Wedding vendors withhold prices for four reasons: the scope does not exist yet (no venue, date or guest count), they want to anchor to your budget first, they are sub-contracting and waiting on someone else's number, or the quote is deliberately timed to arrive after you are committed. Fix the first by sending five details in one message — date, venue by name, guest count, every function, and exactly what they deliver. Then ask three questions in writing: do you take vendor commissions, can I have this itemised, and who physically builds it.
| Why the quote is missing | What it actually means | What to send back |
|---|---|---|
| Scope does not exist yet | Legitimate — the venue decides the build | The five details, in one message |
| “What is your budget?” first | Anchoring; standard, not dishonest | A range, after you ask their typical |
| Waiting on a sub-contractor | They will buy your wedding, not build it | “Who physically builds it?” |
| Quote timed to arrive late | Counting on you being too far in to walk | Ask for a band in writing, or move on |
How we price, for comparison: a flat fee of ₹5–25 lakh+ set by scope, zero vendor commissions, and you pay every vendor directly. Of our last 100 weddings, 3 went over budget, by an average of 12%.
Last updated: August 2026 · Reviewed by Panigrahana’s founding team
The single most common complaint couples make about wedding vendors is not that they are expensive. It is that they will not say what they cost. You ask for a price, you get a callback request. You ask again, you get a brochure with no numbers in it. Meanwhile you are trying to work out whether this vendor belongs in a budget you have not finished building. This guide explains why that happens, and gives you the exact brief and the exact questions that turn an evasive vendor into a written number.
Why a wedding vendor will not give you a price
There are four reasons, and only one of them is a warning sign.
One: the scope genuinely does not exist yet. A decorator cannot price a mandap without knowing the venue, because the venue decides whether they are decorating a room or building one. The same design in a hotel ballroom and on an open lawn are different jobs with different rigging, power and labour. If you have not named a venue, a date and a guest count, an honest vendor has nothing to price against. This is the most common reason, and the fix is entirely in your hands.
Two: they want to anchor to your budget first. The question "what is your budget?" before any number is offered is standard practice across the industry. It is not automatically dishonest, since a good vendor really does design differently at five lakh and at twenty. But it does mean the first number you hear will be shaped by the number you said, which is why you should give a range rather than a ceiling, and give it only after you have asked what a typical wedding of your size costs them to deliver.
Three: the price is not really theirs. If a vendor is sub-contracting the actual work, their number depends on what their sub-contractor quotes that week, plus a margin they would rather you did not see itemised. This is where the delay usually comes from when a "quote in two days" becomes ten. It is a business model, not a crime, but it is worth knowing whether the person you are hiring will build your wedding or buy it from someone else.
Four, and this is the one to act on: the number is designed to arrive late. A quote that only appears after you have visited the office twice, met the team, and emotionally committed is a quote that is counting on you being too far in to walk. If a vendor will not put any band in writing after you have given them a complete brief, that is your answer about how the rest of the working relationship will go.
The five details that make a real quote possible
Most stalled quotes are stalled because the brief was incomplete, not because the vendor was hiding. Send these five things in one message and you remove the excuse:
- The date, or the month. Peak season and a Saturday cost differently from a Tuesday in the off-season.
- The venue, by name. Not the city. The venue decides the build.
- Guest count, and whether it is firm. A number you will revise is fine, say so.
- Every function you want covered. Mehendi, haldi, sangeet, ceremony, reception. Each is a separate build, strike and crew, so a quote for "the wedding" is not a quote for four events.
- What you actually want them to deliver. Design only, or design and execution. Flowers included or not. Whether they are handling lighting and sound or only decor.
Then add one sentence that changes the reply you get: "If any of this is missing, tell me what you need and I will send it today." It removes the last legitimate reason for silence.
The three questions to ask in writing
Ask these by message, not on a call, because you want the answers in text you can compare later.
