Tips For Tippers
The gorgeous Gigi searched the site for an answer to her query but found no satisfaction. To prevent other brides-to-be from suffering a similar fate, I shall repeat her question and my answer here.
Who am I supposed to tip the day of my wedding? And how much? We are getting married in Florida at a resort. Do we tip the person who works at the resort and is running the wedding? Let me just mention that my wedding is a mere 21 days away and I just got an e-mail for the girl who I have been working with since May of last year when we chose this location. She wrote that she had a family emergency and is leaving Florida next week. She assures me the girl who is taking over is good but does she deserve a tip? I know to tip the photographer and DJ, but how much? The bartenders will get tips throughout the night from guests, but do we give them one at the end? It is a buffet so there is no wait staff….I know I am forgetting someone…PLEASE help me.
I’ll admit right now that I’m a big tipper. You might even say that I tend to be an overtipper, unless service has been extra, extra shoddy. Service staffers aren’t usually paid particularly well, and if I can help make up that difference, I’m pleased to do so. That said, tipping only gets really confusing when you’re dealing with wedding professionals!
It’s important to remember that gratuities are always appreciated, but are never required. Some people won’t tip vendors who own their own businesses — photogs, florists, and bakers come to mind — but I see nothing wrong giving a small gift to a vendor who has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Sometimes it’s better to write a gracious letter of thanks instead that your favorite vendors can show it to future customers.
Now, Gigi has been dealing with one on-site coordinator and has to work with another one instead. Being that the change happened so close to her actual wedding date, I’m going to guess that a lot of choices have already been finalized and a lot of orders for ceremony and reception accessories have already been submitted. Presumably, gal number two is going to slip into the role of day-of coordinator. It’s appropriate to tip a planner 10% of the total bill, but whether or not Gigi chooses to do that should depend on how much work her coordinator has actually done. A smaller tip might prove more appropriate.
How much Gigi tips will vary depending on how much she’s spending and who is working at her wedding. Tips are traditionally reserved for those service professionals who will only see a small percentage of the money paid out to the big boss. Tip a maître d’ around $150, tip a catering manager about
15% of the total bill, tip a bartender 10% of the total liquor bill if she or he is working an open bar. To avoid double tipping a barman, ask him (or her or the site manager) to put up a “no tips please” notice.
If the photog and DJ aren’t the owners of their companies or they’ve obviously earned something more than a thankful note, tip them with 15% to 20% of the total bill. If your photog has assistants with him, consider giving them $30 a head if they’ve done a lot of work. Wedding day stylists should be tipped like any other stylists, with 15% to 20% of the total bill. Chauffeurs and drivers get the same. Parking attendants should receive from $1 to $2 per car parked, and coat checkers get the same per guest. If you’re so inclined, you can give delivery staff for florists, bakers, and so forth a small cash tip, e.g. 20 or so dollars.
Since it sounds like Gigi has opted for a package wedding, she should make sure a gratuity hasn’t already been added to her bill — sometimes it’s included in the price but site managers conveniently “forget” to tell the customer. If gratuities aren’t included, put cash in labeled envelopes and give them to your best man or MOH to give out. Don’t, whatever you do, stash them in here:
Holy crap you’re supposed to tip people at weddings?? Hopefully no one was expecting that at mine, because it never crossed my mind. I mean..everyone was getting paid or had been paid for services to-be rendered. I suppose if we’d had a bar tender I can imagine them getting some tips for keeping the bar clean and having a great personality on top of their vast knowledge of drink concoctions..but we didn’t.
Some do, some don’t, Audrey. It’s up to each couple to decide whether to tip vendors and how much to tip. The Beard and I tipped all our vendors — I think — but all my vendors were so good about working with me remotely and delivering/setting up stuff. I’m an obsessive tipper, however! Like I said, tipping is always appreciated, but never required!
Has anyone else run into this one? Our reception site has an 18% service charge already added in but at our last meeting (our wedding is in september) our co-ordinator said that that was not considered a tip but contributed to the staffs wages and we should tip in cash on the day of the wedding. I feel like we were mis-led slightly as 18% is a fair amount of money, and then to have to tip another 15-20% on top of that. Not that I begrudge the waitstaff, I just feel like the owners are being slightly mis-leading.
I like the idea of writing a warm thank-you letter to great vendors who own the company — I’ve seen several of those letters posted in caterers’ offices and bridal salons, and they do make an impression on newbie clients like me. Also, positive WeddingWire.com reviews can go a long way towards boosting a good vendor’s business.
