Not Sure

liancart

This is my first time posting here but I am just not sure where else to go for some good opinions on this.
We are currently 88 days away from our wedding, we live in MI and are having our wedding in CO. We hired a wedding planner serveral months ago to help. Found out a few weeks ago that we only contracted her to set us up with the vendors not to actually be at our wedding. It is a small wedding, no attendants and only about 10ish guests so this is not a huge deal(and now the low price we got makes sense). Today I received an email from our planner, well from her email address but signed by one of her assistants, that they ommited the date that the final payment is due. It is May 26, 2011. Our wedding is July 26, 2011. Is it really realistic for her to be asking for final payment for her services 60 days in advance of our event(she did say that if we still have hours available that she isn't billing for and if she has time she MIGHT be able to be at our ceremony)?
I am also wondering if it is required to tip your vendors(cake, photographer and clergy) if they are independant and don't work for a company? So basically if we are paying the person individually and not a company that they work for.
Thanks for any opinions!

em01092

Welcome to the boards!

Hmmm. I am not really up on coordinators, so I will leave that to someone else to answer. It does seem a little early, especially if you have already paid her a deposit or other payments. She should know by those prior payments that you are committed, so she shouldn't be extremely worried about you bailing or anything. Idk. Maybe call her up and see if she can negotiate? It would help to have a sound reason for the extension though. Ask if there is any way she can push it back. 

As for tipping, I am of the opinion that tipping, like gifts, should never be expected, and should be awarded for good service. That said, this is not really how the world works, and I sort of understand why many companies require gratuity. A lot of your contracts will have gratuity built in, so check that first. If it is built in, then I would say tip only additionally for outstanding service. But if it is not included, yes, tipping will more or less be expected. 

I would not say that just because someone is self employed, they are automatically disqualified for a tip (since they still have to pay for insurance, equipment, supplies, gas, assistants, etc) but I would probably give them somewhat less of a tip than someone who worked for a business that likely charged them some sort of overhead. It would depend on the vendor and the situation. Browse around the site; there are some good tipping guides. 

Hope this helps! Happy Planning!

tuckhm

My final payment to my day of coordinator is due 30 days out, but we are only hiring her for the day of.  So I don't necessarily think it would be that odd if your coordinator that is only doing the vendor set up had her final payment due 60 days before, since it sounds like most of her work is going to be done in advance.  I would say if she doesn't have a lot of work to do right before the wedding, it doesn't necessarily sound odd.  But I've never heard of this type of coordinator before, so don't take my word as gold.

cdavislynn

In regards to the wedding planner: I find it odd that they "ommitted" a date so important in a contract. Especially when one of the wedding planner's most important responsibilities when he or she is hired is to review contracts with vendors for you and make sure they are thorough. Anyway, when I looked at different wedding planner services, all of them offered Day-of coordination, the only differences in price depended on how much they provided prior to the wedding.
Did you ask them if they can provide day-of coordination? And how much extra this would be? I would think you could still add this service on at this  point since you are still almost 3 months out from your wedding. I would inquire about how much to add the day of service, and tell them when they revise the contract to add this service, please make it clear in the document when payments are due. Then, when you get that contract, read every word, and make them add something if they've left it off!
Even though you have a small wedding, I think that having someone there to coordinate the event would be worth it. Then, no one in your family or you, or your bridemaids has to worry about anything at all. Everyone can relax, and the coordinator will make sure everything happens as planned, and will handle any issues if they arise. To me, it was worth hiring mine so that I knew everyone, including myself, could relax and enjoy the day instead of remembering and coordinating the day.

liancart

Thank you for all of the responses.
LucyHC, that is what I was thinking when it comes to tipping since all of our vendors own their businesses.
tuckhm, we were really surprised to find out that she wouldn't be at the wedding, we had never heard of a wedding planner only being contracted to contract vendors.