Etiquette 101: Gratuities

We received the following email from reader Jessica:

Could you please address the issue of tipping…specifically, who to tip and how much? I’m having my reception at a restaurant, and in the contract, the quoted price includes gratuity. Should I still hand out cash to each of the servers and bartenders at the end of the night…that seems awkward, but I don’t want to make anyone feel badly. I know I should tip a DJ, but what about the photographers? They’ll have dinner at the same time as we do, and I assume that I should not tip them. Anyone I’m leaving out? After everyone works so hard on our wedding, the last thing I want to do is to not take care of them properly. Your help is much appreciated.

Jessica, this is such a great question!  So much so that we asked Liene from the fabulous Blue Orchid Designs blog to address it in her week of guest posts a few months ago.

In this post, Liene discusses the etiquette surrounding gratuities.  And here, she lets us all know which vendors to tip and what the expected gratuity amounts should be.  The comments section in both post also asks and answers a lot of other burning questions, such as whether or not to provide meals to your vendors, tipping self-employed vendors, and where exactly that “service charge” on your quote goes!

Hope this helps!
E.