That strikes me as completely absurd, Colleen! I mean, first of all, they are tacitly admitting that they either don’t charge enough to pay their staff or they don’t feel like paying their staff out of what they receive from clients so they have to pad it. If that 18% is necessary for them to pay employees their regular wages, they obviously need to redo their math.
From Tip Compliance:
“The IRS views a tip as a discretionary amount given to a worker by a patron, whereas a gratuity is an amount, typically specified by the establishment, of which all or a portion may be conveyed to the employee. Furthermore, the IRS has specified that gratuities are to be paid to the employee as wages on a paycheck.”
BUT while the gratuity is doled out as part of wages, it’s still meant to supplement base wages, NOT help the company pay its employees said base wage. In fact, doing that is illegal!
From Ford Harrison:
“A recently issued Department of Labor (DOL) opinion letter reminds employers that gratuities imposed by employers on customers cannot be used by the employer to satisfy the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime requirements for tipped employees.”
I’d dig a little deeper, and if you do find out that your automatic gratuity is being used to pay staff a base wage, I’d write a strongly worded letter (after the wedding) to the reception site and alert the BBB. If you haven’t signed a contract yet, you could renegotiate, and if you have, you could try fighting the charge.
Bride, I’m the opposite of you. It takes a lot for me to tip anyone outside the usual spectrum of tippables, ie, waiters and hairdressers. I tipped my former postman at Christmas because he was awesome, but saw no reason to tip the paperboy who consistently messed up the delivery.
Why should you tip for a service for which you have already negotiated the price? Also, why should you tip unless there is extraordinary service? My fiance’ and I had long discussions about this during a recent festival here. He tipped the person who drew him the beer in the plastic cup but not the one who sold us fried macaroni and cheese on a stick.
What was the difference in service that warranted a tip? He said you always tip bartenders. I maintained that you tip a bartender when you are in a bar and the bartender is keeping your table clean and refilling your drinks without asking. But if all someone does is put beer into a cup, why is that tip worthy?
Colleen, I would fight that one tooth and nail. (And yes, I have been a waitress, but I only got tipped when I provided really good service, which honestly was not that hard to do.) I thought a service charge was a tip, too. I would also think that catering staff might be paid regular wages instead of the lower wage that some restaurants pay waiters. I don’t know what the tax classifications are — whether caterers can get away with paying less to waiters than minumum wage. But in any case, that was misleading. Their proposal/contract should have stated that a tip was not included (since when do you tip caterers anyhow?) if that was indeed the case.
Colleen, dig out your contract — does it say how much are the servers being paid an hour? (Mine does, but yours might be different.) Add the 18% service charge on top of that and they’re probably making a reasonable wage already. And, as NtB said, if they’re not it means the venue is shorting them, not you.
Either way, don’t pay an extra 20% in cash tips! That sounds like a scam to me.
Thanks for the links NTB and all the comments everyone! I’m going back to my contract and do a little more digging.
I’m a person who tips, and tips well – but who tips with discretion, especially nowadays. That is to say, I have noticed that tip jars are out everywhere – places where they were not five years ago, for instance. More and more people are putting their hands out these days, on the theory that it can’t hurt to try, and they may well get money they wouldn’t ordinarily have gotten in the normal course of business. I used to, very grudgingly, start tipping my dealer-of-donuts, less grudgingly the lady who dealt out my hotdogs, and then I thought, No. These people are doing their jobs, and I do not see the tip jar on my desk, encouraging the speeding up of tasks by chucking in the dollar or ten. I’ve gone back to tipping people who’ve done me an actual service, and some of them I tip BETTER than I used to, and I tipped darned well. Cab drivers, and the guy who brings me my pizza – I know other people are tipping them less or not at all, as costs have skyrocketed, and I know these men and women are paying for their own gas in order to perform their jobs. I do what little I can on their behalf, and these are folks I would ordinarily tip. The battered coffee cup, put out on the off-chance? Not so likely. The mailman, who gets a solid government paycheck and makes more money than I do, and who carefully leaves UP the lid of my mailbox when it rains, so I have my own little basin full of papier mache? Not a penny. The garbage men, who ALSO make more than I do? No. The woman who does my nails, yes. Bartenders, yes. But the simple ability to put out a hand does not actually entitle people to my money, or to yours.
