"Preferred Vendors"

It depends on the venue. When I was looking about half the venues required to pick of the list and half didn't.

You have to ask each venue this. My venue has that list but you can use people not on the list. Some venues only let you use their vendors.

My venue has a list on their website of preferred vendors, but those are just ones they recommend. I am actually not using any of the vendors on their list.

Some venues only want you to work of the list they provide whereas other will allow you to bring outside vendors as long as they have insurance. I would give them a call and find out.

Confirm with your venue. Since they list as preffered I would guess you don't have to use them. I asked all of my vendors for referrals to vendors they had worked with. If you use one on that list be sure to tell them where you got their name.

Each venue will be different. My venue use to let you choose all of your own, then had some bad experiences with caterers so they narrowed the list down to 3 (you could choose others, but they highly recommended you didn't)

They wanted to control how your wedding went more since it reflected so much on them.

You need to ask the venue about this because it can mean anything from "required vendors" (as in nobody except these people) to "recommended vendors" (as in, we've worked with these peeps and we like the quality and/or they pay us kickbacks to like it).

Find out which is which and don't ask about the kickbacks but know they exist in certain places. Good luck.

Some venues will charge you extra if you don't use theirs or some just don't allow it

Every venue is different. Mine has a list of preferred vendors. There are some...like the florist where she works with ONLY that person and no-one else. Which was fine with me. I've seen the florist's work and she is totally amazing. But there are other vendors that my venue owner recommends but doesn't require me to use, like her stationer/calligrapher. One of the nice things about working with my venue's preferred vendors has been that some of them have offered me a special package exclusively for my venue. So far it's worked out. They all have a really high quality product...whether that's cake or photography, and they've all been extremely professional and communicative.

I do not think my experience is the standard for every venue though. I think if you aren't sure then you need to carefully research their "preferred" vendors and also find out if there's some sort of charge for not using preferred vendors.

My venue makes me use their vendors...which sucks. Honestly if you can I would choose one where you get to pick. All of the options they gave us were way over priced and none of them ever got back to our emails.Finally they found new vendors when we complained, I guess a lot of people had been complaining.

Every venue is different. Some venues only allow people (like caterers, dis) who have worked there and haven't trashed the place. Some venues only allow people who pay to be on the list or pay a referral fee by the job, (which honestly, doesn't always make them the best vendors). Some refer vendors they like and respect and who they know will do a great job.

Most vendors who've been doing this for a while will also have their own recommendations, and usually those are people they know are great; no money usually changes hands, which is the way it should be.

Because many venues, especially historical ones, have had bad experiences with vendors who don't follow their rules, they will either restrict the list or make 'off the list' vendors pay an additional security deposit.

So far we have chosen a lot of the preferred vendors and they are awesome. One great thing is they all know each other and have worked together many times before, which makes wedding day coordination a lot easier.

My venue had a list and to go outside of the list the vendor had to provide their liability insurance policy listing My venue as additionally insured.