Member- sunshadebride
- 2 years ago
- Wedding: May 2017
Hey bees – the subject line here may be a bit misleading but I wasn’t sure how to summarize this situation.
I had a family friend work as our wedding planner. She’s related to my Mother-In-Law and she did a pretty great job for the wedding. Her rate was SUPER low (basically charged me her week of rate) and we worked together easily over a year.
The reason I’m feeling bad about what she got paid now is how much things changed for the wedding and how much work she ended up doing near the end. We had originally planned a somewhat lowkey wedding at first.. but both our families stepped in to help more and the wedding became a lot more. I wouldn’t call it extravagant but it wasn’t this chill beachy wedding we had originally thought of.
Our planner was here and there with helping, and when she did help it was amazing. I will say though that at times I felt I needed to just do some of the tasks myself bc she was slow to email, get responses, organize things, etc. And I honestly let it slide bc she was family and again, she was prob. getting into a wedding much bigger than originally thought out.
There was a moment near the wedding when she asked for more $$ for a hotel room bc she was potentially going to stay an extra (unexpected) night but we worked it out.. but in that moment, she mentioned she was going into the red with planning… And now she’s asking my mom/me to pay back a small fee she spent on getting some props for the wedding made.
I also have a feeling she saw how upscale the wedding got, like how much my mom ended up spending on things to make it nicer, and it makes me feel awkward that she got paid what she did. However I am the one who paid her, and who handled that cost, not my parents.
I think she did the best she could with the wedding and how it grew, and part of me feels bad bc she is family and I don’t know if we overstepped it with how much we had her help. I have a dear friend who is also in my husband’s family about it before, and she told me the planner would let us know if she def needed more compensation or expected it, wanted to change the contract, etc…
I could be overthinking this and the wedding is over, and at this point maybe I should just drop it because everyone else is paid for. I also did what I could to tip her the day of the wedding and I could potentially send her another little tip now.
I know this is a pretty specific situation but if any bees have advice on what to do, I’m open to hearing. I think my biggest issues are I feel like she did a lot and she is family, so I can’t tell if we overstepped or she did it all due to us being family so its fine.
