As promised in Friday’s wedding blog, today I am going to give you a procedure to follow as well as some good questions to ask during your interviews. All of this information (and much more) can be found in the Perfect Wedding Guide Wedding Workbook.
- Before getting in your car, use Perfect Wedding Guide and PerfectWeddingGuide.com to research vendors. You can get valuable information by looking at advertisements. You will probably see some favorites who you will want to meet.
- BUT, don’t make appointments until you visit vendor websites. You will get further insight into their styles and personalities and you may even find pricing.
- Call or email to have information sent. This will give you further insight into your potential vendors personalities. Does the vendor sound eager to speak with you, or disinterested? Is he excited about his work, or nonchalant?
- Set appointments with three vendors per category. This will give you time to get over interviewing jitters and it will expose you to different styles and portfolios. You never know what good ideas you will get from looking at your vendors’ work.
- Compare vendor features. Just because one vendor is lower in price, it doesn’t mean he’s the better deal. Make sure you understand what is in each vendors package.
- Look for personality as well as product. You need to surround yourself with vendors who make you feel good on the wedding day. If a vendor’s personality doesn’t match your needs, go to someone else.
- Follow your instincts. If you don’t feel comfortable with a vendor, move on!
As far as specific questions go, I reached out to my favorite vendors to see what each thought was important. One of my videographers, Paul Duhon responded with some good ones:
1. On the day of my wedding what will you be wearing? I think this question is more important for photo and video. I often see other photo and video vendors wearing things that make them look like guest. It is my feeling that we are there to document the day not be a part of it. Some vendors like coordinators, and musicians should be dressed nicely because their roll is different.
2. Are you going to be the one at my wedding? This is a good question for videographers, photographers, and DJs as some may double-book and then choose which wedding to do.
3. Can I see one of your full wedding samples? This is a GREAT question for couples when they are meeting with videographers. It is super easy to take 2 hours of footage and pick out the best 2 minutes and then add music. In seeing a full wedding sample you really get to see what your video may look like and you also get to hear the quality of the natural audio (which I feel on a wedding day is SUPER!! important)
4. Lastly when I meet my couples for the first time I always stress how important it is to me to document their special day in a non-intrusive way. I tell them things like ” I want to record your wedding for you to remember forever but without being a part of your day.” I have heard a few stories from couples who have attended other weddings and just felt like the photographer or videographer was in their face the entire wedding. I completely disagree with this style. I will rarely ever step on the dance floor at a receptions and I don’t ever stage things for the video. As much as I love recording weddings I love the actual wedding moment even more and would never want to alter that experience for anyone.
Thank you for the great advice Paul!
Be sure to come back to the wedding blog tomorrow for Real Wedding Wednesdays. Also, on Thursday we are starting a new feature called “Ask a PWG Wedding Pro.” You will get to hear from Perfect Wedding Guide wedding vendors from all over the country!
If you have any comments about interviewing wedding vendors, I want to hear from you! Leave a post for me here or email me at susan(dot)southerland(at)pwg(dot)com. Also become a fan on Facebook by clicking here and follow me on Twitter by clicking here.
Your partner in perfect planning,
Susan
