Wedding Rip Offs and an opportunity

[sellickbhoy]

Hi

I'm planning my wedding for next summer.

As soon as you mention "wedding" the prices go rocketing.

for example, i called a venue to be hired for the day. I told them it was for a wedding and the venue was £3500

a few days later i called the same venue and enquired about booking it out for a full day for a corporate event (both wedding and events were for a friday) and the price was £1600

As its just the venue hire and all catering and decoration needs to be done by the person hiring it, then it's an easy couple of grand saved.

but you talk to florists, dress makers, invites, photographers, videographers and it's all teh same pattern

So, once we've got our wedding out of the way, i'm thinking of starting up a "budget" wedding company.

i.e. all the services you need at th eprices you would normally pay for them if you didn't mention wedding

there will still be a profit margin, just not a huge one, but volume should help on the profit front

is it worth undercutting a whole industry just for the benefit of my new business.

I guess it would only last a couple of years before everyone reduced their prices

so a business and a public service

anyway, whats everyones thoughts on the morality and business ethics side of all this??

 

[Ashley_Price]

Shocking, but not really surprising. Look at the lead up to Valentine's day, when the prices of roses, chocolates, etc., rocket.

 

Wedding cake the most expensive cake on the planet.

Earl

 

[eiscltd]

yes, i looked at wedding cakes recently... they don't look better than the Asda kids' cakes but cost all over £300. shocking!

 

[da8iwr]

Your beliefs are 100% right, i am a pro fashion and product photographer (not a wedding photographer). The prices wedding photographers charge for some times extremely poor work is quite high, and if they were doing any other type of photography, just wouldn't be able to demand that amount (or most of the time even get work as they are not talented enough!!). But even though their prices start at about £500-£1000 and go up, it is actually a very small amount of money for the work and service they provide.

They are there from the bride getting ready, through the ceremony, then into the reception and have to hang around whilst the speech is done and the cake is cut. That's a VERY LONG day, and out of that money also have to pay for the printing of albums, transport, etc. Not forgetting the thousands and thousands us photographers spend on equipment and the endless hours we spend practising and testing that we dont charge for.

You can make extra money selling images to other members of the family/friends, but its not much in the long run at all.

I own a share of a Ice Sculpting company www.subzeroicesculptures.co.uk, but as we are a niche product we don't need to charge more or less.

Hotels/Venues require much more work through a wedding than a corporate banquet. There is much more planning and preparation and usually the number of staff required is higher. You will find if you just ask for a bare room, it will usually be the same price, i know of 2 places that will do it for free, as they get the sales of drink at the bar.

I'm also getting married next August 2010 in a small town called lavrio in Greece (as that's where my fiance is from), and she has already started the search for invites, flowers, and all the other bits. The budget for the wedding is going up and up.

There are very few industries in the UK that still hold good profit margin with comparison sites tearing the profit margins down to almost zero and crippling the industries. That is why high street shops are struggling, as they just cant compete to Internet sales and pay the over heads, which leads to job cuts.

Many industries such as flowers, cakes etc, make low if not no profit through the year, and only make profit during the celebration times, such as valentines, weddings and christmas. So they have to charge more then to make the money.

£300 for a cake to me at let say £50 per hour is only 6hrs work, excluding materials and the time it takes to source them, which is not much in my eyes at all. i charge much more than £50 per hour, so why shouldnt they, are they not worth it???

Its very rare you meet a millionaire flower seller or wedding cake maker, because overall they don't make that much.

I would suggest leaving the budget price ideas alone, leave one industry that can actually make money. Set up a quality service, where you can source high quality products and services that you have vetted.

Removing profit margins from industries only lowers attention to detail and the quality of the product or service, look at all the crap food you can buy in asda/tesco compared to the quality the local butchers/bakers/grocers once provided with the personal touch that had been trading for centuries and closed down as they couldn't compete against budget supermarkets.

 

[SillyJokes]

You asked for a corporate quote on the venue, did you ask for a Saturday afternoon in June? or mid week in March?

