Getting Ghosted - Don't Leave Your Wedding Vendors On Read

Researching Vendors: Communication Goes A Long Way

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by Regina George! Wait…. sorry, let’s try that again!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been ghosted by a wedding vendor. Now raise your hand if you’ve ever ghosted a wedding vendor. Looks like we’ve got some wedding couple and vendor crime here!

On Wednesdays, we wear pink!
Photo Credit: Lauren Carroll Photography

I know, it’s complicated. You’re on The Knot, you’re reaching out to every vendor in a specific category. Ten of them reply with availability and pricing and now you only want to talk to the three of them that fit your budget. But those other pesky vendors just keep emailing you to see if you still want to talk. So what do you do? #leftonread #deleted

Photo Credit: The Masters In Love Photography

Let’s talk about ghosting vendors and how you should handle communication with a vendor you’re no longer interested in working with. Once you reach out to a vendor for more info, they enter you into their pipeline of inquiries. A professional vendor will follow up with you multiple times to see if you received their info, if you want to set up a call, or to check in and see if they can answer any questions you may have. The “checking in” process is likely 2-5 emails, unless you return their communication and reply to them. I personally send 2-3 touchback emails to see if an inquiry is interested in setting up a phone call or needs more information. These emails are spread out over a week or two.

If you’re not receiving follow ups to your inquiry, and you haven’t been in communication with a vendor that replied to your initial inquiry, YOU may be getting ghosted!

I’ve been Ghosted: Now What?

If a vendor has ghosted you, I truly am sorry! Not everyone has a great system in place to manage inquiries. Some vendors get overwhelmed answering client emails during busy seasons and neglect to follow up with inquiries. My best advice if you’ve been ghosted by a vendor that you truly are interested in, is to send them a follow up email. Let them know if you don’t hear from them within 24-48 hours (or whatever you’re comfortable with) that you will assume they are booked and move on to contacting other vendors. This gives them a push to reply and sets a deadline on your communication.

This is exactly how we handle couples who ghost us!

 So you’ve inquired with a vendor that doesn’t fit your budget, or you don’t want to pursue that vendor anymore for some other reason. Hey friend, I’m here to tell you that IT’S NOT PERSONAL! Vendors are not going to get their feelings hurt if you tell them they are out of your budget or that you changed your mind, or that you booked someone else, or whatever the reason is. JUST RESPOND! Even a simple “thanks but we’ve gone in another direction” is sufficient.

Photo Credit: Tasha Rae Photography

It’s not you, Its me!

Letting your vendors know that you’re not interested will close your inquiry, save you from reading emails you don’t care about, and save them the time of unnecessarily following up with you.

Some vendors (yeah I mean me, but others also) will ask why you chose not to work with them. This is not the wedding equivalent of “does this outfit make me look fat?” We simply want your feedback. Let us know if we were out of your budget. Or if you felt the services didn’t fit what you were looking for. Or even: “Hey, I connected with another vendor and they blew me away and I love them!” That’s totally fine! We want you to hire the right people, even if it’s not us!

So in short: Répondez s'il vous plaît!

Don’t forget to RSVP!!
Photo Credit: Geaux Garcia Photography