David Tutera in Court with disgruntled clients

I just stumbled across an article about David Tutera being taken to court by his clients for failing to turn up at their wedding. As I read on I discovered that the reason behind this was because his clients didn’t make their final payment. This just reiterates the point I have made previously about needing a water tight contract.

David Tutera claims he was told not to come as the wedding funds had dried up and the couple are saying that isn’t the case. This could be an interesting one to watch, but it is a dilemma that could face any wedding planner whether they are a celebrity planner or not.

Here is the Tip I wrote about this very subject a couple of months ago:

Show me the money. Hopefully we all love what we do, but we don’t work for free just because we enjoy it. Getting paid can sometimes cause issues and it is certainly hard as you don’t have a product you can refuse to send when your clients don’t pay you. Even though contracts are important and you need to make sure they are water tight, is it really worth suing your client over $500 or even $1000? The chances are it will cost you more in legal fees and you don’t want to get yourself a reputation of being a nightmare planner. So how do you ensure you get paid for what you do? It’s really quite simple – no money no planner. I always got paid for what I did before I did the work. Normally I requested 50% of my fee up front and once that was received and cleared in my bank account then I started work. Once I had completed the work covered by the fee then I invoiced for another 25% and so on. If you are doing ‘On the Day Coordination’ only then make sure you are paid prior to the wedding and that it states that in your contract. You will be perfectly within your rights then to refuse to turn up to the wedding if they haven’t paid you. I know it sounds harsh but at the end of the day you are running a business the same as anyone else. I often found it helped to ask my client if they worked for free, and when they shook their head I would say well neither do I?

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