They can charge that much because demand is that high and people are happy to pay it, or feel they much as the alternative is cheap rate.

I've got four daughters, not looking forward to pay their wedding bills.

 

yes, i looked at wedding cakes recently... they don't look better than the Asda kids' cakes but cost all over £300. shocking!

The cake was just symbolic of the whole wedding industry.

apparently average weddings cost about 25k.

Insanity for the average young couple.

everything seems to be about image these days and keeping up with the Jones's.

My first wedding was in a registery office with a reception over a chinese restuarant ,Cheap as chips.

Mind you the divorce cost me 500k.

Earl

 

[An Oasis]

You must be talking to the wrong people. We publish our prices, it does not matter if it's orgy or a wedding the prices will still be the same…

 

[sellickbhoy]

You asked for a corporate quote on the venue, did you ask for a Saturday afternoon in June? or mid week in March?

it was a request for the same date in both cases

da8iwr

you make a lot of good points

1st off - photographers. there are a lot of rubbish wedding photographers out there. Buy a decent (sic) camera and point and shoot - how hard eh? (bet you hate folk that say that!) and they can charge £500 just to shoot the wedding. then they want £6-7 a print, £200-300 for an album? You know how much prints and albums cost, so they are getting paid for their time.

A lot of the time, they just upload all the images to a web and let folk buy the ones they like - though some of teh better ones will touch up and edit the photos, adjust contrast/colour etc, add effects - but they are at the more expensive side of the scale. I've been quoted in excess of £2k for a days shoot, album and disc. Not bad for 12-16 hours work and album costs at about £100.

However, photography is an art/skill and i wouldn't want to offer that as part of my "budget wedding service"

I was thinking more along the lines of wedding invites, table plans, order of services, table decorations, seat covers, cakes, confetti, favours etc.

as you said, shops can't compete with online retailers - but why not offer a service that does a bit of both. a face to face meeting in teh persons house, samples of each type of item, then source the products on the net and add a mark up for your time/service - no need to hold stocks, just buy it as it's required. Much like what someone would do planning their own wedding, but take all the time aspect out of it for people planning the thing.

I also don't agree that you would lose out on the quality - 1 because there is a lot of tat out there already 2 - you can offer them products at a price that reflect the quality and let them choose.

if there is an industry padding out their profits, then surely there is an opportunity for someone to "revolutionise" the industry by resetting the expectations and giving customers choice.

 

[stoco]

As a recent newlywed (and young couple), I have to say that this is something I would have snapped up in an instant.

Our wedding was fairly extravagant: We got married at 8:30 at one venue, had wedding breakfast in another venue, photography sessions in public gardens and a third venue evening reception. We also invested in a decent wedding photographer who was willing to sell us the digital rights to his photos (rather than paying each time for reproductions), bought all the decorations ourselves, hired 5 suits, bought 7 bridesmaid dresses, a wedding dress, a DJ, a close-up magician (who was admittedly an extra luxury, but fantastic on the night and worth the money!), plus all the usual cakes, food, registrar fees, hotels etc etc.

We spent 8k. This included the honeymoon.

We could probably have spent less if we decided to go more spartan (but hey its a wedding, you've got to have a few luxuries to make the day an experience you will have many happy memories about!)

HOW young newlyweds spend 25k on weddings I have no idea! A little negotiation, and sitting down at the beginning to work out which things actually matter you is absolutely essential. A service which provides this, and then links to parties & businesses willing to come down on their prices would be a godsend to those of us on a shoestring, but still want to have a fantastic day to share with the other person (the guests don't count - think of them as the audience! Feed & water where necessary!).

 

[scotmum]

I have to say that a wedding planner would have been a godsend for me. We had quite an extravagant wedding and were nearer the 25k mark (not including honeymoon). The venue that we hired gave us a wedding planner in the deal - she listened to what we wanted and delivered a fantastically and simply decorated room. I think that one of the biggest expenses in a wedding in the wedding breakfast. Ours was £100 per head (including wine and champers) x 130 but was worth every penny.

