to look for when hiring each member of your vendor team!
You likely aren’t hiring from every single category on this list (and if you are, that is a THICK lineup for your event!). For whatever categories support your event, keep in mind the special kind of magic you’re looking for that professional to produce. If you keep your eye on the prize, the best fit for the job will be clear.
If you like the way we framed up each of these categories, chances are you’ll love our free planning worksheets! We think it’s important to take time in the planning process to outline your Values, your Budget, and your Venue expectations. Click the link below to download all three worksheets for free and get your planning started off on the right foot.