You get paid before the wedding. That's not even not trusting the bride and groom or anything, that's just recognizing how many things they have to think about on that date and bringing your check is going to be just one more.
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Can we then agree that the phrase, "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark?
NEVER jump sharks while wearing your leather jacket!
If you have trust issues with your client, you need to collect 100% up front. Communicate to the client you need full payment to complete the contract and fulfill its terms.
Of course, many clients are not comfortable with that either. My 50% non-refundable reservation fee assures that I can pay my band members something if the event is cancelled. A client who fails to pay my balance as stated in the contract in a reasonable amount of time will face a law suit. Again, after 15 years and hundreds of formal event clients, I've never had to so much as pick up the phone to call my attorney. They have all paid their balances within a week or so.
It also helps to not make any promises to your band members about money you don't have in your hand yet. I always make my musicians aware of the realities of being paid and solicit their patience. We just played a ritzy casino gig Friday and Saturday night, and I'm waiting for the agent to send the check. Then I have to deposit it and wait until it clears to pay them. My band understands.
But disrupting the event to confront the client or venue manager to resolve money issues should be avoided at all costs. Far better to give them a week to mail a check or pay you via one of several reliable electronic payment methods. About as far as I'll go is to politely and diplomatically ask once, as we're loading in, then I drop it and contact the client within the next day or two if necessary.
Clients screw up sometimes. They're amateurs at event planning and paying vendors. Some of these people will only plan one or two events like this in their entire lives, and they are faced with an avalanche of details and a huge learning curve. As service professionals, it's up to us to take the high road. A neglectful bride or "wedding planner" doesn't have nearly as much to lose in the reputation department as we do.
You'll almost certainly be paid in full for this gig. Acting desperate or inconvenienced if it takes a few days longer than you expected does no good, and could do harm.
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I'm guessing she was either as pissed off about the turn of events as you were - or - the party wanted her to square it with your band somehow and she couldn't.
Hey...not your circus, not your clowns and monkeys, not your ringmaster - and definitely not your problem.
FWIW many times families bite off far more than they can chew with a wedding. I've occasionally waited close to a week after a wedding to get the balance of the money I had coming - although I always had better communication with my clients than you seem to have had. The bride and groom or whoever hosted the event are liable for what's owed you. Sometimes you just need to let them get the wedding gift checks deposited before you see yours. It's one of those things you need to call on a case by case basis.
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I'm in the middle of planning a wedding right now (ok, my fiancee is planning most of it, but I'm helping...really!) so I'll chime in.
Payment to your vendors is a key priority. We cant talk about a single thing planning a wedding without talking about the cost of it. "Forgetting" to pay a vendor on time seems damn near impossible given the scrutiny with which most weddings are planned.
This seems like a classic case of someone entering into an agreement with the intent of reworking the deal after getting what they want.
Payment to your vendors is a key priority. We cant talk about a single thing planning a wedding without talking about the cost of it. "Forgetting" to pay a vendor on time seems damn near impossible given the scrutiny with which most weddings are planned.
This seems like a classic case of someone entering into an agreement with the intent of reworking the deal after getting what they want.
I used this to sell the concept of remainder in full before we unload/start/whatever. I would explain that everyone is busy and it is one more thing out of the way.
And yet people forget or neglect to pay bills all the time. It is the reality, maybe not with you (good man) but it does happen. So "impossible" seems a little strong.
And it happens to wedding entertainers too.
When it does, I think as professional business people, we need to apply the same standards as any other bill collector: Give a reasonable amount of time to complete the transaction and pay the balance due, be prepared to collect through the courts if necessary.
And it's a little paranoid to assume that your formal event client intends to diabolically re-negotiate terms and fees already contracted. If I was the entertainment, that would be a really stupid thing for my client to attempt. I just chalk it up to some people not being experienced, organized, and losing track of a few details in the face of an enormous task.
Especially "wedding planners." I can't even type it without quotation marks. Some of these so-called experts are just terrible. Yet we have to work with them and play nice, they have the confidence of the client (bride), and they control our fate.