"Do you take commissions from the vendors you book for me?" Watch how long the pause is. There are two honest answers. Some companies work on commission from vendors and charge you little or nothing directly; others charge you a fee and take nothing from vendors. Both are real business models. Only one of them has an incentive to recommend the vendor who pays them best rather than the one who fits you best, and you deserve to know which one you are in.
"Can I have this itemised rather than as one figure?" A lump sum cannot be compared with anyone else's lump sum, and it cannot be trimmed later without guessing at what you are losing. A vendor who will not itemise is asking you to buy on trust something you will only see once.
"Who physically builds it?" Their own team, or someone they will find later. This one question tells you more about what your wedding will look like than any portfolio, because a portfolio can show work the company only styled.
What a real quote looks like when it arrives
Once you have a number, you need a way to judge it. Across our own productions the decor budget splits roughly like this, and it is stable enough to use as a sanity check on anyone's quote:
| Line | Share of decor budget | On a ₹15 lakh decor budget |
|---|---|---|
| Mandap (structure + florals) | 25–30% | ₹3.75–4.5 lakh |
| Stage / couple seating | 15–20% | ₹2.25–3 lakh |
| Entrance installation | 10–15% | ₹1.5–2.25 lakh |
| Table decor and centrepieces | 15–20% | ₹2.25–3 lakh |
| Lighting design and equipment | 15–20% | ₹2.25–3 lakh |
| Fabric draping and linen | 5–8% | ₹75,000–1.2 lakh |
| Props, signage, stationery | 5–8% | ₹75,000–1.2 lakh |
| Setup labour and logistics | 8–12% | ₹1.2–1.8 lakh |
If a quote has no mandap line at all, or the setup and logistics line is missing entirely, the number is not finished. Those costs do not disappear; they arrive later as an addition. For the full band-by-band picture, our wedding decor cost breakdown for Bangalore sets out what ₹3–5 lakh, ₹5–12 lakh, ₹12–20 lakh and ₹20 lakh+ each actually buy.
The seven things to check before you sign
These are the lines that most often turn a quote into a bigger invoice:
- Transport and logistics charges, and who pays them if the venue changes.
- Generator and power costs, which outdoor venues almost always need and quotes almost always omit.
- Teardown and cleanup, including whether the venue charges for a late strike.
- Overtime clauses, and what triggers them when a ceremony runs behind.
- Taxes and damage deposits, and whether tax is being applied on top of a service charge.
- Whether the flower list is specified in writing by variety and source, not just "seasonal flowers".
- How each line compares against current market bands rather than against the vendor's own last quote.
If you would rather not do this alone, send us the quote and we will mark it line by line as fair, high or missing, free, whether or not you ever hire us: the Panigrahana quote check. We do not name or criticise the vendor who wrote it. The verdict is about the structure of the document.
What “starting from” and “packages” actually mean
"Starting from" is the price of the cheapest configuration the vendor has ever delivered, usually for a smaller guest count at a venue that did most of the work. It is a real number and it is almost never your number. Treat it as a floor, not an estimate.
Packages are more useful, but only if you read what is being held constant. A package that is fixed on flower volume but flexible on structure will look very different at your venue than in the photograph that sold it. Ask which parts of the package scale with your guest count and which do not, and you will usually find the answer explains most of the gap between the brochure and the final invoice.
The related trap is the cost nobody quoted because nobody thought to: our guide to hidden costs in Indian weddings lists the twenty that show up most often.
How Panigrahana prices, so you can compare
We charge a flat planning and design fee, set by scope, from ₹5 lakh to ₹25 lakh and above. We take zero commissions from vendors, and you pay every vendor directly, which means you see what each one actually charges rather than what we marked it up to. We design and fabricate in-house with a thirty-person team, so the person quoting you is the person building it. Of our last hundred weddings, three went over budget, by an average of 12%.
We publish those numbers for the same reason this page exists: a couple buying a wedding is making a one-time purchase against vendors who do it every week, and the only thing that closes that gap is written detail. If you want the model explained in full, see how a zero-markup planning fee works.