How to Handle Vendor Contracts and Payments
As wedding planners, one of our most important jobs is finding professional vendors for our clients. Finding and securing vendors with your clients can be complicated. You want to have a process that ensures you are not financially responsible and that your clients are not only getting all of their needs met, but they are also in legal contracts with their service providers.
The following process allows you to make thoughtful recommendations and manage contracts without becoming entangled financially or legally with contracted vendors.
Vendor Recommendations
Getting recommendations on trusted wedding vendors is a big benefit of hiring a wedding planner. As planners, we have knowledge about who can meet our clients’ needs and who we feel are the best professionals to work with.
My process is to offer three vendor recommendations in each category that fit the client’s needs, style, and budget. Depending on the level of service they contracted with me, I either pass along the recommendations and they follow-up, or I set up and attend the consultation meetings with them.
Contracting with Vendors
Once you have made your recommendations and your clients have met with and chosen their event professionals, it is time to sign a contract. As a planner, you are an advisor, but you do not contract or pay vendors on behalf of your client. The contract is always between the couple and the service provider. This removes you from the liability of being the responsible party for all contractual agreements. If you don’t feel comfortable negotiating with vendors on behalf of your clients, set that expectation up front with your clients.
Vendor Payments
All payments to the vendors should be made directly from the client to the vendor. If you are paying on behalf of your client and plan to be reimbursed from your clients, what happens if your client does not pay? You are out large sums of money for a service you aren’t even providing. As the planner, you can remind clients when they have upcoming payments due and make updates to their event budgets and payment schedules as they are completed.
The key thing to remember is that, as a wedding planner, we are hired to advise, educate, and implement on behalf of our clients. We are not meant to take on the financial or legal responsibility for other event vendors on behalf of our clients. Your wedding planner contract can clearly state how you work with your clients and vendors.
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This is a guest post from Amber Peterson. Amber is the owner of Cheers Wedding Planning & Design and Cheers Consulting Group in western Washington. She has a Masters Degree in Integrated Marketing Communications and consults with wedding professionals about their marketing and business challenges. Amber is also the co-founder of the Skagit Wedding Society.
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I have a doubt about a contract which I should sign as a wedding coordinator.I’ve proposed myself as an ON SITE WEDDING COORDINATOR OR PLANNER for wedding agencies who might get some DESTINATION WEDDING request from their clients. We discuss by mail about what coordination service might include and got a contract between me and the agency to sign. the Agency named itself as the coordinator and named me as “supplier”.I believe that the part should be between WEDDING AGENCY and ON SITE WEDDING COORDINATOR. Am I right? Secondly at the end for the contract, it is stated “EXECUTED BY ABC company” while actually will be totally executed by me. Is there any specific contract between wedding agency and on-site wedding coordinator? Is it right to issue a contract stating SUPPLIER instead of WEDDING COORDINATOR?
Nicoletta, it is very important that you speak with a lawyer about these contract questions before signing it.
I have a question…. If I am just the person who is looking for vendors and presenting them to my client, then what stops the client from going behind my back and booking all my suggested vendors and saying they do not need my services?
My client doesn’t want to sign my contract without seeing the recommended vendors, but if I provide that information there would be nothing stopping her from booking those services and never paying me.
Also, even if she did sign my contract first, I would still then provide her with the vendor list and she could just take all my advice, hire all my suggested vendors, and then say she wants to cancel my contract and/or just never pay my invoices.
How do I avoid this issue of getting cut out of the deal if I’m just the “middle man”?
Thank you for your comment Clarisa. You would not provide any work or recommend vendors until your planning contract is signed and the client has paid the deposit. As planners, there is so much more that we do in addition to recommending vendors. Things like budget projection and management, design, scheduling and attending vendor meetings, creating detailed timelines, managing the details of all the booked vendors, plus coordination of the event.