How to Read a Wedding Vendor Quote, Line by Line

A wedding quote has a number at the bottom, and that number is the part you will remember and the part least likely to be what you pay. Everything useful is above it.

Here is how to read one properly, in the order the surprises usually arrive.

Separate the fixed from the per-person

Almost every quote is a mix. Rental, labour, delivery and setup tend to be fixed. Food, drink, chairs, linens and staffing tend to scale with headcount.

Split them into two columns yourself. Then you can answer the question you will genuinely need to answer four times before the wedding: what does adding ten people actually cost? Sometimes it is small. Sometimes ten people is a second server, another table, another linen and another centrepiece, and it is not small at all.

Service charge is not gratuity

These are two different lines and they can both appear.

A service charge is usually an administrative fee charged by the business. Depending on where you are and how the contract is written, it may or may not reach the staff working your wedding. A gratuity is money intended for the staff.

Ask, in writing: is the service charge distributed to staff? Is additional gratuity expected on top? If the answer is that the service charge is administrative, you should budget for tipping separately, and you should know that before you have committed the rest of the money.

Check whether tax lands on the service charge

In many places, a service charge is itself taxable. That means the tax line is calculated on the subtotal plus the service charge, not on the subtotal alone. It is a small percentage of a fee that is itself a percentage, and on a large catering bill it is not a rounding error.

You do not need to argue about it. You need to know whether the quote you are comparing already includes it, because the quote next to it might not.

Find the things charged separately

The usual suspects, in rough order of how often they appear late:

• Travel, mileage, parking, tolls, and accommodation for a distant vendor.
• Vendor meals — often required by contract, often per head.
• Overtime, and the rate at which it is billed.
• Delivery, setup, strike, and late-night collection.
• Rentals sourced by the vendor on your behalf, sometimes with a handling markup.
• Power, generators, and lighting for anything outdoors.
• Cake cutting, corkage, bartender minimums.
• Insurance certificates required by the venue.

None of these are unreasonable. All of them are easier to accept in the quote than in the final invoice.

Look for the escalation clause

Some contracts signed eighteen months out reserve the right to adjust pricing before the event — often for food, sometimes for staffing. If that clause exists, ask for a cap, and get the cap in writing. A vendor who cannot cap it should at least tell you what the adjustment has looked like historically.

Read the payment schedule as a calendar

Copy the deposit and every instalment into whatever you actually use to run your life, with the amount and the date. The most common wedding budget failure is not overspending — it is three balances that all fall due in the same fortnight, six weeks before the day, when you are also paying for everything else.

Read the cancellation terms twice

• What happens if you cancel — at twelve months, six months, one month?
• What happens if you postpone? Is the deposit transferable, to what dates, and for how long?
• What happens if they cancel? Is their liability capped at your deposit, or do they owe you the cost of replacing them?
• What happens if the venue becomes unusable?

Symmetry is a good sign. A contract where one side can walk away for the price of a deposit and the other cannot is telling you how the relationship is structured.

Then ask the one clarifying question

"If we sign this today and change nothing, what is the exact figure we will have paid you by the end of the wedding?"

That number — inclusive of tax, service charge, expected gratuity, travel and every add-on already discussed — is the only figure worth comparing between two vendors. Ask all of them for it. It is a completely fair question and a good vendor will have it ready.

Once you have real figures from real quotes, put them somewhere they can be tracked against the whole. The budget calculator gives you a starting shape in the browser with no account, and if you want the categories to track actual payments as you book, planning on United Vows is free for couples and stays that way.