<> "Hello?" I'm, uh, planning a wedding for next spring." "a quick quote for
a venue for a family gathering"
"between 120 and 130 guests." "for 125 people"
"we're aiming for April 16th" "the 16th"
"That's going to be a $15,000 food and beverage minimum" "The food and beverage minimum is $17,000."
This 2000 dollar difference is what's known as the
"wedding mark-up"
where some venders charge a higher price for weddings than for other similar parties
so why are weddings so expensive?
The wedding website "The Knot"surveyed thousands of its members and found that the average
cost of their weddings was thirty-one thousand dollars last year that's not including honeymoon
wedding dresses average at thirteen hundred dollars and
catering comes in its $68 dollars per person. And those numbers are a lot
higher if you live in places like New York Chicago DC or San Francisco
the wedding industry is kinda weird and it's an industry that I have quite a bit
of experience in
my way Isabel and I run a wedding videography business in Washington DC
and here's my take on my way to so expensive
There's this economic concept called
asymmetric information. With most things you buy you have a pretty good gauge in
what you're getting for what you pay for.
you pretty sure that an 8 dollar avocado is way too much
because you've bought avocados before. Familiarity with a market
produces balanced information between buyers and sellers and so they can settle on a fair price
This is like economics 101.
but most people shopping for wedding stuff and very little
if any experience with what they're buying.
cake, dress, napkins, catering, venues, flowers.
This is something you just don't buy very often so you have a very good gauge
on what should be paying.
This is made a lot harder by the fact that we wedding vendors
have a hard time posting our prices. You usually have to reach out and inquire
to get any sort of pricing information.
Imagine if you had asked for pricing for every item
in the grocery store. Shopping would be a lot harder. When I first was starting my business
I read on a blogs about marketing to prospective clients.
And overwhelming message that I kept reading is
"steer away from talking about price"
Blogger: "we've put together a free report that shows you how to answer
"price question" with those email leads in a way that steers them away from price quickly
so you can get them on the phone or to a meeting where you can book them!"
And then there's Pinterest. Planning: "Pinterest can be really useful I think
using it as a starting point" It's an amazing tool for wedding inspiration
or if you have an experience wedding planner by your side, but usually doesn't
help with the price question.
"...and you see all these like amazing dresses and you can click on it to like get more information.
you're going to get a lot more pictures , but you're not gonna find
any pricing information. And of course there's always
the option to "repin" it if you'd liked. If you are like a normal person
with a budget like you're setting yourself up to be
let down. Another thing that makes wedding so expensive is
the once in a lifetime mentality.
The classic line for brides shopping for a wedding dress
is: Designer: "It's the dress of your life ,
and if there's ever one picture will have of you,
it's the one in your wedding dress wedding dress."
That's wedding dress designer and artist talking on Planet Money. I'm as guilty as
anyone at this:
Here's were very first ads. it's all about that once in a lifetime feel.
It's just really hard not to splurge when you put so much weight into one day.
So, it's easy to look at this and think there's no doubt that wedding vendors
are ripping off their clients.
But there's another side to the story that i think is important to mention.
Planner: "Corporate flowers for example all there's probably going to be
direction but maybe there's a little bit more flexibility where as a bride had
dreamt up a certain flowers and she in
want to talk to the florist multiple times about the bouquet and the ribbon
treatment and the fact that her grandmother's broaches gonna be on that Bouquet.
It's a lot of time and energy spent on those flowers and that's gonna be
reflected in the price."
The upshot of this is that the emotional weight of weddings usually means more
work for vendors,
and thus higher prices. And the most demanding clients
are the ones that set the prices for everyone. So the best thing you can do to
avoid being swindled
is to demand the price range before hearing a sales pitch.
we vendors might hate it but it's the fair thing to do.