Illinois-Chicago

How much to tip?

I was looking online for how much to tip wedding vendors, and have run across vastly different recommendations related to outside caterers and wait staff. What are others tipping their vendors? DJ? Catering manager? Wait staff? Thanks!!!

Re: How much to tip?

  • edited December 2011
    DJ: we tipped $50Wait staff: we tipped either 18% or 20% on the total food and beverage portion of the bill - we paid this with our final bill and were assured that it went directly to the wait staff.  I remember reading something that if you are to tip each wait staff individually, you give them each $2 or $3 per guest at your wedding.Catering manager: we gave her an extra $100
  • edited December 2011
    there was a recent post on this if you search. there seemed to be no standard, and you are supposed to tip vendors you feel you had go above and beyond for you on your wedding day. tip what you can afford.
  • edited December 2011
    i just read the above post:"if you are to tip each wait staff individually, you give them each $2 or $3 per guest at your wedding." most weddings have 8+ servers and 150 people. that would mean each server would get $300-$450 in tips. if that is the case, i should drop out of the military and become a wedding waitress!
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  • edited December 2011
    JMB - when you add up the gratuity for 8 servers at $2.50 per guest (for 150 guests) it comes in just under $3000.  This sounds about right to me.  What would the total food/beverage costs be for 150 people?  It would be reasonable to assume they might fall somewhere in the vicinity of $15000, and 20% of that is $3000.  Of course it depends on the cost of your catering (if you had budget catering you'd be closer to $2 per, or maybe even less; if you went balls out and had an affair where you spent $40K on food it would be more).  Another way to look at it - If you have an average of $100 per person for food, that would be a $20 tip for each person.  $20/8 servers is about $2.5.  These aren't hard rules or anything, I was just offering up some guidelines I had read when planning my own wedding.
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