Wedding planners are professionals, just like doctors, lawyers, cooks, landscapers, carpenters, etc.. They get paid very well, and in some cases extremely well. They are paid to do their jobs in the best way they know how.
In order for them to do a good job, they need to be able to get close to the bride and the groom. They have to be able to understand how they think and how each decision will affect the entire family. In order to get close enough to be able to come up with ideas for the wedding, they have to spend a significant amount of time and effort in understanding the bride and the groom. Because of this, many people become attached to their wedding planners, and become emotional about giving their wedding planner a significantly large tip.
In all honestly, most of us need a wedding planner because there is just so much going on all at once and there is no one available to actually coordinate everything without getting emotional about many decisions. A wedding planner is the objective body who helps to make decisions and who coordinates the wedding without having any real emotional attachment.
If the goal of tipping is to motivate the wedding planner to do a better job, then what about the other professional services we use? Why do we not tip say, our doctors who may help in saving our lives? Doctors give us invaluable tools to help us to live in the healthiest way possible. However, we do not even think twice about giving a tip to our doctors. In fact, we sometimes cringe at having to pay a twenty-dollar co-pay at a doctor’s office. This may be less than a tip that one pays at a fancy restaurant, and undeniably it is far less than the amount you would tip a wedding planner. Not to mention that a wedding by itself is exquisitely expensive. Just the venue could run $30,000 on average, without counting the expense of the dresses, flowers, limosine, tuxedos, and vendors like photography, videography,etc.
Just because a person, i.e. a wedding planner works so closely with us, we feel so obligated to tip him/her. Why should we have this desire to tip someone that is working closely with us? Why should we feel so guilty if we do not tip our wedding planners? The chefs in the Restaurants work hard as well, in a hot, sultry environment, filled with grease and they do a tedious job concocting each meal. Yet, we do not seek out the chefs in the restaurants and give them a tip. Why have we as a people designed our world in such a way that only certain professions get to have tips, and others do not?
Why is it okay to tip a waitress or or a waiter and even a wedding planner, but it is unheard of to tip a doctor or a chef? Some even believe that the larger the tip, the more the planner was appreciated. What people fail to understand is that there are other ways of expressing gratitude. Tipping is only one way. A very simple and less expensive way is to continue to refer people in the future to the wedding planner. It will not only keep the planner busy, but will build up their reputation in the community and in the town.
It is tough to comprehend why some people should get a tip for doing what they are supposed to be doing at work. Remember that it is the job of a wedding planner to get close to the bride and the groom in order to do a good job. They need to tap into the tastes of the bride and groom as well as their own experiences as wedding planners, in order to find something spectacular and original for the wedding. It is their job to think of things that the bride and groom would not think of, mainly because they are just too stressed with the enormity of the biggest day in their lives. Tipping a planner is just not necessary, especially considering all the money that is going into the wedding to begin with.
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