Caterer - Negotiating Deposits/payment Plans

I would imagine that any caterers that allow this will be few and far between. It's part of their contract and most wedding vendors aren't hurting for business, so they're not going to bargain with potential clients if they can't afford to make the full deposit.

I agree, I wouldn't expect much luck on this front. The deposits are to protect the business from cancellations that would ultimately cost them more from losing the date for another potential job. Bringing it up might make them more hesitant to book with you too, as they could expect that you won't be able to pay the balance. I would look into more affordable catering.

Especially since your wedding is less than a year away, I don’t think you’d find anyone who would negotiate to a payment plan. Maybe if you weren’t getting married until 2021 and planned to pay the full 50% still over a year in advance they’d do it, but I don’t think you’ll have much luck with this.

Actually yes. Much sooner than quarterly, but our caterer required a 50% deposit, and they allowed us to break that up into 4 separate payments, due monthly. It didn’t buy us a ton of extra time but worked out nicely for us to break it up as we could go back and forth — 1 payment on my card, next on H’s. We didn’t actually ask for it or negotiate, they just offered (or maybe saw the look on my face when they said “we need 50%
now” haha) that it would be possible to break it into 4 monthly payments if that worked better. I’m sure we could’ve figured it out if we had to do it all at once (well, we may have had to spread it out bc our deposit may have been more than my credit limit on one cc 🤣), but since they offered, we weren’t gonna pass that up!

id just ask if there was any way to spread out payments— no harm in asking but be prepared that they may not say yes, and if they do, it’s likely to be much sooner than quarterly and may come with some sort of strings (additional fee or something)

Thanks everyone! We're scheduled for a tasting next week so I will definitely ask. We could manage the 50% deposit but would have to delay finding a photographer and DJ since we wouldn't have much funds leftover for their deposit. If we could stager payment for caterer it would have been a huge help

Hope it works out for you. I know Some vendors are open to negotiation. Good luck!