How does this relate to weddings? The same way, IMO. The people whom you would normally tip, get tipped. The folks about whom you are dubious, maybe you really don’t need to tip them. This excepts Colleen, whose reception co-ordinator is verging on and, ah, tipping over, into fraud.
“Our reception site has an 18% service charge already added in but at our last meeting (our wedding is in september) our co-ordinator said that that was not considered a tip but contributed to the staffs wages and we should tip in cash on the day of the wedding.”
The hell? Why are YOU expected to contribute to the staff’s wages? Isn’t that what their employer is for? Are you also expected to make out W-2s, since you are “contributing to WAGES”? If you don’t, will it turn up when you run for public office? It’s been my impression, from every occasion where a site nailed you for that non-negotiated 18% added on, it was added on AS A GRATUITY. This sounds like a shakedown. Either the staff is getting stiffed by the employer, who is keeping the 18% they’re supposed to get, or the EXTRA tip isn’t getting reported. I call double-dipping, and I suggest that you advise the co-ordinator that since you hadn’t budgeted to make up for the SHORTFALL in the staff’s REGULAR WAGES, you will be happy to do so, of course, poor things – but they’re not getting tipped on top of that. There’s no money left, unless the co-ordinator wishes to contribute his/her paycheck.
In point of fact, the staff gets nailed for taxes upon a certain amount of tips calculated by the IRS as having been earned — whether they get those tips or not. That’s what that extra 18% is all about, and it is in that way you are “contributing to the staff’s wages” – by contributing the 18% gratuity upon which they will be taxed. The surcharge was added to keep the staff from being stiffed by patrons, when they will be taxed on what the IRS thinks they SHOULD have gotten, regardless of the lack of actual tip. You do not, NOT, tip on top of that. You’re not contributing to a charity named “Reception Site.”
And you need to make it clear that you will see them in court if the service falls below what’s expected of a place with Reception Site’s reputation. Check your contract, maybe check with a contract attorney if you have access to a lawyer in your group who’s not too expensive, consult amongst yourselves – you may want to get your ducks in a row, and wait until AFTER the reception for the staff, God help them, to discover they’re not getting an ADDITIONAL 20%. Where are you going to find the wherewithall to tip all these folks THIRTY-EIGHT PERCENT OF YOUR RECEPTION FEE for their services, however sterling? And if you find in teeny-tiny print in your contract that you’ve been screwed, feel free to drop a dime on them to the IRS reporting the situation, because I’m pretty sure all that lucre isn’t being reported. It’s my recollection that if Reception Site gets fined by the IRS for tax evasion, you get a percentage of that for your honeymoon budget. Yes, do be sure to let the IRS, as well as the BBB, know what’s going on. If that Tip-In-Addition-To-Surcharge isn’t specifically spelled out in your contract, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s utterly fraudulent, and that the co-ordinator is getting kickbacks from the staff on the Additional Surprise Tips for which people are being whacked.
Don’t put up with it.
Sorry for the extra-long rant, but I’m sick of people being robbed blind In Honour Of Their Special Day.
Oh, boy. The answer to the questions we’ve been asking are down below. All credit goes to http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/001607.php, where I found the information.
And yes, the reason for the existence of the “service charge” is because the site owner can legally keep it, whereas the site owner cannot legally keep tips. My feeling is The Hell? What is the service fee for, then, if not for the … service? The restaurant/country club/barbecue pit/whatever is ALREADY BEING PAID for the food and drink. So they rake in an extra “service charge” just because they want it, and we are expected to STILL tip the servers? (This is my fulmination; the actual entry is below.)
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Boy, isn’t that the question? Is a tip a service charge? That’s what many restaurants want us to believe, isn’t it?
What does replacing voluntary tips with a service charges actually mean?
Lets start off by understanding that tips and service charges are both defined under federal law. Did you know that federal regulations state that a tip is to be distinguished from a payment of a charge, if any, made for the service? Do you know why? You see it would be fraud if a customer gave a tip to an employee and the business owner kept it for himself or controlled that money to his own benefit. Service charges are not tips. Service charges may be kept by the business owner. Did you know that?
Here is a link to the law which explain that service charges are the property of the employer.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_531/29CFR531.55.htm
You see it clearly says that service charges are amounts received from customers that are the employer’s
property, not the employees, such amounts do not constitute tip income to the employee.