My only question to the original poster is why would savvy brides looking for a budget wedding not source the items they want themselves on the Internet and bypass paying you? Sorry to sound harsh, but the kind of clientele you are looking for may wish to do this themselves. I think that the sort of people that hire wedding planners to help them with decoration, etc, may have the cash to pay thousands such a service. Don't forget that the majority of brides actually love planning their weddings (some dream of it from their childhood) and would want to have more of a handle on the biggest day of their lives. Just my opinion.

 

[sellickbhoy]

My only question to the original poster is why would savvy brides looking for a budget wedding not source the items they want themselves on the Internet and bypass paying you? Sorry to sound harsh, but the kind of clientele you are looking for may wish to do this themselves. I think that the sort of people that hire wedding planners to help them with decoration, etc, may have the cash to pay thousands such a service. Don't forget that the majority of brides actually love planning their weddings (some dream of it from their childhood) and would want to have more of a handle on the biggest day of their lives. Just my opinion.

well, some folk don't even know where to start.

but yeah, some folk do love planning all the little bits and sourcing all the deals. But if the business was set right and the pricing was competitive with the better deals available - then i'd hope that the reputation of the service would spread and folk would come direct to us instead of starting off doing all the searches themselves for individual items and finding out we are just as competitive - but we have the added advantage of taking the hassle away from them once they know what they want

 

[Jeff FV]

I'm already encouraging my (9 yr old) daughter to elope.

 

[Alison Jones]

HI

I got married in 2006, I got it into my head that I must have a cake stand with cupcakes half in white icing and half in lilac icing and a wedding cake to be on the top tier.

We asked a lot of cake shops saying it was for a wedding and they were wanting £3 or more a cupcake. We were trying to stick to a budget and I thought that I might end up baking cakes myself which mother-in-law thought was not such a good idea, she found a local bakers and said she wanted 100 cupcakes (50 white icing and 50 lilac icing) for an event and told them the day. We got them at 40p each (and bought a wedding cake for top tier from Sainsburys for around £10) and bought items to decorate the cakes for £5.

Think that wedding businesses should not charge more just because it is a wedding.

Alison

 

[JakeGrinnell]

Weddings put people into so much debt it's untrue. I think a business like this would take off like you said for a year or so before the bigwigs start dropping there prices!

Good luck

 

[MrsPWN]

The problem I see with your plan id that the 1st time you do it you will get away with it but the 2nd time you try and book the same venue for a "corporate" event I think you will have problems.

If you could figure it out I think it's a great idea , but I do think it makes you a wedding planner lol

 

The problem I see with your plan id that the 1st time you do it you will get away with it but the 2nd time you try and book the same venue for a "corporate" event I think you will have problems.

Not a problem.

second marriages.

The triumph of hope over experience.

S,Johnson

 

[ExtinctFire]

well, first of all congrats

because of the outrageous prices for weddings me and my wife got married in jamaica, for about £15,000 you can take 10 family/friends all inclusive and get married in 'paradise'. of course this price was cut for me because i made relatives and friends pay for them selves

it cost the two of us about £4000 all inclusive of all fees, certificates, photo's, suit hire, steel drum band breakfast in bed the lot...it was amazing i must admit!

we were originally going to get married on the beach but on arrival found they had outstanding gardens.

i absolutley recommend getting married abroad....particulary the caribbean

 

[mslouise]

Sorry to hi-jack this thread but I am a wedding florist and would just like to have the right to reply and point out that we (and I presume many other) florists don't have a bigger mark up on wedding work than any other work. In fact, when taking in the hours of consultations, designing and ordering we make less profit on weddings than anything else. The only benefit to us is that we are selling a lot more flowers. All our prices are based on the price of the materials and the time taken to make the piece (materials and labour same as any other trade).

One reason it may seem this way (and is also the reason for flower prices going through the roof at peak times) is the system used for selling the vast majority of flowers worldwide. They are sold at a small number of auctions (mainly in Holland for Europe/Russia and even Canada) and therefore the bigger the demand, the more the flowers cost. It is a reverse auction where the prices start high and come down until all available that day are sold. These days 99% of our brides know or have specified exactly the flowers they want used in their wedding flowers and I therefore have a committment to source them for her. I therefore have to pay higher prices to guarantee them, if the buyer waits too long to bid they will all be sold and we will have disappointed the bride.

