Possibly one of the most difficult things that you will ever have to do is to choose the suppliers for all the various functions at your wedding. It is, after all, a very big day, and choosing the right suppliers is critical if all is to go well.
Probably the very first thing that you should do, assuming you are not hiring a wedding planner, is to make a list of all the different suppliers that you will need. So, for instance, you will need a venue both for the ceremony and for the reception. These may be one and the same if you are having a civil wedding, because many venues – hotels, conference centres, and so on – are licenced for civil weddings.
Of course, if you are having a church wedding, then you need to book the church as a separate venue for the ceremony, and another venue for the reception. Many hotels/large restaurants which are licenced will hold weddings on a regular basis, and they will often be able to recommend other suppliers such as florists, cake makers, photographers, and so on, who they will have worked with on many previous occasions.
Of course, if you are using a hotel as your reception venue, they will be supplying the catering, but if you are using another type of venue you will need outside caterers.
Then there is all the décor for the venue itself, and depending upon the type of wedding you may want walkways, wedding centrepieces hire, a bar, lighting, floral decorations, and more. At Kenza Creations, wedding decor is our speciality and we have huge stocks of all sorts of decorative items that we can use for your reception venue, as well as the wedding venue itself.
One of the most obvious things that you will want to do is to get recommendations about wedding suppliers, and of course, a very good way to go about that is to ask friends or relatives who have recently got married if they can recommend suppliers to perform certain functions.
Another very good source is online reviews. Good wedding suppliers will be happy to point you in the direction of reviews of their work in the past so that you can see what other people have to say about them as well. They should also be able to connect you with some of their previous customers directly so that you can get an opinion from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. In fact, if a supplier is not prepared to show you their reviews, you would probably be far better off looking elsewhere.
You also need to keep in mind your budget. As you research each stage of your wedding you need to create a shortlist of those whose work you like and who can operate within your budget.
When you have a shortlist, it is now time to talk to each supplier and see if they are available on your date. In some cases, you will want to meet them in person – photographer, cake designer, florist, and so on – and this will give you a feel for how friendly they are and how efficient. Do they answer emails promptly? Meeting them in person will give you the chance to decide if you can work with them comfortably.