How Wedding Discounts Sites Are Killing Wedding Businesses and Stifling Creativity

Cheap wed­ding dis­counts and the dam­age they cause

Oooh… “she’s a bit ranty today”, I hear you say. But not with­out rea­son, I promise! Cheap wed­ding deals are all very well in the­ory, until you under­stand the mechan­ics of wed­ding dis­count web­sites. And the sto­ries I’ve been hear­ing about how they work have turned my stom­ach, to be honest.

So what’s so ter­ri­ble about cheap wed­ding dis­counts sites?

1. You get what you pay for! If some­thing is cheap, it’s cheap for a rea­son. Items may be poor qual­ity, or there may be a catch. Always check the small print before you buy, and always, always ask for a sam­ple when buy­ing wed­ding sta­tionery or sim­i­lar items online.

2. The choice is so lim­ited — look­ing at one wed­ding dis­counts web­site as I type, there are a hand­ful of offers on pho­tog­ra­phy and on the day ser­vices, as well as some sta­tionery com­pe­ti­tions. If you’re deter­mined to save money on your wed­ding then there are bet­ter ways of doing it! Use the new wed­ding search engine at www.ukwed.com and a sim­ple search will bring up many more wed­ding sup­pli­ers in your area, as well as forum dis­cus­sions, blog reviews and sup­pli­ers’ own web­sites. You’ll find miles more choice and often bet­ter prices.

3. Dis­count sites dam­age small busi­nesses. There’s no two ways about it — these are middle-men who make their money by tak­ing a cut from small busi­nesses. I think it’s lazy and exploita­tive. The gen­eral feel­ing from my friends in the wed­ding indus­try seems to be “if I ever get des­per­ate enough to adver­tise on Vowscher, shoot me.”

Dis­count sites are aimed at cou­ples who are look­ing for bar­gain base­ment wed­ding prod­ucts and ser­vices. Let me be clear: if you want some­thing really cheap, you’re com­pro­mis­ing on qual­ity — there’s no other way. These sites are under­valu­ing crafts­peo­ple and qual­ity providers. Wed­ding invi­ta­tions from a voucher site, or even eBay? Think about the hourly wage the design­ers are mak­ing… could you feel good about buy­ing hand­made items from some­one who was earn­ing a pit­tance for hours of work? No, me neither.

I have been dis­cussing wed­ding voucher sites with my friends on face­book — there’s a dis­cus­sion here which you can see on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog face­book page. Please join the chat if you have an opin­ion on wed­ding dis­count sites to share.

My friend Kristin Mitchell is a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher, and first brought the issue of cheap wed­ding dis­counts to my atten­tion. Kristin’s views on dis­count sites are the same as mine — and she explains their impact so well:

“I think group dis­count web­sites can poten­tially work, for busi­nesses who have enough of a profit mar­gin to fac­tor in any poten­tial loss through book­ings. How­ever, the major­ity of the wed­ding indus­try is a small cot­tage indus­try, con­sist­ing of indi­vid­ual self-employed sole traders oper­at­ing with smaller profit mar­gins and this is the sort of busi­ness that is cur­rently being tar­geted by Vowscher.

“In that regard, these cheap dis­count web­sites are to small busi­nesses what pay­day loans with mas­sive APRs do to low-income fam­i­lies. They offer a quick fix but ulti­mately the price is a longer term problem.

“By turn­ing a wed­ding into a purely bar­gain num­bers game, you risk los­ing the beauty and per­son­al­ity that comes through hand­pick­ing skilled artisans.”

The longer term prob­lem cre­ated by these cheap-as-chips wed­ding web­sites is their effect on the small busi­nesses who are des­per­ate enough to use them. Imag­ine, for exam­ple, a cal­lig­ra­pher offer­ing a big dis­count there. Yes, you could have place cards writ­ten for bar­gain prices. But there’d be a cal­lig­ra­pher work­ing for peanuts, earn­ing too lit­tle to pay her bills, won­der­ing if a cou­ple of pounds an hour was all she was worth.

The impact on that cal­lig­ra­pher (and trust me — she’s a myth!) would be pretty soul-destroying. Where is the future in a qual­ity busi­ness reduced to offer­ing their ser­vices at a loss? Bet­ter to give up on the cre­ative dream and head for the job cen­tre — and there’d be one more cre­ative wed­ding busi­ness destroyed for the sake of deals and discounts.

A plea to brides and grooms all over the UK

I implore you — and with the lovely crafts­peo­ple who earn a liv­ing mak­ing wed­dings spe­cial on my side — Please avoid the likes of Vowscher. Wed­ding dis­counts and cheap wed­ding deals are there to profit from you while exploit­ing inde­pen­dent businesses.

There’s always a catch — for cou­ples, for sup­pli­ers who get caught up in these awful schemes. It’s a price too high to pay.

Your thoughts, ques­tions and sto­ries are always wel­come — use the com­ments box below if you have some­thing to say. I’m lis­ten­ing — and often your com­ments on top­ics like this pro­voke the best and most enlight­en­ing dis­cus­sions of all on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog.

Claire x