Why You Should Not Lie To Your Nigerian Wedding Vendors
Lying to your Nigerian Wedding Planner for instance, is like lying to your doctor. When you lie to your doctor, you get the wrong prescription.
This is similar to when you lie to your wedding vendors. You get the wrong recommendation and something will likely go wrong at your wedding.
This article will help you understand why clients lie and why lying to your wedding vendors will most likely make you cry on your wedding day. It would also help you see how this can affect not only you but almost everybody that would be attending your wedding.
Why Couples Lie To Their Nigerian Wedding Vendors?
When I just started my wedding planning career in 2015, I used to charge a percentage of the total wedding budget.
I noticed that couples lied about how much their wedding budget was, in a bid to pay less for my wedding planning services.
So if their wedding budget was N5 million Naira, they would tell me N3 million Naira.
Then I started charging a basic fee per number of guests. For example, N300,000 Naira for 500 guests.
I noticed that couples now started to lie about the number of guests that they were expecting at their wedding.
I soon realised that couples did the same with other wedding vendors as well.
Related: Nigerian Wedding Planners: How much they charge
This brings me to my first reason as to why Nigerian couples lie to their wedding vendors.
1. In a bid to reduce cost
This number one rule is the foundation to all the other rules. The number one reason many Nigerian couples lie to their wedding vendor is to get lower prices. They lie about their number of guests, wedding budget, wedding details etc to get lower cost… Some even go as far as not telling their wedding vendors, such as their makeup artist, hair stylist, etc that the are doing a wedding, all in a bid to save money.
2. Trust issues
A lot of Nigerian couples have trust issues. Probably because of some of the scary stories they have heard about some unprofessional Nigerian wedding vendors. So they either want to handle some certain things themselves or lie about certain things.
As a result, they tend to have trust issues and lie about certain things. For instance, a couple may not want to tell their planner that they would be inviting an A-list music artist to their wedding, so that the Planner won’t see them in a certain way and start billing them more for other regular items.
3. To give a false representation of who they truly are
Just like I mentioned in the last point, some Nigerian couples tend to give false representation of who they truly are, as they believe that this may allow some Nigerian wedding vendors to charge them more.
For instance, a governor’s daughter may pretend to be someone else, just so that some Nigerian wedding vendors won’t charge her a fortune for her wedding.
4. They believe that everybody in Nigeria is corrupt and only after their selfish gains
Probably because of how corrupt they think Nigeria is, as a country… quite a number of couples seem to believe that Nigerian Wedding vendors are also corrupt and they are all finding ways to leech off them.
As a result of this, many Nigerian couples tend to give inaccurate numbers, thinking that they would be charged anyway for more than what they need.
5. Scary stories of how some vendors over-price abroad couples
There have been cases where by some Nigerian vendors over-price couples are based in the abroad. For instance, an abroad number reaches out to a vendor and the vendor sends an inflated price just because they see that it is an abroad number.
6. At the mention of ‘wedding’ everything goes up!
There is this general belief that at the mention of wedding, everything goes up! It is believed that vendors charge more for Nigerian wedding events than any other type of Nigerian event.
Wedding vendors tend to believe that couples have big budgets and limited time frame to plan a wedding and feel that they may be somewhat desperate, hence the high charging for some services.
While this may be true, it still does not justify lying to your vendors. Some couples even go as far as NOT telling their vendors that it is a wedding they are celebrating. They lie to their makeup artist, hairstylist, even wedding venues about the kind of event they are having.
7. Scary stories of unprofessional vendors
Many couples fear that some Nigerian Wedding Vendors are professional while some are not. The truth is that there is a 50% chance of a Nigerian vendor disappointing you, even if the vendor was recommended by another.
Related: How To Prevent Nigerian Wedding Vendors From Disappointing You.
For instance, a bride lying to her Asooke vendor about her real wedding date. So she backs it up by four weeks before the actual date, because of the stories she has heard about Nigerian Asooke Vendors disappointing. (I also sometimes advise them to back up their wedding date, just to avoid being disappointed and also because I’ve also had my own fair share of disappointments.
So Should You Lie To Your Wedding Vendor?
The short answer is NO. I believe that Wedding vendors charge higher for a reason. Nigerian Weddings are single-handedly the most difficult Nigerian events to plan. Every single detail is important. The stress that comes with planning a Nigerian wedding does not in any way compare to planning any other Nigerian event.
This mark-up that comes with everything associated with weddings, is simply because the deliverables for weddings are different.
For instance, the makeup for a bride will be different for that of a wedding guest. The details for a wedding decor will definitely be different from a birthday decor.