Also, you have to factor in the fact that a brides bouquet has to be perfect and not all flowers are (it's mother nature) therefore there is a higher wastage factor. It also takes between 1-2 hours to make an average bride/bridesmaids bouquet so that it is perfect. I also think there is a problem with perception of value being based on size. If I was to take the typical amount of flowers used in a brides bouquet, leave the stems long and add a bit of foliage it would be huge and easily look worth more to those who think size matters plus would be made in a quarter of the time.

The auction system of sales is responsible for the prices at Valentines Day and Xmas. (The auction is how the flowers are sold from the grower to the wholesaler and onto the florist). The whole world wants red flowers at the same time and as they are sold at a small number of auctions worldwide unfortunately that sends the cost through the roof. Our mark up is actually less during these periods. My advice for getting better value for money is to choose something different to the majority of other people - wintery whites and Xmas and orchids/amaryllis (not red) at Valentines Day which will cost you less and last much longer.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your business plans. Pitched right, you could be on to a nice little niche. However, I would point out that anything wedding related is hard work. You have only 1 opportunity to get things right, it's a stressful time for the bride & groom and it takes a while to build up a good reputation.

Mslouise

 

[thebigIAM]

The wedding photography market has changed dramatically. In the early 1980s a photographer would probably take three times as much in reprint orders as she/he charged for the wedding coverage. Now Uncle John and his camera, or even a decent camera on a mobile phone, has blown that away.

Some photographers have tried to combat that by trying to place themselves more upmarket. Some do more elaborate albums that seem to take hours and hours of photoshopping and which, in my opinion, is largely unappreciated. With the arrival of digital, most wedding photographers I know seem to take a far greater number of photographs - more than 500 - which must take much longer to sort through. The photographers I knew in 1980 would typically take 12 rolls of film for a two and a quarter inch square camera, which had 12 shots per roll of film. The bride and groom would typically choose 30/40 for their album. Those beautifully designed book things sometimes seem to have hundreds of photographs in.

Another additional cost to consider for the wedding photographer is that it seems far more usual for them to attend wedding fairs, which must add to their time and costs. Back in earlier times, an ad in the Yellow Pages would have been enough.

The budget wedding site should work in my opinion. I've even thought about it myself and once bought a domain name (now lapsed).

In true, traditional, skinflint style, we married on the cheap: register office, reception at home, knew loadsa wedding services people who donated everything - car, flowers, cake, dress. Forty guests. Less than £200. I was more interested in buying a house at the time.

 

[CoolioXXX]

OMG £1000 for flipping taking pictures!!! PAY ME £100 I will be happy to take hundreds of pictures for you on the day! Then I will give you the pictures and you can print them via PHOTOBOX for only about 5p per picture! not flippin £ per picture! they also do very good albums and other things as well!!!

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

You must be talking to the wrong people. We publish our prices, it does not matter if it’s orgy or a wedding the prices will still be the same…

If you book any orgies i'll do the photography for free

 

[da8iwr]

OMG £1000 for flipping taking pictures!!! PAY ME £100 I will be happy to take hundreds of pictures for you on the day! Then I will give you the pictures and you can print them via PHOTOBOX for only about 5p per picture! not flippin £ per picture! they also do very good albums and other things as well!!!

Lol, i love people like you, you make my day
"Its dead easy to take photos, anybody can do it!"

Mate anybody can pick up a free pencil from Ikea, but only a hand full of people can draw quality art with it.

The actual process of taking an image is very easy, i have even taught our 6yr old god daughter how to take images with a Canon 5D, one of the highest quality and expensive 35mm cameras you can buy.

She even knows how to change a lens, what each lens does and the difference between each of them.

But will she catch the right photo at the right time, have the settings correct, catch the little things such as the glance and smirk on the face as it happens, not a second after it has gone.

