Money: A Top Marriage Stressor ($25)

This award winning games does not require a financial planner background. This simple to use game will get you and your partner (or parents!) on a new level of understanding about your ATTITUDES on money...spending, saving, security.

No matter what your money views, there is no "right or wrong." A few big "a-ha" moments may greatly help your wedding and married life. read more

Wedding Discounts for Marriage Preparation

You take driving lessons, cooking classes, get coaching on sports, but somehow the most complex, life long relationships are assumed to magically work.

We are teaming up with wedding vendors to offer you wedding discounts for qualifying marriage prep purchases (books and classes.) Get Details

We're Going to Be One Happy Family...or else!

A very unique book written by a nationally respected marriage and family therapist, along side his GenX daughter.

A mother loved our book so much, she bought over a dozen copies to give to everyone in the family! They used the guidance from beginning to end to reduce conflict and avoid the "emotional landmines" that are sure to arise in wedding planning. read more

What Wedding Vendors Wish They Could Tell You

We've been to events around the country, met with nearly every type of vendor (including lighting vendors?!) When you aren't a bride, and you ask, they always have complaints and frustrations with their customers. But because they're professionals, don't want to lose business, and know the wedding vendor industry is tight-knit, they only carefully complain to select people. We've been those people and now it's time to share what you'll never hear directly. But more than just hearing their complaints, we're offering solutions or ideas for how to avoid being "that bride." In the process you may actually get better service from your vendor and have a more enjoyable wedding.

If you're a wedding vendor, send along YOUR complaints and with complete confidentiality about who you are, we can grow this article.

Wedding Vendor Complaint: First Question from Prospective Brides, "How Much Does It Cost?"

Surpringly a question we think is helpful to ensure we aren't wasting our time or the vendors time can turn into quite a bugaboo for vendors. They don't want to share a price so quickly for many reasons. You may not know the details of what they offer so by saying a price you have no context. One wedding photographer, for example, may quote you at $1,500. The next wedding photographer is $3,000. Raw dollars alone won't tell the whole story. The first photographer may not be around for as many hours, may have no reliable back up in case of illness or emergency, likely gives you negatives and requires YOU to do all your prints and assembly (which takes many countless hours of your time and without skill, the album may never really be very good.) The photographer may also be less experienced, therefor requiring more time taken away from your wedding festivities, or perhaps being unable to control large groups to get good shots, or not being super fast in running around to capture all the action.

Some wedding vendors are also frustrated by the question because they feel they are artists, and the first question you ask an artist isn't "how much is a painting?" You engage the artist in their work, their background, experience, and skill. Then you engage in the options, how they are unique, your needs, and come to a general quote for their product or services based on a mutual understanding of what that money will buy you. Unlike a single painting, they have many options so their price range can be quite dramatic depending on your exact needs.

The question, "How much does it cost?" can also trigger the problems they find with their competitors. They don't want to bad mouth others in their industry, but they want to scream when brides fall victim to lower prices without knowing the full story. One very large wedding vendor, I know from a photographer friend, charges a pretty great rate to brides, but then turns around and posts Craiglist ads for photographers and pays a criminally small hourly rate! Brides have no idea the photographer who shows up may be off the street, no real wedding experience and is being paid a fraction of what their skill is worth simply to get the experience. This is one reason why buyer beware... you pay for a good photographer and you're going to GET good photos and really good service.

What Brides Can Do Instead...

Instead of asking wedding vendors how much they cost, you could flip it around to learn from the wedding vendor. Instead of saying, "how much does this cost?" you can ask, "I'm budgeting about $2,000-$3,000 for [insert their wedding category here which you can find on our wedding budget page]. Do you think this is a reasonable expectation with a wedding of about 150 guests, at such-and-such location?" Now instead of asking for their rates, you are going to get their wisdom. If they're out of your league, they'll either just admit it, or they'll describe to you what you'll get for that range and what you would get IN ADDITION if you went a little higher. This will help you even if you don't use that vendor. Remember they have to be competitive so if you happen upon a low end vendor, you're not going to get a quote above what they normally charge just because you say you have more money! They know you talk with friends and competitors, so they aren't going to try to weasle more money from you.

Wedding Vendor Complaint: The Constant Emails or Voicemails

One most universal complaint is how often brides call or email after booking with a wedding vendor. My guess is this is the needy or vulnerable bride who doesn't realize she can't have it both ways. You can't have a fully attentive vendor and ALSO have a very popular, competent vendor who is actually serving other weddings while you're freaking out about some small detail 8 months before your big day. It's easy when you're sitting at work and make a call to a vendor to expect a call within hours, or even the same day. But remember those vendors are busy folks, too, and they must prioritize the weddings just around the corner first. Often they don't make enough money to hire a receptionist type person to simply answer all the calls, which means many vendors work very long days and THEN spend hours responding to email and calls. And keep in mind the skills required to do their job (photos, baking, etc) are often very different from the mundane customer service skills we expect from people whose full time jobs is administrative work. Just because they aren't timely in returning your calls or email doesn't mean they won't be a fabulous wedding vendor for what you're hiring them to actually DO.