There are also the invisible labour costs that goes into planning a Nigerian wedding that a lot of people do not see. The multiple phone calls, meetings, complex wedding briefs, the plenty family members you need to deal with, the extra able hands to help etc… it is A LOT!
These are some lies that can totally ruin your wedding day
1. Number of guests
Many times, the number of guests is the focal point of many wedding planning processes. Because this determines the hall space, wedding budget, choice of vendors etc…
Wedding TIP: Not every vendor can handle large events, there is a reason why couples ask planners for the highest number of guests they have managed in the past, this is because it takes a special skill to be able to manage large number of guests properly.
2. Not giving your wedding vendors the right information.
For example, not telling your decorator that your wedding is a themed wedding or your caterer making food provisions for 350 guests when you know you are expecting 500 guests. Or telling your makeup artist that it is a birthday celebration you are having and not a wedding.
3. Wedding Budget Lies
Not being truthful about your wedding budget. Your wedding budget is 10million but you tell your wedding planner 5 million, just because they would be charging a percentage off your wedding budget.
4. Lying about important family details
For instance, your father is a king but you conveniently leave this important piece of information out to your wedding planner/coordinator, because you feel like once they know, they would start billing you unnecessarily… forgetting that your father would come with other kings and Kings don’t eat in public and would need a secluded room to eat at the venue. But since you decided to leave out this information, provision wasn’t provided for this and this may cause issues on the wedding day.
Why lying to your Nigerian wedding vendor is a bad idea
Chances are that the wedding vendor will eventually get to learn about the actual details of your wedding and what do you think will happen?
1. It will backfire and ruin your day
For example, you are expecting 800 guests for your wedding and you tell your planner 500 guests and as a result, your planner gets a wedding venue that can sit 600 guests tops… what do you think will happen when 800 guests shows up? Not only would they not get a space to sit, but they would probably not get food to eat.
2. It is unfair to everybody involved in the wedding planning.
It is unfair to your Planner, as it portrays them as unprofessional and makes them look like they don’t know what they are doing on the wedding day. It is unfair to your wedding guests, as they deserve to be treated properly after inviting them to your wedding. It is also unfair to your wedding vendors, because they may be perceived as being dishonest about what their deliverables should have been, when the actual problem lies with the couple.
3. Weddings are planned months in advance, there is a very high possibility that the truth will be revealed one way or the other before your wedding day.
Once Nigerian vendors get to know that you are lying about some aspects of your wedding, you may not get the same level of services you would have gotten if you had told the truth from the get go. Is that really a risk you are willing to take?
4. You will still end up spending more money.
I recently had an event where the couple refused to tell their decorator that it was a themed wedding. When I came on board as their wedding planner, I started to go over the details with their vendors and got to know that many of them (if not all), weren’t informed about the wedding being a themed wedding.
I was surprised because the couple seemed to be very particular about their wedding theme and it made me wonder why they left such an important detail out to their vendors. Then I realized that they had thought that this would help them get reduced prices from their wedding vendors.
But as their planner, I couldn’t let this very important piece of information slide, as I knew how this could affect their wedding and had to do what was right by giving the right information to their wedding vendors and this became a problem when the vendors began re-edit their initial quotes to be able to accommodate the new information, which led to a significant increase in the wedding budget.
Wedding TIP: Themed Weddings in Nigeria are more expensive to plan than regular weddings.
So why not try being honest from the get go? This will save you unnecessary and unplanned cost.
There are honest ways to cut cost on your wedding budget
How, you may ask. If you are keen on not spending above your wedding budget, There is a method I adopt and I will share with you.
I give my vendors a detailed brief about the particular service and get a quote from them, then I start to negotiate. We then make compromises here and there and then we are good to go.
A helpful vendor may even be willing to help you reduce costs by telling you what you can cut down on. Some may even be nice enough to refer you to a more affordable vendor, if their prices is way out of your budget. (this is rare but it happens, especially when they have trainees that they have trained and can trust them to deliver).
You can also read HERE where I wrote about creating a realistic Nigerian wedding budget for 2022.
You can also plan your Nigerian Weddings in off-peak periods. Between May and August. But definitely not in April or December.
There are lots of wedding vendors for different categories, you can always get wedding vendors within your wedding budget. Just do more research and don’t limit your search to Instagram, there are many other platforms that can help you get more affordable wedding vendors.
Do you want to avoid making costly mistakes at your Nigerian Wedding? Then contact Olamide of La’ Heiress Weddings to handle your Nigerian wedding.
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Olamide~ The Heiress
Head Planner,
La’ Heiress Weddings