Professional photography has nothing to do with the camera or the camera itself or ow well you know the camera, as that is the same as holding a pencil correctly. Its about the actual photograph composition, lighting and the lack of lighting. I personally hate flash photography, as the people you are photographing freeze and don't have a natural stance of appearance. But if you use a long zoom lens, slightly high ISO, very wide aperture lens and stand back out of the way, you can zoom into some extremely stunning natural photography of people completely unaware of you being there having fun.

And if you think £500 for an entire days work, with 3 - 7 days post production and a high quality album is a lot, you should see how much i charged for this
http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/portfolio/tate-britain-bullet-time-exhibition.html
lol .

 

[ExtinctFire]

Lol, i love people like you, you make my day
"Its dead easy to take photos, anybody can do it!"

Mate anybody can pick up a free pencil from Ikea, but only a hand full of people can draw quality art with it.

The actual process of taking an image is very easy, i have even taught our 6yr old god daughter how to take images with a Canon 5D, one of the highest quality and expensive 35mm cameras you can buy.

She even knows how to change a lens, what each lens does and the difference between each of them.

But will she catch the right photo at the right time, have the settings correct, catch the little things such as the glance and smirk on the face as it happens, not a second after it has gone.

Professional photography has nothing to do with the camera or the camera itself or ow well you know the camera, as that is the same as holding a pencil correctly. Its about the actual photograph composition, lighting and the lack of lighting. I personally hate flash photography, as the people you are photographing freeze and don't have a natural stance of appearance. But if you use a long zoom lens, slightly high ISO, very wide aperture lens and stand back out of the way, you can zoom into some extremely stunning natural photography of people completely unaware of you being there having fun.

And if you think £500 for an entire days work, with 3 - 7 days post production and a high quality album is a lot, you should see how much i charged for this
http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/portfolio/tate-britain-bullet-time-exhibition.html
lol .

the demand has surely gone since the popularity of photoshop's come in? some of the stuff some kids do on their myspace etc is really good

 

[plymgary]

I shot a bride a few months ago that turned up in a limo so long, it couldnt get near the venue.

I bet that maiming ruined her special day!

 

[adventurelife]

I have never understood why people spend a fortune getting married. We bought our first house before getting married so were skint. Organized everything ourselves from a distance of 500 miles from the venue and did not let anyone know until a week before the event Kept all hassle to the minimum.

Hoping my daughter follows our lead and does something similar or heads for a far off island

Any market that is full of inflated prices is open to smart moves by someone who wants to offer a quality lower budget service so what you suggest is a winner. However, it is really just being a wedding planner but a budget one.

I meet a lot of brides and grooms each year as we have several hundred stag and hen events. They are charged exactly the same as a group of friends doing the same event. Nine times out of ten though they are always harder work This is suspect is why other providers of services to weddings charge more.

 

[Feanor]

I agree with the original poster - weddings are just too overpriced!

I am in the process of setting up my own business selling budget (But beautiful!) wedding dresses.

Go fo it if you think you can make it work!

 

[Arcadian]

steel drum band breakfast in bed the lot...it was amazing i must admit!

we were originally going to get married on the beach but on arrival found they had outstanding gardens.

i absolutley recommend getting married abroad....particulary the caribbean

Wow .... huge beds in that hotel

The whole wedding thing is quite barmy. A friend of mine spent £18,000.It completely broke her parents, who ended up forking out for half of it even though the couple said they were paying for it themselves. Now it's "we'd love to have a baby but we can't afford it". For goodness' sake, what's important in life? Kudos though on getting married before the baby arrives!

There are couples out there who would like a budget wedding but they don't want to look cheap and they feel pressurised into spending more than they can afford. I have to admire the couple (their first wedding...) who refused to play - they invited a small group of friends, wore normal albeit smart clothes and celebrated with a barbeque in the garden. Then they gave £15,000 to charity for the money they would have spent.

If only you could promote that "keep it simple" idea. Then couples could say "We're using Keep It Simple Solutions for our wedding" and it would become the new big thing in weddings I think that's where the business might be.You can be a wedding planner or just offer guidance and suppliers where brides want to do to themselves. I wish I'd had a wedding planner 25 years ago. I didn't enjoy the planning one bit.

