Flower Power: It pays to negotiate

When I started planning the wedding I had no idea how much various things cost. Very quickly I learned that um...weddings are expensive! Even after learning how much venues, photographers, and DJs cost, I never really thought flowers were *that* expensive. Ha! Wrong. Or, maybe it's just that I have expensive tastes. Either way, I wanted to cry when I received the proposal from one of our potential florists. They impressed me so much when meeting with them, but their prices were crazy. Even my mom said so, and for her to admit that something is "too much" takes a lot.

So after crunching some numbers and finding things we could eliminate, I wrote an email to the guy we were working with outlining my concerns. I told him that his prices were just too much and that we wanted to eliminate a number of items. A day later he came back with a counter offer. He cut the price of some items by half! He came down in price for my BM bouquets and centerpieces. He said he would eliminate the things I wanted. I was elated!! This was my first real vendor negotiation. It gave me a lot of confidence to negotiate with future vendors. It does make you wonder, though. If you can come down in price so much, why didn't you offer me that price to start with?

So now we have our florist!! Yay! Now that our "big" vendors are out of the way it's time to start thinking of all the "little" things.

Were you able to negotiate with any of your vendors? How did it go?