What Brides Can Do Instead..

If you already know you are "that bride", or suspect you're going to be getting a lot of questions from your mom that you won't be able to answer, plan accordingly. When you book a wedding vendor, ask how they best operate when it comes to all those small details and questions. Find out how long they usually take to respond to questions, so you can be armed with "their normal" and not freak out when it takes a day to get a return call. You can even say, "when I'm freaking out, what do you recommend I do to calm down?" Similarily if you have unique requests or pricing, ask the vendor how you can help them manage the special details. They may appreciate you sending them a written up set of notes from the conversation so they can stick it in your file. They may suggest having the maid of honor remind them the day-of, that, say, Grandma is coming in a wheel chair and needs to be in the photos, but will be arriving late. Or the vendor may say they work best if they get an email one week before the wedding because that is when they review all the details for the weddings coming up and the email will prompt them to more carefully review the unique requirements for your day. And other vendors will be offended and remind you, perhaps not so gently, that they are PROFESSIONALS and their job is to manage all your needs without being reminded. Wedding vendors are as varied as you and me.

Better yet, do all the research you can, ask tons of questions as you book with the wedding vendor, and confirm with the wedding vendor how to get your questions answered before your wedding. (Some vendors might like to have a meeting 2 weeks before your wedding to go over all details. If this is the case, you're best off waiting until then anyway so you don't have a trail of emails that your vendor is not likely to be keeping track of.) Some may let you know they love emails, or the phone, or they may prefer you mail in notes. You don't know if you don't ask!

Complaint: The Family Drama

Family drama comes in many forms. It may be showing up for cake tastings and getting into a mini civil war with your mom over the cake style, flavor, or prices. Bakers love to bake, not get involved in conflict. They'll often leave the room and wait for you to talk. Wedding coordinators see a lot of drama and they are sometimes willing to play middle-man, sometimes not. DJ's are also often asked to play babysitter to an obnoxious uncle who wants to grab the mic. Some DJ's are great about it and will have "an accidental power failure" just as the obnoxious toasting begins. Other DJ's have no interest in getting involved with the interpersonal issues of your wedding and are hired to just play music, thank you very much. Photographers often learn fast when parents call them post-wedding, irrate at the lack of certain photos, and realize in the future they NEED to ask the parents of the bride and groom to review the "must have photo list". Afterall, it doesn't help the photographer to blame the bride and groom. The parents don't care about anything but that this photographer didn't do their job and get the photos.

What Brides Can Do Instead..

Obviously we're fans of working out your issues without requiring wedding vendor mediation. This entire website is dedicated to family drama and we have a personalized wedding stress coach service to directly help you, with or without your groom, parents, in-laws.

The biggest way to avoid drama is to be well prepared. If you do your research ahead of time, then before you visit the baker, for example, you talk to your mom about the options and get her reactions BEFORE you are doing cake tastings. It's going to be a lot easier to let her be horrified at the expense at home than in the actual store, where you'll likely feel horrified at her outrage, fueling the flames of resentment and conflict. If you have impossible people in your life, think creatively and don't rely on wedding vendors to rescue difficult situations. By all means, however, ask the DJ, or photographer, or caterer what they recommend for situations that you're dealing with. You may be surprised at the creative options out there for, say, bitterly divorced parents, for dealing with small children at an adult-focused reception.

The Complaint: What Do You REALLY Want?

Wedding vendors can't ask you if you're more self-obsessed or focused on your guests. You'd be more than a little offended at the question, and it still wouldn't help the wedding vendor. For example, wedding videographers and wedding photographers have an enormously challenging interpersonal dilemma they need to try figuring out on their own. What is the dilemma? Are you the kind of couple who expects to be full center of attention the whole day? Or, are you the couple who wants the full view (through video/photos) of how the day passes among the guests?

One wedding videographer shared how she does not tape while people are eatting. She uses that time to eat her dinner. But at one wedding an aunt came up to her irrate that she wasn't doing her job, filming people while they ate! She was stuck between her professional knowledge that watching people eat isn't fun to watch, nor fun to be taped while eating, and the image of her being "paid to sit and eat." Where does professional experience end and your own needs begin? What if you assumed the camera will be on you all day and the vendor takes a bathroom break? Do you postpone your next wedding moment until they return? Do you have someone go hunt down where your vendor went? Do you move forward, not caring if every single minute moment of the day is captured??

Another way this issue manifests is whether you expect the photographer to treat you like the king and queen, following your every move, or whether there are times that you want the camera on everyone else, to capture THOSE moments. There is no right or wrong, but you can see how tricky it is for wedding vendors to balance what they might assume you'd like without offending you. And because no two weddings are alike, and things are happening in "real-time", it's always a balance between capturing you and noticing what else is going on so they can quickly grab spontaneous moments.