Now that we understand what service charges are, let’s understand what tips are.
Here’s a couple of link which explain clearly what tips are.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_531/29CFR531.52.htm
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs15.htm
As you may note in the first link A tip is a sum presented by a customer as a gift or gratuity in recognition of some service performed for him. It is to be distinguished
from payment of a charge, if any, made for the service. Whether a tip is to be given, and its amount, are matters determined solely by the customer, and generally he has the right to determine who shall be the recipient of his gratuity.
Now on to the second link which clearly explains; Retention of Tips: The law forbids any arrangement between the employer and the tipped employee whereby any part of the tip received becomes the property of the employer. A tip is the sole property of the tipped employee.
So now lets get back to the question at hand. Is a tip the same as a service charge?
NO
Now let’s move on to a few more pertinent and revealing questions.
1. Why are restaurants replacing a tip with a service charge?
2. What does replacing voluntary tips with a service charges actually mean?
3. Is it legal?
1. Isn’t it clear when one has an understanding of what tips and service charges actually are that the reason restaurants want to replace tips with service charges is so customers will give the business money that they used to give the employees. Remember tips are the sole property of the tipped employee, that means that moneys received as tips can’t be used by the business. On the other hand, moneys received as service charges are the business’s property and as such the business can do what ever they want to do with those moneys according to federal law.
2. Replacing tips with service charges actually means that customers will be giving the business money instead of the employees. Remember, under federal law service charges are the business property not tip income for the employees. What will actually happen is that the money that used to be given to the employees will become by law the employer’s property. What this means to workers is that the tips that they used to receive from customers and which were protected by federal laws as their sole property will become property of their employer. What this also means is that a customer’s right to determine whether a tip is given, the amount and who will be the recipient of his tips will be replaced by an automatic charge which denies customers their right to determine such matters and which results in the business fraudulently reaping the financial rewards of the tip that would have gone to an employee of the customer’s choosing.
Why do I state that it is fraudulent? Most customers who pay these service charges think they are the same thing as a tip. In fact, many restaurants openly suggest that the service charge is in lieu of a tip. What is in lieu. Alternately, alternatively, by choice, by preference, first, in lieu, in preference, instead. Business want customers to instead of tipping their employees to give the business additional income.
3. Is it legal.
I do not think so. Customers are being led to believe that a service charge may be paid in place of a tip, however no distinction is being made that the service charge is not the same as a tip. Many customers are paying these service charges with a misguided impression that a service charge is the same as a tip when clearly there are distinct differences. Customers, in fact, are paying service charges that they think are money intended as tips not knowing that the money is legally the business’s. I truly believe such practices are fraud on the consumer and not only fraud but intentional fraud. Businesses have every right and ability to charge more for their services if additional income is needed. Instead of charging more for their services many businesses are intentionally substituting service charges for tips in an effort to defraud money out of the public.
You can write whatever you want about service charges, but I am telling you right now they are nothing but fraud when they are accessed in lieu of a tip without distinguishing that they are not actually a tip.
Businesses have been attempting to steal the tipped employee’s tips for decades. The service charge is just another blatant attempt.
Sincerely,
Gary Reed and millions of tipped employees nationwide
Posted by Ralph R. Frasca at 10:33 PM in Economics ~ in Law ·
I would take a magnifying glass to your contract, Colleen. If it says that the service charge is suggested, I suggest that you not pay the service charge, and tip the staff instead. Legally, that “service charge” isn’t making up the remainder of the staff’s wages; it’s going straight into the pockets of their employers, who are not obliged to disgorge penny one to their staff.
If it states specifically that the service charge is going to go to the staff, then that actually IS a contractual obligation on the part of the employers; that information needs to be getting to the staff, if they do not already have it.
Fantastic info, La BellaDonna!
I wholeheartedly agree that a warm thank you note would be better than a tip. A thank you note is infinitely more useful in attracting more clients for future business. For friends who offered their help in our wedding (ie, music, photography, etc.) we will be giving them a small cash gift. But for our vendors that did an exceptional job I plan on writing them a warm letter instead of giving a tip.
On the tip/service charge discussion, I wonder if “gratuity” is considered a tip or service charge? Rereading the contract with our reception site, it says an 18% gratuity is added to our bill. Since the wedding is done and over with I’m not terribly concerned, but it does bother me to think that this gratuity did not necessarily mean we were tipping the waitstaff.