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Ideally, someone walks up and hands me an envelope while we were loading in and setting up. This actually happens the vast majority of the time because I communicate this clearly to the client as we complete the contract. It is a busy day, so the more business we take care of and get out of the way before the event starts, the better.
Over the past few years I have been accepting payment via PayPal and other electronic payment methods (Gigmasters has a nice electronic payment option). My formal event clients often pay their balances electronically the night before or within a day of the event.
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That happened once to me. The contract stated my fee and, at the end of the night, the gentleman who booked me said he forgot his checkbook and he'd get it to me "sometime".
I went to his business the following Monday morning and told him that I provided an agreed to performance and he didn't hold up his end...He promptly gave me a check.
Since then, my contract states I get paid before I set up, or I go home... haven't had a problem since.
I went to his business the following Monday morning and told him that I provided an agreed to performance and he didn't hold up his end...He promptly gave me a check.
Since then, my contract states I get paid before I set up, or I go home... haven't had a problem since.
As others have stated, for a festival or a party, get the balance before you get onstage. I played a festival a few years back, and was given the option of cash or the check. I took the cash. They made the papers a couple weeks later for stiffing all their vendors with bad checks.
I agree with others that you should put it in your contract that you get paid upfront for a wedding. It just removes the possibility of an issue. In this situation, I would have left and called the mother of the bride the next day to request payment.
OP. Since the mother of the bride hired you, I'm going to give the wedding planner a break. Prior to you asking her for payment, she probably had no details of your contract with the mother of the bride. I suspect she just tried to help out, but like you, wasn't getting anywhere with the wedding party. The only thing I would hold her responsible for is not coordinating with the wedding party regarding handling payments to vendors. And maybe she did that prior to the event, but the wedding party told her they would handle paying the band.
OP. Since the mother of the bride hired you, I'm going to give the wedding planner a break. Prior to you asking her for payment, she probably had no details of your contract with the mother of the bride. I suspect she just tried to help out, but like you, wasn't getting anywhere with the wedding party. The only thing I would hold her responsible for is not coordinating with the wedding party regarding handling payments to vendors. And maybe she did that prior to the event, but the wedding party told her they would handle paying the band.
There's a simple way remedy this.
"Any remaining balance is due no less than 48 hours before event"
Glad it worked out in the end and you didn't have to send Tonya Harding's boyfriend over with a crowbar to collect 
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- I teach lessons and perform live music in and around San Diego CA. Sometimes I even make money doing it!
I was pretty old-school, in that I would take checks day-of until this year. I still required that the checks be in hand before I began playing. Even still, I would be handed empty envelopes, the wrong vendors' envelope, etc. The straw that broke the camels back was my first wedding this season, I was handed a check in the wrong amount. It was a small error so I didn't bother them day of, but had to bother the bride the Monday after the wedding.
Nowadays that brides and grooms usually pay their own way, it's just too much for them to handle day-of. So I've changed my policy to have my final payment in by the Monday prior to the event. When clients ask, I make sure they know that my contract specifies that if there were a catastrophe that caused me to cancel (which hasn't happened in over 20 years of performance), they would be refunded, that I'm a licensed business so they have legal recourse, and that a negative review in which I missed an event would be far worse for my business than the money I would gain from them.
If you were hired by the Wedding Planner then yes, she should have had this dialed in. I did wedding photography in the late 80's through the mid 90's, and was always hired by the bride's mother. I never had an issue because I asked for the check before things got hectic. And by the way, every time I worked a wedding that had a Wedding Planner, they were nowhere to be found when the coordination was needed.
i.e., the perfect introduction to married life. That's pretty much every weekend.
The original contract should include two checks to be written at the same time. The first, a deposit to reserve the night, and the second to be presented upon arrival. No waiting to write it, no misunderstandings.
The limo driver, while driving the bride and her entourage, threatened to drop his passengers off on a street corner, if his overage fee wasn't immediately paid online, or in cash on arrival, at a friend's wedding.
You took it easy on them lol.
You took it easy on them lol.
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