The wedding tax
Let me paint a picture for you: you and your significant other just got engaged, and it's day one of your wedding planning.
You don't know where to start, so you do what most of us do in a situation like this: you ask social media.
You create a nice cute "we're getting married!" post and ask other couples for guidance and suggestions, tips and tricks.
The comments start pouring like a flood, lots of them congratulate and wish you the best for your wedding, others share their experience, you'll also find the occasional vendor using some desperate cookie cutter comment to try and get hired (but that's a story for another post).
Then you see it, in the middle of all that mess, a comment that gets your attention like a red fox on a snowy mountain, gaining traction faster and faster: "just say it's for a family gathering, don't tell it's for a wedding or they'll 10x the price!"
What you witnessed is somebody bringing up the feared "Wedding tax", a common belief among soon-to-be-wed couples that vendors hear the "wedding" word and jack up the price for no reason at all.
Let's get one thing out of the way: "the wedding tax" is not real, it's a myth, and omitting that the thing you're looking for is for a wedding is going to be the single biggest disservice you'll do to yourself.
While i do understand the sentiment behind this thought, there are some very real reasons why weddings are way more expensive than a generic event like a family gathering or a random party on a friday.
I can already feel your eyes rolling in front of the screen, pointing your finger saying "of course you're defending this, you're a wedding videographer! You're clearly biased!". I get it but i promise, you'll change your mind if you get to the end of this.
Yes, i am a wedding videographer since 2017, weddings sustain my family and pay my mortgage, for this very reason i've decided to ask some other wedding vendors friends and some strangers to get their point of view, specifically catering businesses, hair stylists and floral designers.
Let's start with some things that all of the vendors share: weddings are a one-shot event, everything has to go smoothly, every moment cannot be missed, every second has to be planned, plan Bs and Cs need to be ready to be executed on a very short notice.
You only have once chance, even if you remarry later in life it won't be the same, this fact alone bears HUGE amounts of responsibility and pressure which allows for only perfect executions.
Moving on to specific vendors, starting with my own field: videography.
Being a videographer since 2017 i've worked many events, from weddings to corporate. In 2025 i've been asked to film a yearly event for big oil companies at a very fancy resort (key word "yearly). All i had to do was to deliver a 90 seconds highlight reel of a 5 hour conference, both portrait and landscape with no original audio. All it took was a suitcase with a main camera, a spare, 3 lenses, batteries and memories. Basically impossible to do a bad job, and if i did no big deal, there's another conference happening every year, nobody's going to remember the "2025 video fiasco".
Now think about a wedding, maybe even your wedding if you're planning or you've already did it.
First of all, not a recurring event. You plan a whole day for one year or more, investing huge amounts of time and resources into one of the most important days of your life that will be gone in just a half day.
The stakes are impossibly high, there are no second takes, it's a day packed with only "first times". The father is not going to see his daughter as a bride for the first time a second time, emotions aren't rehearsed, happy tears can't be cried again. As a videographer i am not allowed to fail in any measure or to miss even the smallest hug.
That's why i bring a full trunk of gear, 2 main cameras with spares, redundant lenses, batteries to power a tesla factory with battery charges, redundant memories, tripodS -plural-, all sorts microphones and extra lighting.
All of this multiplied x2 if there's a second videographer.
But gear is nothing without strategy, that's why in the monthS (plural, again) before your wedding i'll be communicating with ALL the other vendors involved to know exactly what's going to happen and when. Shooting the actual wedding is just 10% of the whole job.
But enough about me, let's talk about the catering.
If you think it's just about putting food on the table you couldn't be more wrong.
Weddings have tight timelines often tied to venues' noise regulations, some venues need to be silent by 1AM or even midnight. Caterers need to deliver warm food to 100+ people simultaneously with zero delays, just one mistake and the three hours dedicated to the dancefloor turn into a rushed one and a half hour of forced dancing, leaving you and your guests wanting more, and that's where highly trained catering staff show their true value. Skilled waiters will operate like clockwork, giving you all the time you need to enjoy the rest of the wedding party.
I've worked a wedding held in a regular restaurant with regular staff and regular cooks and trust me, you don't want to be seated at 7PM, get the second course at 11PM and cut the cake at 3AM (actual personal experience from a 2023 wedding).
On top of that, wedding dinners require an army of people cooking, serving food, drinks, but also loading and unloading and setting up tables, chairs, linens etc. The people running on the reception floor are just a small visible part of the huge machine that hides out of sight.
Moving on to hair stylists, without a doubt the most common complaint is "there's no difference between a hairdo for a random event and a wedding!"
Ladies (and the people who identify as such), i want you to go on a quick stroll on memory lane: when was the last time you went to get your hair done for a girls night? Did it last all night or started to fall apart right before going to the club?
Once again, it's not just about making your hair "look pretty". Weddings are long, often the hair is done in the morning with the ceremony being in the afternoon, it has to survive heat, emotions, hugs car rides, photoshoots, and somehow it'll still look flawless when it's time to go to bed after a very stressful day, this alone is something that requires a specific set of skills and the use of various products (that needless to say cost quite a lot of money).
But wait, there's more! Hair trials need to be done to perfectly match your wedding dress and even your bouquet, it's a whole stylistic study that takes place months before the wedding day.
Have you ever done something like this for a random night out? I don't think so.
And finally, floral designers.
Way too many people compare the bridal's bouquet to a common bouquet of flowers. Think for a second what happens to the bride's bouquet -one of the most important accessories, if not THE most important- during a wedding day: it'll be grabbed, moved, placed in random places and, at the end of the day, thrown to one lucky person. It's the focal point of a bride and one of the wedding's symbols, often kept at home as a floral decor for many years.
Flowers for a bouquet need to be carefully selected and prepared many days before the wedding, painstakingly maintained with specific products and designed to perfectly match the overall wedding aesthetic.
Same goes for all the floral decorations throughout the venue, from the ceremony to the cake cutting.
A long process that starts long before the wedding day, with site inspections, hand drawings, renderings and palette compositions. An art that takes many years of training and dedication.
Let me be clear, there are A-holes that bump up the price for the exact same service, they're known in wedding vendor's communities and believe me, they don't have a good reputation. There's always going to be the black sheep ruining the game for everyone else and we honest vendors will gladly help you spot them.