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If you are planning your wedding right now, one of the important stuff you may overlook is hotel reservations for your honeymoon.

Wedding budget is definitely tight (unless you are really rich!) and couples are mostly looking for the lowest rate they can find.

In the midst of busyness, hotel reservation seemed to become among the last priorities due to the reason that honeymoon is after the wedding.

“So who cares what is after the wedding? Lets settle what is to be done till the wedding” - this is what most brides and grooms will think.

What about those who have suddenly awakened and realised that they should book their hotels for their honeymoons?

Looking at the hundreds of hotel booking sites, printing them out to compare the rates are good ways to be overwhelmed and become lost.

Don’t forget you have a million and other to-do tasks on your wedding to-do list!

In fact, there is no need to go through this hassle of browsing all the hundred sites to get the best bargain.

Here are 3 ways you can do it - stress free.

1. HotelCombined.com
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I have the luxury of knowing the boss of my bridal studio and this makes the difference in terms of treatment from their employees.

I have heard of unfair treatment of “ordinary” clients just because of the lower value of bridal package they have paid.

It is not easy to tolerate this kind of treatment. It is going to make you feel from uneasy to angry to frustrated and eventually to helpless.

Wedding planning is supposed to be fun and things are supposedly to go along as plan. The professional bridal service providers are supposed to be professional enough to give the best customer service to any customer and at least treat them all equally.

These are all the assumptions before wedding planning. This is the kind of image portrayed by bridal magazines and tv commercials.

No one really knows that biasness still exist even between customers and bridal studio staff.

It literally means staff gives different service to different customers they are serving.

There are 7 pointers to take note even before signing on the dotted line:

1. Sales person is not the same as those coordinators who will eventually serve you.
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Yesterday I was speaking to one of my good friends who is getting married next year.

She will be signing up for the wedding package in one of the local hotels.

The price per table is currently at about S$800 plus.

I was going through some of the must-do stuffs with her so that she will benefit more from the contract.

These very powerful tips I am going to share with you has saved me at least S$1000 or even more.

I have this belief that hotels are there to eat us, the small consumers and thus, we have to play hard to avoid being bullied in some sense. Anyway, we are paying at least S$20,000 for our wedding banquet.

I’m sure we are already considered very mild in our negotiation compared to some corporate business managers who are so well-trained in their negotiation skills.

I do work with corporate partners before and you should see how sharp their tongues were. They were soft, graceful and gentle in their bargaining skills and the sales person attending to them had no choice but to say yes to every one of their requests.

And they always send in the Miss Pretty and Mr Handsome to do the negotiation so that they can use their physical appearance to break the wall.

Alright, let me do a quick summary of what I had told her so that you can benefit as well:

7 Must-Know Before You Sign the Wedding Contract

1. Whatever agreed terms that are not in the contract, please request the hotel staff attending to you to write them in the contract and counter sign.

Turn-over rate in hotel staff is high and is common to have a different coordinator attending to you after a few months have passed. I have mine changed 3 times.

Thus to avoid yourself getting into a difficulty spot to explain again, get the current hotel coordinator to counter-sign so that there will be no question ask in the future.

2. Verbally clarify any issue that you are unclear.

Don’t assume as it is. Contract is one funny piece of paper where the power of English comes into play. And only those who know the game can win.

The words may appear as they are but can have another definition, according to the hotels.

For example, if the contract states “day rental of helper’s room”, don’t assume that their day is 24 hours or as in 1 whole day. Check with them what the hotel means.
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I am always very amazed by how a package that is worth S$3,300 can shoot up to S$8,000 or even more!!!

This is when there is no communication and common understanding between the bride and groom.

It all started when my friend stepped into the bridal studio with her finance…

It was the day that they were going to choose their wedding photos for their wedding album.

Normally, though the album can only contain 26 pictures with only 26 poses, the photographer is smart enough to have taken at least 200 photos or much much more…

Why?

Here comes the reason…when the couple sat down and their coordinator “assisted” them in choosing the photos, the coordinator would identify who the decision maker was.

