tipping vendors

aaf10

Technically we only have one vendor to potentially be tipping--the photographer. The hall payment will include gratutity, and everything else will be done by me and my friends. The photographer owns her own "business". Do I tip her, if so, how much? I am kinda hoping the answer is no as even a 15% tip would be $375, yikes!

bonitatinabina143

no if it's their own business you don't have to tip them

leeshab1982

General rule is if they own their own company, you do not need to tip them since they get the entire profit to themselves.  That doesn't mean you can't tip them, though.  We had vendors that we still tipped even though they owned the company because they did a great job. 

Also, we didn't really base our tips on percentages.  Maybe we were wrong in doing that, but the cost of the vendors is so much that if you base the tips on 15%-20% (like you would for hair or restaurant), you'd be shelling out thousands the night of the wedding.  We went with what we could afford, which probably turned out to be a very small percentage...probably between 5% and 10%, maybe 15% was the max.