Taken at Studio 215, a wedding venue in Fayetteville, NC.

Being in the wedding industry for more than 20 years and you start to have the same questions asked over and over again, usually, I have a good answer for the questions that couples tend to ask.

Truth be told, Carole and I were meeting with a couple this week over wedding photos and videos and the bride-to-be asked a great one.

Why do wedding vendors have deposits and why are they so expensive?

Well, it’s actually a great question and one that isn’t answered very often, see vendors like to steer away from cost and focus more on what they offer than talk about money, well, they don’t talk about the money that’s coming out of your pocketbook.

So let’s go over the reasons why and help explain it to you in layman’s terms you can better understand.

Locking You in with The Vendor

The most often talked about answer is that putting a deposit down on a vendor locks you in. Putting down a hefty sum as a deposit takes the vendor’s date off the calendar and it secures it with you.

Let me give you a little knowledge to better help you understand.

Couples Getting Married in Virginia

Average number of couples getting married a given weekend

Let’s use Virginia as an example since that’s where we live.

In 2018, roughly 55,000 couples got married in the commonwealth and here in my own region, that number was just under 16,000.

That’s a lot of couples and when you divide the number of weekends by that large number, it give you a line average of 1,096 couples a given weekend that are getting married in the state.

you are completing against other engaged couples.png

And that applies to just about all regions of the United States, you in fact are competing against other couples who are also getting married on your wedding day.

In turn, those that book early, tend to get the best of the best and the longer you wait, the less likely the vendors you want will be available.

Helping Protect the Vendor

Wedding deposits also help vendors such as Carole, my wife, and me by providing income on the front end of your wedding as well as the back end of it too.

Most times your wedding will be 9-16+ months out from when you book with us, so deposits help give us income to be able to operate up until your wedding day.

Deposits or retainers are often used to keep the business operation going and are rarely held in some sort of escrow, it’s fairly typical across the board.

Without that income, it’s hard to operate, purchase new gear, advertise and just run the operations of the wedding business too.

But, it does more than just provide us income up until the wedding day, there is a reason why it’s expensive, to begin with.

Why is it So Expensive?

Deposits come in all ranges but the industry standard is 50% for most.

For higher-cost vendors it could be a flat chunk of the deposit with monthly payments or it could be broken up into smaller pieces, but usually, 50% is the benchmark that most of us use.

The main reason why they’re so expensive is because it keeps you from wanting to cancel the contract and bow out of it all together.

Having a large down payment in a wedding vendor means that you’re going to be vested in them for the long haul and because you are putting that large sum of money, you’re less likely to walk away and find someone else.

Wedding Deposits (sometimes retainers) help keep you locked into a contract and they provide income to operate for the business.png

Ironically, I’ve seen that happen before, even locally recently, a local photographer (not us) wasn’t following the contract up to far with an engagement shoot and the couple went and found someone else.

Sadly, the couple was out half the deposit, about $500 from what I was told.

Yes, there are always circumstances where you may need to break the contract, some for better and some for worse, but in any case, deposits or money put down usually are not refundable, you’ll need to know and understand the contract.

“If you don’t have a contract and just a verbal agreement, walk away, it’s for your own good. You wouldn’t just buy a house with any paperwork, the same applies to a wedding vendor.”

— Joshua Gabrielson

That’s pretty common in the wedding industry when it comes to contracts, so if by chance you do need to cancel with a vendor, chances are yours simply out of luck.

ALWAYS have a signed contract when you work with wedding vendors.png

There is an alternative however that you can ask for that usually works and thats selling your contract to another couple for a small amount and ask the vendor about having someone else use the deposit for their wedding.

The downfall here is finding a couple that wants the same vendor on the same date and that’s hard!

The three main reasons why you may want to cancel a contract and deposit with a vendor:

The vendor wasn’t following the couple’s expectations
The couple broke off the wedding for a number of reasons
The couple eloped during the planning process

Why Do Weddings Cost So Much Money?

Honestly, when I first started working in the wedding industry, those that had higher-end incomes would drop a lot of money for their children for the wedding.

Avg Cost of Wedding In US

Today, it’s become more commonplace for couples to shell out big bucks for a wedding to cover everything from a venue to the flowers.

The average cost of a wedding in 1999 was roughly $19,000, today that number is closer to $35,000 according to Wedding Wire.

Part of the rise in cost is simple, it’s inflation over the years, but part of it is the demand for more at a wedding.

People want things like wedding venues instead of churches, which had added a huge amount to the overall portion of weddings. Something that was pretty much free now costs on average $5,000 in the United States.

Weddings were less costly in part because in years past were married in a church, which saved money.png

Another reason is that couples have more credit than they did years ago and with more credit, comes more line items at the wedding.

The one thing that I can tell you from personal experience is that everyone wants an over-the-top experience, that wasn’t always the case when I first started in the industry.

The baseline services are no longer seen as being luxury, they are seen as well, the baseline.

For example, when I started as a videographer, I only did the ceremony and the reception. Today people want far more than the basics, they want multiple cameras and mics, feature films (sometimes called highlight films), drones, lights, and the list goes on and on.

Since demand has increased and changed over the years, so has the price of what we do.

Even Carole’s side, wedding photography has seen a huge shift into getting far more images than wedding photographers of yesteryear. With digital compared to film technology, there has been a huge increase in how much work is done and thus the increase in cost.

Today, prices have increased because of demand in what is expected in the industry.

Couples demand far more in their wedding vendors than 20 years ago, in turn, that costs more..png

While that’s not a bad thing, it is an expensive one for the couples that have demanded it over the years.

And that in part, at least for media professionals, why it simply costs a lot of money to couples, the sheer demand has increased roughly 44% in recent years.