Brides Beware - SURPRISE FEES FROM WEDDING FACILITIES!

What would you think if you booked a facility for your wedding reception and were told that you could only use a certain DJ or cake person or florist at the facility? What if you were also told that if you used someone not on that reception facility’s “preferred vendor list” you would be CHARGED HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IN FEES?! This practice is becoming more common in the Austin area and it is something a bride planning a wedding should be aware of.

Fortunately for the bride to be, the majority of wedding facilities do not practice this activity and for the most part, you can rest easy. It is customary that reception facilities provide a recommended vendor list to their clients. The purpose of this list is to inform brides of vendors that are consistently professional and that the facility likes to work with. These lists are created by the booking manager of the facility in an effort to provide their opinion of quality vendors. Certain wedding facilities in Austin are now asking wedding vendors to PAY to be on this recommended vendor list by providing a “kick-back” fee to the reception facility for every event they contract there. In essence, facilities are getting paid a “kick-back” from the preferred vendor for the privilege of being one. A videographer or DJ or string quartet’s fees are therefore adjusted higher so they can cover the “kick-back” fee they need to pay the facility - passing this cost onto the bride. Even scarier, some facilities are CHARGING THE BRIDE a fee for using the vendor of their choice that the facility does not approve of. Thus making the bride pay the “kick-back” fee the facility would be losing. Kind of hard for a facility booking-manager to offer an un-biased and honest recommendation when the DJ, florist, photographer or caterer they are recommending will benefit their organization financially for the referral. It is because of this conflict of interest that all major hotels ban this practice. There is one wedding facility in particular on lake Travis that charges you hundreds of dollars if you do not use the preferred vendors on their list. This facility receives a kick-back from vendors on their list for every booking. If you tell the facility that you wish to use a different DJ or caterer, they disguise this kick-back by calling it a "Coordinator Fee". They claim that by using a DJ the facility coordinators are not use to working with, will make events more difficult for the coordinators. More difficult? Don't they mean less lucrative without the kick-back? Brides should be disgusted by this practice.

It is understandable that a wedding facility would want to ensure only professional vendors step foot on their property. Wedding facility managers have oodles of stories about experiences with unprofessional vendors that caused wedding receptions to become a disaster and have learned their lesson about working with companies with a bad reputation. Some facilities have banned vendors altogether that they dislike. Is charging a fee to the bride to “push” them to hire only certain vendors the answer to the problem of using poor quality wedding vendors, or is this only a revenue generator for the facility disguised as a way to ensure professionals on their campus? Is extorting the bride to pay this “kick-back” fee a good idea or will it backfire on the facility with time? Will this practice lead to vendors choosing relationships based on who will pay rather than which vendor is the best in town? If it is standard procedure for hotels to operate with a ban on this type of behavior so that employees in charge of booking and buying for the hotel do not try to line their pockets with under the table money, should the same ethical standards apply to smaller wedding facilities as well? Will this new source of money to a reception facility create animosity towards the facility from brides and local professional wedding vendors and in the long run, hurt business for the facility?

Ask about fees that you could incur by choosing the vendor of your choice BEFORE signing a contract with a reception hall.

Todd Turlington - President
A-Town Disc Jockey Service Inc.

todd@atowndj.com
512-899-1300