Thursday, December 2, 2010

Tip O' The Week - Tipping!

No, not cows. Vendors. No, not physically. Monetarily. (I know, I'm hilarious.)


I did a lot of research on a lot of things during my wedding planning, one thing I'll bring up for you today is vendor tipping. Some say tipping isn't necessary. I think it is. But that may be because I worked in the service industry in college (read: waitress), and I know how it feels to not get tipped. I also know how good it feels to get tipped! Needless to say, I always tip bartenders, waitresses, etc. But when it came to figuring out what to do for wedding vendors, I definitely needed to do some research. I read some forums, googled and saw what other people did, and I think I came up with a pretty good solution. You tip those that don't own their own business. Those that simply work for the business typically get paid less than those that do own that business. Those that own the business set the prices and do so by figuring out how much profit will be made versus how much they spend to provide the service. For example, our videographer. He owns the business, so obviously he gets all that money. Yes, I know that he uses it to produce the final product and pay for his equipment and all, but if it were anyone other than him doing the videoing, they would get less of that profit. Therefore, the owner gets the price they laid out, but the worker (non owner) should receive a tip (unless they sucked at whatever service they provided). Same goes for delivery people (if you have to rent things like a tent, port-a-potties, tables, etc., like I did). I gave delivery people $5-$10 per person depending on what they had to set up (I had 3 rental companies).

Hope this helps someone out there! And I also hope it doesn't offend any vendors. I think it's pretty fair, no? I mean, if you want to tip everyone, go ahead, but that's your call!

-C
xxx

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