Wedding Vendor Tracker

The standard structure with most wedding vendors is a deposit that holds the date, plus a final balance due before the event — deposits commonly run 20–50% of the total, with the balance falling due 30 to 14 days out. In many contracts the deposit is not an advance on the price: it is what takes the vendor off the market for your date, which is why it tends to be non-refundable even when you are the one who cancels.

Each vendor sets its own final-balance date looking only at its own contract, and nobody coordinates across suppliers — so the photographer, the caterer, the band and the rental company often land in the same two or three weeks. Nobody is at fault; the pileup is structural. Copying every due date onto this one sheet the day you sign is what makes it visible months ahead, instead of the week it arrives.

Before signing, many planners suggest getting four things in writing: the exact deposit amount, the exact due date of the final balance, what happens if you pay late, and whether the deposit is refundable under any condition — assume it is not unless the contract says otherwise in plain words. Where a vendor accepts cards, that route is often preferred: a card network's dispute process can reverse a charge when a service is not delivered, while a bank transfer or a peer-to-peer app usually cannot.

This is one of the eight worksheets in the Wedding Planning Kit. The kit ties every due date on this sheet to the Budget sheet and every vendor meal to the Guests tracker — the kit has the other seven sheets.