Let’s say the fiancee was the one and she could choose any photo that she loved and the fiance had absolutely no say…the coordinator would focus on the fiancee and “complimenting and praising” any photo that she picked up…every photo of her in her wedding dress looked fabulous!!!

This was to encourage her to want the photo to be part of the album.

Mind you….every addition photo add up another $80 to $100 more to the bill….of course, the coordinator would want his customers to buy more. From the final amount, he will get a certain percentage off from the total payment as commission.

Normally, couples won’t have discussed what their ceiling budget was and what their expectations were.
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Many brides emailed me telling me how tough it was to bargain with the hotel coordinators…

It was tough for them even to request for something that they truly deserve.

I have heard brides saying that “they will try”…or “they will see the mood of the coordinator”…or “the coordinators are so experienced. They just won’t barged. What can I do?”

Seriously, I am someone who don’t even know how to bargain. I will always take the first offer.

Wedding planning isn’t easy and that is why I bought this to help me…

I didn’t learn bargaining until the hotel that I had my wedding dinner at was too irresponsible. It was then we felt we must do something about it. If not, we would feel like mistreated.

What actually happened at the hotel was that our coordinator resigned. It was already the second time. 2 staff left in 5 months.

However, the new coordinator didn’t inform us. It was when we emailed our coordinator, then the new one replied us saying that she had “taken a long leave”. By that time, it was about a month before our wedding.

When we called the hotel, the Director of Food & Beverage said that she was on study-leave. When we wanted to bring this matter up to the Director of Business Management, she said that she had resigned too and now one of the managers in the same department had taken over as the acting-Director.

Wow, 2 staffs left the department and it must be something awfully worng that had happened.
The worse thing is the hotel herself was not even sure if she had quitted or she was on long leave. Or are they throwing to hide “something”?

We felt that the life of our wedding dinner was endangered!!
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Around this time last year, me and my fiancee were desperately searching for the right hotel for our wedding.

We emailed about 50 hotels and only 25 replied and from these 25 hotels, we shortlisted them based on prices, accessibility and the number of tables they could accomodate.

I’m not saying the hotels’ ballrooms were too small to fit our wedding. The opposite is in fact the case. Not many hotels can accomodate to only 18 tables or less.

At that point in time, being new to the wedding industry, we were absolutely clueless of what to do in planning our wedding. Luckily, my friends were willing to help out.

They helped me to negotiate. They have strong negotiation skills.

Seriously, we were not very good negotiators and that was why we needed help.

These were the times I found it helpful to ask for more perks or freebies.

1. Before signing the contract, ask for more free corkages and any other freebies or special requests you have. If the sales manager is unable to compromise, just bring your business to other hotels.

2. There will be a time when you and the hotel coordinator will sit with you and your spouse-to-be to discuss the programmes in details. So this is time you can tell your coordiantor your requests…

Some requests that you can make:
1. More free corkages
2. More helpers room
3. More guest book
4. Free wedding cake AND bottle of champagne
5. In any case if the given helper’s room is not to be used on actual day, ask for the days to be shifted to some other days when you can come back for a holiday.

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The hotel gave us MANY surprises before our wedding. Surprises = shocks!!!

In February 06, we contacted the Business manager, P and she left in June 06.
It was during this time, the 2nd coordinator, S emailed us telling us she will take over P. The hassle we went through was we have to brief the new coordinator everything we had discussed with P.

One month before our wedding, we tried contacting S but couldn’t locate her after many attempts. No response to emailsthat we sent to her and no call from her. Then, suddenly, V emailed us telling us she was the new coordinator as S had left.

V told us she was temporarily on leave for a very long time and the Director that we contacted told us she left for studies. We kept on hearing different versions of stories.

S left about 1 month after she took up the job.

We were really displeased with the hotel’s service at that point in time and my wife was terribly affected. We lodged a complaint to the Director level, only to realise the Director had resigned recently too.

Oh my!!! Seems like everyone was leaving the hotel.
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