RIVALS COMING “FAST AND FURIOUS”
The practice of hiring foreign vendors for local weddings has been around for a long time, said Ms Tan Weiwei, 37, who was a wedding planner for more than a decade until the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the recent advisory, couples who hired foreign vendors for their weddings were “frantically” looking for local replacements, said Ms Tan, who now runs online wedding industry publication Wed&.
“Local boutiques who have been able to provide all-in-one services at competitive prices are also affected as they might have been using foreign vendors from neighbouring countries who are willing to be paid lower (fees) for their work,” she said.
Wedding photographer Annabel Law, founder of Annabel Law Productions, said that by early October, she had received about 200 calls from couples looking for another photographer after their foreign vendors pulled out of their weddings because of the advisory.
Like Kevin and Rachel, lower costs are what motivate most couples who choose foreign vendors, said the wedding industry veterans.
Ms Law said that foreign vendors in Singapore can charge as little as S$300 for photography and videography on the wedding day, while local vendors charge from a figure in the upper S$3,000 range to S$6,000.
“We are unable to compete with the prices and the standard of living that the foreigners have in their own countries,” she said, adding that the difference in economic levels allowed them to charge lower fees.
“The market is very saturated already. And now, if we add in the foreigners, we are dying,” said the 33-year-old.
