So you are looking around for ways to save money on your wedding, when a friend offers to be your wedding photographer, design the invitations, or make the cake. What’s a bride to do? There can be some very good reasons to accept a friend’s kind offer to help, but also some excellent reasons to run the other way! These are the pros and cons of hiring friends as your wedding vendors.

Hiring your friends as your wedding vendors can be complicated; so complicated in fact that the only reason to remotely consider it is to save money. If things go terribly wrong (the amateur seamstress does not finish your wedding dress in time or the wedding pictures look terrible), it could very well spell an end to the friendship. So question number one is how solid is your friendship with the person? It either needs to be strong enough that it could withstand a major wedding-related snafu or conversely casual enough that losing the friend would not big a big deal.

Then there is the question of the how experienced the friend is at the service they are offering to provide. Just owning an expensive camera does not qualify someone to photograph a wedding, after all. Nor does liking to bake mean that your cousin can create a fabulous three tier wedding cake with handmade sugar flowers. If you are considering accepting a friend’s offer to make something for your wedding, be sure to look at samples of their work first, just as you would any professional vendor. Also ask yourself how important the service is to you. Maybe you don’t care if the wedding favors do not come out looking absolutely perfect, but would be terribly disappointed if your wedding album looked amateurish. It is best not to take a chance hiring a non-professional friend for anything which is super important to you.

One way to approach offers of help from friends is to only accept offers for goods which can be remade before the wedding if they turn out terribly. For instance, if you have a friend who wants to make your wedding invitations, you have the option of ordering new invitations from a store if hers do not end up looking good. On the other hand, if your wedding photos turn out looking terrible, you will not know until after the wedding when it is too late to do anything about it. I knew a bride whose sister wanted to make her some jewelry for her wedding. When it arrived in the mail, the bride nearly cried because the pearl earrings were so badly done. The good news was that she had time to purchase a beautiful pair of pearl earrings from a store before the wedding, but the bad news was that she had to hurt her sister’s feelings by telling her she would not be wearing the jewelry she had made. This is why dealing with friends and family can be so tricky.

Then there is the issue of payment. If someone offers their services for your wedding, you must offer to pay them for their time. When a friend is a professional, the bride should ask what her going rate is and offer to pay it; it is then up to the friend to refuse to accept money or offer a reduced rate. For non-professional friends, you should still offer to pay them a reasonable sum. If they decline payment and insist that their services are a gift, give them a nice tip and take them out to dinner. Of course, the bride should insist on paying for any materials used, such as flowers or baking supplies. And if you decide that the risk to your friendship or the quality of your wedding is simply not worth the lure of saving money, all you have to do is thank the friend for their offer of help and say that all you want is for them to join you at your wedding as an honored guest.

Author Bio: Bridget Mora writes for Silverland Jewelry about all the special considerations that go into planning the perfect wedding. Pearl earrings, necklaces, and bracelets from http://silverlandjewelry.com/ make beautiful gifts for weddings, birthdays, and holidays. All jewelry orders over $99 receive free shipping.

Category: Marriage
Keywords: pearl earrings, wedding vendors, wedding planning, hiring friends for wedding, amateur photographer