How To Start The Wedding Vendor Search (Plus, How Vendors Work Together To Ensure Event Success!)

The bubbly’s been poured, the glasses clinked, relatives called, and kisses shared. You’re engaged, yay! This is one of life’s pivotal moments – enjoy it!

While you’re riding that wave of happiness, channel some of that energy into reading this piece. We’re going to talk about wedding vendors.

We’ll cover how to start the wedding vendor search (we know a thing or two – we’re professional wedding DJs!) and discuss how wedding vendors work together to ensure a successful wedding.

Grab a beverage, get comfy, and let’s get into it!

While this is not an exhaustive list, here’s a snapshot of the vendors you’ll want to secure well in advance of The Big Day:

• Venue*

• Wedding coordinator/planner

• Photographer

• Caterers

• Cake bakery

• Entertainment (Bands, professional wedding DJs)

• Makeup artists and hairstylists

• Officiant

• Florist

If you choose to hire a wedding planner, they can help sort out vendor contracts, provide preferred vendor lists, set the schedule for your wedding day, and generally ensure that everyone is corralled and where they need to be.

*This little asterisk means this selection is important! The Venue should be among the first vendor you book – and most require at least 12 months notice. Your wedding date is contingent upon your preferred venue’s availability, so as soon as you know that wedding bells are on the way, start shopping around!

Before selecting your vendors, it’s important to prepare for information overload. Create a spreadsheet, open a fresh Google Doc, open the trusty Notes app, or dig out a good old fashioned legal pad and pen.

• First, do a little local research. Need a DJ? Google ‘wedding dj service in Chicago/near me/City Name’. Doing this will give you the most relevant results in your area for the vendor you’re researching.

• During said research, look for objective, recent reviews on their Google My Business profile, Yelp,The Knot/Wedding Wire, and Social Media. These will paint a pretty clear picture of how they do business and what people liked about them!

• Once you’ve whittled down a shortlist for each vendor, it’s time to set up some calls and/or appointments. A good vendor will have their contact information front and center – usually via email, social media DM, or a handy contact form on their website that you can fill out.

• Ahead of your meeting, get psyched to be involved in a detailed conversation! Show enthusiasm, interest, and come prepared to talk about your vision for your day.

Also, we love to chat here at Toast & Jam! We’re pretty proud of our bumpin’ reviews – check out the love we get on The Knot Vendor Marketplace here! All our interested clients need to do is fill out our super cute contact form, and we gotchu from there.

The way we see it, wedding vendors are all a part of a team. Team Wedding Vendor. Heh.

To get specific, professional wedding DJ services, caterers, the venue staff, and photographer(s) all rely on each other, to varying extents, to help the night run smoothly.

We’ve all got to be on the same brainwave to ensure the night rolls smoothly. Ceremony start time, cocktail hour, toasts and speeches, and set up and tear down are just a few of the times throughout the night that we’ll interact and need to work together.

To be on the winning team, we’re respectful and polite to other vendors and venue staff. This means using the right elevator or staircase, the correct door for equipment loading, wearing the correct attire (no slobs around here!), and generally coming correct.

We’re Toast & Jam, and we’re pretty awesome Chicago DJs. We want to turn your wedding into a super-fun dance party that your friends and fam reminisce over for years to come.

Sound cool? Cool. Fill out our short little contact form here so we can get a sense of your needs, wants, and desires - and we’ll go from there!

Bonus: We exist on social media! Here’s our Facebook, and here’s our Instagram. Happy scrolling.