I'm in two minds about photographers. Yes, of course good professional photographers can get great results but some of the ultra posed photos you pay a fortune for look ridiculous and never get seen. And why, pray, is the photographer doing the "getting ready " photos? I'm a keen scrapbooker and see hundreds of fab layouts where the bride's friends/bridesmaids/family have taken those shots.

These days with digital cameras and helpful friends you can get thousands of images and edit them yourself later. You then own the images. My scrapbook gifts for brides include pictures of getting ready the day before, "interviews" with the bride's parents, the best man, what she wanted for her wedding day when she was a child - all that kind of thing that the bride's friends and family can do.

The cars are another ridiculous expense. One of my hubby's colleagues hired a bus to ferry everyone around on the day and it was great fun for everyone. At my wedding the church was only half a mile from the house and the driver got lost

 

[scotmum]

I totally agree with Place of Design with regards the pressures on wedding photographers. I paid £2000 for our wedding photographer and although that sounds very expensive, the job was professional and my photos will be cherished forever. I was not aware of my photographers at any point in the day (we had very few formal shots). I have been to some weddings where the photographer has sent the bride and groom back down the aisle because he didn't get a good shot of them. I have also been to another god-awful one where the bride and groom were taken away by the photographer for 6 hours leaving their guests starving and very, very drunk. Like with most things in life: you get what you pay for.

 

[Arcadian]

You're lucky that you weren't aware of the photographers. At my cousin's wedding the photographer pratted about taking photos of her gazing at a tree and other nonsense.The reception meal was delayed for two hours while he did this. Admittedly this was, presumably, the bride's choice but elderly relatives were left hanging about in the cold. The arty stuff could have been done in a studio. In the end the prints were so expensive no-one ever saw them. Probably just as well as the pair of them looked plain daft in most of the shots.

Professional photographers earn their fees but surely they should be there only at certain points and at certain times. I'm with the registrar who wouldn't let a formal ceremony be wrecked by photos and with vicars who won't allow them in the church. It's serious vows before God not a photo shoot!

 

[Alicatt]

My sister decided not to bother with a professional photographer as "we have loads of friends with cameras". As she said later - we forgot that all said friends would be drinking!

She ended up with lots of photos, 95% of which were a bit wonky.

Don't blame the wedding industry for the excesses of brides - nobody is forcing anyone to spend £25k. I don't know any rich wedding professionals - but I do know lots of people who love working with couples to create something special and who put in long hours to provide excellent service.

 

[garyk]

Yep fully agree with the OP, I'm sure there is plenty of suppliers that as soon as you mention the magic word 'wedding' the price gets bumped. I went through all this as I got married last year but we did it on the cheap, had 120 guests, most of whom got trolleyed said it was the best wedding they ever attended!

What we did;
Went to the local village methodist church, £250 inc everything even the organist!
As it was local my wife to be walked to the church from our house, no car hire!
We bought a 12m x 6m marquee off of ebay for £500 (and later sold for £325)
Hired 100 chairs and 10 tables at a cost of £120
Borrowed a generator to power the entertainment
Had a singer in the afternoon (fortunately someone I knew and it was free!)
Band in the evening was £300
Hired a bouncy castle and the biggest bouncy slide we could get (this got used non-stop from 4pm-1am by kids *and* adults) - cost about £250
Reception meal was a budget buffet, £5 per head
Evening meal was a load of 'tray' pizzas from a local italian pizzeria, £140
Booze was free but bought from supermarkets, £1000 worth
Suit hire for me, best man and brides father was £210
Wedding photographer we got for £500
Cake was made by bride's father's sister as that is what she does for £50
Flowers, table decorations, plastic cutlery etc probably added another £300 tops

Bloody bargain!

Did take a fair amount of time to organise but was well worth it!

 

[yorkshirejames]

There will always be people who want the big 20k show - then there will always be people who want to pay £250.

If you've found a niche then go for it.