Wedding Scams: Surviving Wedding Planning

The calls start only shortly after you’ve come home from the big wedding show. You’ve gone from the kind of person that’s never won anything to the recipient of at least four grand prizes containing everything from full makeovers to complimentary vacations someplace sunny and warm (which sounds great in the middle of a New England winter). Sure you don’t remember signing up for those offers, but what’s the harm?

Now you’re in the second hour a very hard pitch for a very aggressive sales pitch and that great vacation or giveaway seems to have an awful lot of strings attached to it.

This is a scene that’s played out for plenty of couples that are caught in the whirlwind of Boston wedding planning. Couples in New England are spending upwards of $30,000 on their big day, and there are some unscrupulous people that want to have a piece of that pie and will dangle free stuff out like a carrot in order to get their foot in the door.

In an earlier entry in this series - the Bridal Fair Trap - we talked about what some of these tricks might look like, in this entry we’re going to give you some tools to identify and avoid them.

Digging Your Digital Moat:

The best way to avoid wedding scammers is to dig a digital moat between you and the world of planning your Boston wedding. Until it gets closer to your wedding day, there’s rarely anything involved in wedding planning that will require an instant response - most communications can wait and hour or even a couple of days (even those from your favorite Boston Wedding Photographer). You can dig this moat with two very simple tools.

1) A New England Wedding Email Address:

When you start planning your wedding the first thing you should do is set up a specific email for all of your fact-finding, communications, and any time you’re signing up for a service related particularly to the wedding. It’s also easier to share that e-mail with your partner and anyone else that needs to be looped into planning so there’s no need to worry about forwarding or hitting reply-all (and services with Google Drive can help you keep a lot of basic planning organized).

2) A Google Voice Number:

Not everything gets done over e-mail, there are still some vendors and events that might want to field initial consultations and communications over the telephone. Using a VOIP number (and there are several free ones) means that you can move most of that straight to voicemail so you can follow-up at your leisure. Of course when it comes to people that will probably never need to call you (like bridal fairs), a fake number will work just as well.

Hone Your Google-Fu:

You’re a savvy consumer and it’s nothing to just do a quick Google search on an offer or a company to see if they’re on the level. But this isn’t always a foolproof method since search engines can be manipulated and reviews can be faked. One simple trick is to just add the word “scam” into your search, which will tend to turn up more negative results unless the company has been especially thorough in scrubbing their online reputation. Also ask around alternative resources, there are a lot of Bridal forums and wedding groups (on Facebook and other social sites) where you can ask for real feedback (which takes more effort to fake than most of these operations will invest).

Ask the Big Question:

When you’re planning your wedding, everyone is trying to sell you something. If it’s not clear what they’re trying to sell you, then that’s a red flag.

For example - you favorite Boston Wedding photographer gives out a bunch of engagement sessions every year. We’re pretty transparent that we want to turn those couples into full-blown wedding clients, and it’s pretty easy to draw a line between the two.

But what are people giving away laser-engraved champagne flutes selling? What do the people giving you cruise tickets want you to buy? If they’re not able to give you a clear answer about that (and what it will cost), then there’s a good chance it’s not something you’d be interested in buying under other circumstances.

What are some of your strategies for giving yourself a little breathing room during wedding planning? Have you run into one of these shadier marketing deals when planning your Boston wedding or is there something we’ve missed, let us know in the comments.

Ryan Richardson Photography, Massachusetts Wedding Photography, Massachusetts Engagement Photography, Boston Wedding Photography, Cape Cod Wedding Photography, New England Wedding Photography.