Vendors

One of the best ways I've found to both save money and get an awesome professional is to hire someone who is new to the wedding business. Since they're just getting off the ground, they're normally only really charging for the equipment/fees associated with doing the wedding. You can see pretty clearly who has talent (that might need polishing) and who just picked up a piece of equipment and went to town. My long engagement has really helped me out in this regard. I was able to watch a few releases of work and see how it evolved (and if it evolved!). It kept me out of booking someone who didn't know what they were doing. I've saved about $4000 this way!

Take, for example, my photographers. Husband and wife team, all day coverage, unlimited locations, rights to digital negatives, sittings for e-pics, b-pics and TTD with rights to the negatives for one, and a magazine style album for about half to a third of what one would pay for a more established photographer in my area. The husband was a photographer before, and then the wife started up with him, and they went into the wedding business together. I've actually been able to look at the work they've displayed on their webpage, and I've seen the evolution of their work. It will be amazing come July. They'd been in the business for two years, I think, when I booked them.

I recently blogged about my videographer, another favorite. She holds a media arts degree from UVA, and started doing wedding footage. She'd only been in the business a few months when I contacted her. There are obvious improvements, both from the better equipment and from the increase in experience. I'm getting two cameras for the ceremony and one for the reception, and I'm paying a third of what I would have paid for someone in the business longer.

My invitations are a *slightly* different story. I'm not saving money, per se, but I'm getting better quality. I had originally planned on getting invitations from theamericanwedding.com, sweet, simple, to the point. I'd found some pretty silver ones, and I really didn't think I needed anything that complex. An acquaintance of mine recently started an invitation business and she asked me if I would be interested in having her do my invitations. The cost is about even with how much I would have paid for The American Wedding invites (both of these include envelopes, inserts, thank you cards, etc) but now I'm getting gorgeous, colorful ones of higher quality. I didn't even realize I wanted it until the option was there!

Are you using any new wedding vendors? How has your experience panned out?