Thanks for all of the insight everybody!
@@acw271011 is right, I am indeed a groom. My future bride is less interested in these kinds of details. Her forte is making the guests happy and making everything look great!
It sounds like there isn't a good reason to not get prices on our own, besides the idea that it may indicate a lack of trust on our part towards the potential WC.
I definitely agree that trust is very important.
To be perfectly honest, the first planner that asked us not to contact places on our own was somebody that we do not trust very much. It was in an area that doesn't do many weddings and she didn't have a ton of experience, so we were wary of her from the start. But we were still considering her because a coordinator with boots on the ground may be better than no coordinator at all, even if we had to keep close tabs on her.
As for the other wedding planner who said this to us, we actually like her a lot. In fact, we like her so much that she's the reason we put the RM area back on our list after initially dismissing it. So we do trust her, but I think we still need to make sure we're safe. There's too much money on the line to just cross our fingers and hope we've placed our trust in the right person.
The question mostly came up because we have a site visit planned very soon but don't have a contract finalized with a WC yet. We are trying to figure out on our own if we can either rule any places out or put them at the top of our site visit list based on price alone.
So the main goal has been getting information as soon as possible, even if the WC may be able to get lower numbers in future negotiations. Second to that is, yes, a desire to know if we are going to end up paying less on our own than with a WC because the venue will pay the WC a commission or something like that...
To @@TAkathy's point, if we get a price directly from one boutique hotel or beach club and the WC comes back with a price for the same venue that's 10% less or includes more for the same price, that will certainly build our trust in the WC! If the price for the venue comes back higher from the WC, then I'll be wondering why we aren't going to the venue directly.
Also, in our case our agreement is set up so that we'll be making payments directly to the venue and vendors, so we will see the individual contract and pricing for each.
Thanks again, all!